Hanchao Lu’s Superb Shanghai Tai Chi

Posted: September 24th, 2024 | No Comments »

I don’t think I’ve learnt as much new information from a book about Shanghai for a long time as in Hanchao Lu’s Shanghai Tai Chi (Cambridge University Press)…. so much of interest from the 1950s/1960s (until the Cultural Revolution trashed everything and everyone) from secret dance parties, the old houses people lved in, public toilet grafitti, the end of Fuzhou Lu (once 100 bookstores selling everything imaginable), those who kept their tweeds and resisted the drab Mao suit, those who kept insisting of proper coffee and butter with their toast, who still sat of “decadent” sofas, held banquets at the Pasrk Hotel, kept playing mahjong despite a ban from the no-fun cadres, the 82 restaurants with proper chefs that remained open, and the stats of mid-60s foreigner numbers:

1965: Shanghai’s population was 6mn – foreign population included 25 (UK), 7 (France), 6 (USA), 5 (Germans), 3 (Italians) – not totals for Japanese or Russians (presumably hardly any given WW2 and the Sino-Soviet Split of 1960 that saw the large “Red” Russian population leave en masse). In 1969 there were only a ttoal of 774 visitors to Shanghai – 2 a day! In 1976 Shanghai recorded a total population of 100 foreigners (which seems suspiciously rounded!)

a few little bits I learned language wise from the 1950s/early 1960s:

“laoxiu”– a “decrepit element”

“Mr Three R’s” – people who had a pair of Raybans (often originally from the US military in China); a British Raleigh bicycle, and a Rolleiflex camera

“xiaokai” – “little open” – i.e. children of the rich

“afei” – show-offs

laokele – those with nostalgia for the old Shanghai (kele from “class” or “colour” – as in life was more colourful then)

yangchang kuoshao – a rich dandy in the foreign concessions

Shanghai Tai Chi offers a masterful portrait of daily urban life under socialism in a rich social and political history of one of the world’s most complex cities. Hanchao Lu explores the lives of people from all areas of society – from capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals to women and youth. Utilizing the metaphor of Tai Chi, he reveals how people in Shanghai experienced and adapted to a new Maoist political culture from 1949. Exploring the multifaceted complexity of everyday life and material culture in Mao’s China, Lu addresses the survival of old bourgeois lifestyles under the new proletarian dictatorship, the achievements of intellectuals in an age of anti-intellectualism, the pleasure that urban youth derived from reading taboo literature, the emergence of women’s liberation and the politics of greening and horticulture. This captivating, epitomizing, and vivid history transports readers to history as lived on Shanghai’s streets and back alleyways.

---