Read more
By mapping the city's native spaces of leisure and everyday life, this book reconstructs the spatial, material, and gender modernity of nineteenth-century Shanghai, giving the reader a window into the social life of late imperial China.
List of contents
Introduction 1. Fluid Tradition, Splintered Modernity 2. The Convergence of Writing and Commerce 3. Ephemeral Households, Marvelous Things 4. The Meeting of Courtyard and Street 5. Ultimate Ingenuity, Amorphous Crowds 6. The Mingling of Magnates and Masses Conclusion
About the author
Samuel Y. Liang is Assistant Professor of the Humanities at Utah Valley University, USA
Summary
By mapping the city’s native spaces of leisure and everyday life, this book reconstructs the spatial, material, and gender modernity of nineteenth-century Shanghai, giving the reader a window into the social life of late imperial China.
Additional text
"The great strength of this book is its focus on the spatial rather than the temporal; Shanghai’s urban spaces are brought vividly to life. The book contributes greatly to our understanding of what modernity really meant to the Chinese residents of Shanghai." - Jonathan Howlett: The China Quarterly, December 2011
"Studies of modern Shanghai have disproportionately focused on the city in the early twentieth century, particularly in the Republican era. Liang’s work is a welcome remedy to this obvious imbalance in the field. For its glimpse of life in late nineteenth-century Shanghai and for its rethinking of issues related to city, gender, and modernity, it will be a useful handbook for historians and students of cultural studies." - HANCHAO LU, Georgia Institute of Technology; The Journal of Asian Studies
