Shanghai and the edges of empires / Meng Yue.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meng, Yue, 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shanghai (China)--Civilization--19th century.

Shanghai (China).

Shanghai (China)--Civilization--20th century.

Physical Description:

xxx, 295 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2006]

Summary:

Even before the romanticized golden era of Shanghai in the 1930s, the famed Asian city was remarkable for its uniqueness and East-meets-West cosmopolitanism. In Shanghai and the Edges of Empires, Meng Yue analyzes a century-long shift of urbanity from China's heartland to its shore. During the period between the decline of Jiangnan cities and Shanghai's early twentieth-century rise, the overlapping cultural edges of a failing Chinese royal order and the encroachment of Western imperialists converged. Simultaneously appropriating and resisting imposing forces, Shanghai opened itself to subversive practices, becoming a crucible of creativity and modernism. Yue examines such cultural practices as the work of the commercial press, street theater, and literary arts, and shows that what appear to be minor cultural changes often signal the presence of larger political and economic developments. In doing so, she reveals the retranslation of culture that characterized the most notable result of China's urban relocation-the emergence of the international city of Shanghai.

Contents:

Introduction: the border of histories

The shifting locations of the translation of science

Semiotic modernity: the politics of philology and compilation

Urban festivity as a disruptive history

In search of a habitable globe

Reenvisioning the urban interior: gardens and the paradox of the public sphere

The rise of an entertainment cosmopolitanism

Conclusion: Chinese cosmopolitanism repositioned.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-287) and index.

ISBN:

0816644128

0816644136

OCLC:

62177999

Publisher Number:

9780816644124 (hc)

9780816644131 (pb)

Online:

Publisher description