This book explores the play of international forces and international ideas about Shanghai, looking backward as far as its transformation into a subdivided treaty port in the 1840s, and looking forward to its upcoming hosting of China’s first World’s Fair, the 2010 Expo. As such, Global Shanghai is a lively and informative read for students and scholars of Chinese studies and urban studies and anyone interested in the history of Shanghai.

Excerpt from Some Pages in the History of Shanghai, 1842-1856: A Paper Read Before the China Society on May 23, 1916 Thirty odd years ago, life at Shanghai was, perhaps, not so strenuous as it has since become, and the British Vice Consulate was not so busy but that there were half-hours in which other work than that of the day could be taken in hand. As much of the ordinary work, related to the tenure of land within the Settlement, this subject naturally excited my interest, especially owing to the existence of two counter-forces, of which the one impelled natives to acquire land within the Settlement intended for foreigners, while the other drove foreigners to live outside their own Settlement. In the one case, the cause was the desire to secure the immunities and advantages which were to be obtained by living in territory controlled and policed by foreigners. In the other, the motive was to get away from the bustle and stir of the busy port, and to enjoy a country life outside of. Office hours. In both cases there was added the excitement of the knowledge that the purchase of property was an} extremely good speculation, and that the tendency was towards a constant advancement of values in spite of occasional waves of depression. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Transformed from a swampland wilderness into a dazzling, modern–day Babylon, the Shanghai that predated Mao‘s cultural revolution was a city like no other: redolent with opium and underworld crime, booming with foreign trade, blessed with untold wealth and marred by abject squalor. Journalist Stella Dong captures all the exoticism, extremes, and excitement of this legendary city as if it were a larger–than–life character in a fantastic novel.

This volume provides a historical narrative, historiographical reviews, and scholarly analyses by leading scholars throughout the world on the hitherto understudied topic of Shanghai Jewish refugees. Few among the general public know that during the Second World War, approximately 16,000 to 20,000 Jews fled the Nazis, found unexpected refuge in Shanghai, and established a vibrant community there. Though most of them left Shanghai soon after the conclusion of the war in 1945, years of sojourning among the Chinese and surviving under the Japanese occupation generated unique memories about the Second World War, lasting goodwill between the Chinese and Jews, and contested interpretations of this complex past. The volume makes two major contributions to the studies of Shanghai Jewish refugees. First, it reviews the present state of the historiography on this subject and critically assesses the ways in which the history is being researched and commemorated in China. Second, it compiles scholarship produced by renowned scholars, who aim to rescue the history from isolated perspectives and look into the interaction between Jews, Chinese, and Japanese.