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FOCUS ON
The Heritage of Shanghai Fig.1 Fireworks at the Opening Ceremony of 2010 Expo Shanghai, 30 April 2010.
The advent of the ‘2010 Expo Shanghai China’, which opened on 1 May and continues until 30 October, has rivaled the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an event designed for national display and the celebration of Chinese acumen in everything from industry to culture. In this issue of China Heritage Quarterly we consider the heritage both of the obloquy suffered and the reputation enjoyed by Shanghai in the context of the official exuberance of the 2010 Expo. The historian Xu Jilin meditates in Features on the abortive renaissance of Shanghai culture in recent years, while the Republican era writers Lin Yutang and Zhou Zuoren offer views of the shocking delights and sober realities of Old Shanghai, many aspects of which many would argue find a ready home in New Shanghai. In his study of Sinmay Zau the Shanghai sojourner Jonathan Hutt provides a unique insight into the life of one of the pre-1949 city’s cultural lions. Gloria Davies compliments this with a penetrating view through the ‘Shanghai haze’. On the sidelines of such cultural rancour Sapajou, the Russian émigré artist, created a body of work that reflects the complex realities of the Republican city. In Articles, Duncan Campbell offers our readers further insights into the traditions of Chinese books and reading, while Linda Jaivin reviews a contentious novel by Chan Koon-chung. Chan’s work offers a bleak view of an anodyne future-present while Eric Mu remarks on the historical present evoked by the popular Beijing pedagogue Yuan Tengfei. The T’ien Hsia section features the once-famous foreign resident of Shanghai, Emily Hahn. We also reprint an article by the noted architect Dayun Doon, the man who was crucial in designing Greater Shanghai, a new Chinese city to be build north of the old Foreign Concessions. This extraordinary creation, one readily overlooked by writers, curators and historians today, was a feature of the city’s ‘Nanking Decade’ that dated from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. Without the support of Jonathan Hutt this issue would lack the piquant insights that he offers when we approach the historical and contemporary dimensions of Shanghai. Xu Jilin has also been generous in allowing us to translate a recent essay on Shanghai culture, while the graduate scholars Li Jie and Zhang Enhua enthusiastically responded to a request to write a report on their conference ‘Red Legacies in China’, held at Harvard University in April 2010. Richard Rigby has also been kind enough to allow us to reprint his important study of the Russian émigré artist, Sapajou, and Lois Conner has again let us produce a photographic essay related to the theme of this issue. Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei Media also gave us permission to reproduce Eric Mu’s essay on Yuan Tengfei. Here I would also acknowledge Paul Pennay for directing me to the latest developments involving the Ancestral Temple in Beijing and Stefan R. Landsberger for his permission to carry an image from his important collection of Chinese posters (see Gloria Davies on Lu Xun in Features), and to thank Misael Racines for his help scanning in pictures. I am particularly indebted to Daniel Sanderson for finding time to work on this issue during his research travels in Europe and North America. |
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