Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era: Bourgeois Aspirations and Practice of Longtang Everyday Life
This essay studies an often overlooked and understudied topic – the survival of Shanghai vernacular longtang (alleyway house) urbanite culture in the Mao era (1949-1976). It discovers how bourgeois sentiments embodied by the Shanghai national bourgeoisie were aspired to and inherited by the longtang petty urbanites (xiaoshimin) and their quotidian practices of Shanghai-styled (haipai) everyday life. By delving into archives, newspapers, and urban cultural studies, the essay particularly examines how urbanite culture was revitalized by the mode of Shanghai everyday living and how it resiliently co-existed with socialist revolutionary culture through a type of distinctive material culture particularly manifested in housing and food. It investigates the dialectical and conflictual relationship between the discourse of revolution and that of everyday life. It challenges the problematic incompleteness of Socialist Transformation project and searches for a new understanding of historical viability and sustainability of Chinese socialism, as Chinese socialism did not succeed in eradicating bourgeois sensibility as an oppositional historical force in Shanghai in the Mao era. In this context, the essay argues that Shanghai maintained a privileged urban center while its urbanite culture persisted by means of self-preservation of the longtang everyday life and fetishized bourgeois materialism and aspirations under Maoist Chinese socialism.
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Marie-Claire Bergère. Shanghai: China’s gateway to modernity. 2009, Stanford University: Stanford, California.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. June 6, 1950.
“Yuan” here refers to jinyuanquan or “jinyuan paper currency.” It was first issued on August 20th, 1948 by the Nationalist Party (GMD) and was phased out 10 months later due to inflation and economic crisis. One jinyuanquan was equivalent to three million fabi (legal currency).
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. June 6, 1950.
Yomi Braester. A big dyeing vat: the vilifying of Shanghai during the Good Eighth Company Campaign [J]. Modern China, 2005, 31(4): 411- 447. Also see Richard Gaulton. Political modernization in Shanghai, 1949-1951. In Christopher Howe. ed. Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis.1981, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
On December 1, 1951, the Central Committee issued “Decisions on Practicing Better Troops and Simpler Administration, Increase Production and Thrift, Anti-Corruption, Anti-Waste and Anti-Bureaucratism.” The Three-Anti Campaign (sanfan) officially began thereafter. It was intended to remove the politically unreliable state officials and party cadres, as well as to correct the specific problems found in the function of the administrative organs of the new state. On January 26, 1952, the central government further deepened the campaign scale by issuing “Instructions on Thoroughly Launching ‘Five-Anti’ Campaign during Limited Period in the Cities.” The Five-Anti Campaign against bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of state property, and leakage of state economic secrets. The target of the “Five-Anti” extended from industrialists and merchants to the national bourgeoisie in general. On April 30, The Liberation Daily newspaper announced that the Five-Anti Campaign had secured an overall victory in Shanghai.
Mao Zedong’s speech at the Eleventh Session (Enlarged) of the Supreme State Conference. Mao went over the verbatim record and made certain additions before its publication in the People’s Daily on June 19, 1957. See reference from Selected works of Mao Tse-tung. Vol. VII. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm.
See reference in Hanchao Lu, Beyond the neon lights: everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century. 1999, University of California Press. Yomi Braester. Painting the city red: Chinese cinema and the urban contract. 2010, Duke University Press.
Xiong Yuezhi. Shanghai urban life in heterogeneous cultures. 2008, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe. “Shanghai Land Regulation” especially regulated land lease policy and legalized separate co-existence of the Chinese and the non-Chinese. Regulation item 15 indicated that the Chinese could not negotiate rent among themselves, nor could they build houses and rent properties to other Chinese businessmen. Regulation item 16 indicated that the Chinese were allowed to trade in the public properties built by the British, but were prohibited from renting them.
Known as “huayang gongchu” in Chinese. Xiong Yuezhi. Shanghai urban life in heterogeneous cultures. 2008, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe.
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Siheyuan is a type of traditional Chinese style architecture that is a compound with houses on four sides.
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See history of longtang in G. Byrne Bracken, The Shanghai alleyway house, vol. 95. Routledge Contemporary China Series. 2013, New York: Routledge.
Also see Xudong Zhang. Shanghai nostalgia: mourning and allegory in Wang Anyi’s literary production in the 1990s. In Postsocialism and cultural politics. 2008, Duke University Press. 181-212.
“Ah la” means “we” in the Shanghai dialect, it is used here to represent the dialect itself. Wen-hsin Yeh argues that the term “petty urbanite” first appeared in the pages of popular 1930s Shanghai magazines. This notion of “petty urbanite” (xiaoshimin) is also illustrated by Marie-Claire Bergère in Shanghai: China’s gateway to modernity. 2009, Standford University Press, as well as by Hanchao Lu in Beyond the neon lights: everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century. 1999, University of California Press.
Zhang Zhen. An amorous history of the silver screen: Shanghai cinema, 1896-1937. 2005, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
This is what Xiong Yuezhi calls “wufang zachu.” Xiong Yuezhi. Brief study of the making of Shanghainese and their identity [J]. Academic Monthly, 1997: 10.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. January 17, 1950.
Xiong Yuezhi. Brief study of the making of Shanghainese and their identity [J]. Academic Monthly. 1997:10.
Ibid.
Please refer to Xiong Yuezhi. Miscellaneous notes on the Shanghai school. In Shanghai. Ma Fengyang. ed. 1996, Wenhui Chubanshe, 180-188.
Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s gateway to modernity. 2009, Stanford University: Stanford. California.
Ibid.
Wang Anyi. The song of everlasting sorrow. Translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan. 1995, Columbia University Press.
Known as “luosike li zuodaochang” in Chinese. Metaphorically refers to a meticulous and enjoyable way of managing everyday life in a compact living space.
Henri Lefebvre. The production of space. 1991, Oxford, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell.
Mu Mutian. Longtang [J]. Young Companion, 1935: 110.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. June 30, 1950. “Flesh screens” refers to the male residents who tend to be topless in public when enjoying cool evening summer breeze in Shanghai.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. June 20, 1957.
Also see Lu Hanchao. Beyond the neon lights. 1999, University of California Press. This term comes from a Shanghai local comedy also called “House of Seventy-two Tenants” in 1958.
Xiong Yuezhi. General history of Shanghai. Vol.13. 1999, Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe.
Marie-Claire Bergère. Shanghai: China’s gateway to modernity. 2009, Stanford University: Stanford, California.
Xiong Yuezhi. General history of Shanghai. Vol.13. 1999, Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe.
It is also from the 1958 comedy “House of Seventy-two Tenants.”
Shen Jialu. Shanghainese ways of living. 2009, Shanghai Wenhua Chubanshe.
Shanghai statistical yearbook. 1986, Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe.
Ibid.
Mu Mutian. Longtang [J]. Young Companion, 1935:110.
Hanchao Lu. Beyond the neon lights: everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century. 1999, University of California Press.
Marie-Claire Bergère. Shanghai: China’s gateway to modernity. 2009, Stanford University Press.
Qian, Nairong. Shanghai dialect. 2007, Wenhui Chubanshe.
Ibid.
Eileen Chang. Embittered women. 1987, Haixia wenyi Press.
Lu Xun. Street vendor past and present. In Selected works of Lu Hsun. Vol 4. 1964, Foreign Languages Press: Peking.
Lu Xun. Snacks. In Selected works of Lu Hsun. Vol. 4. 1964, Foreign Languages Press: Peking.
Lu Xun. Street vendor past and present. In Selected works of Lu Hsun. Vol 4. 1964, Foreign Languages Press: Peking.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. August 4, 1950.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. September 4, 1950. The sound of making popcorn is reminiscent of the one of broken tire.
Shen Jialu and Dai Dunbang. Shanghai lao weidao (The old Shanghai taste). 2007, Shanghai wenyi chubanshe.
Xinmin Evening Newspaper. May – August, 1950.
Jin Dalu. Normality and abnormality: Shanghai social life in the Cultural Revolution. Vol. 2. 2011, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe.
Due to food shortage, the state issued food vouchers based on monthly rations between 1955 and 1993.
Half liang equals 25 gram. Shanghai Food Bureau Archive. 1619-225.
Jin Dalu. Normality and abnormality: Shanghai social life in the Cultural Revolution. Vol. 2. 2011, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe. In comparison, snacks from cities like Beijing tended to be “big,” “hard,” “thick” at that time.
Ibid.
During the Cultural Revolution, pastry stores in Shanghai often took urgent orders from the “revolutionaries” who organized rallies in People’s Square and Cultural Revolution Square in Shanghai. Thousands of jin (500 grams) bread and biscuits were produced for the rallies, including the most popular ones such as “evergreen sweet biscuits,” “sandwich biscuits,” “cream soda biscuits”.
Yu Garden market had a long history and tradition in Shanghai. Yu Garden was first built in 1559 during the Ming Dynasty.
Liberation Daily. July 28, 1972.
One of the state convictions was “the entire nation was obliged to protect Shanghai, also known as quanguo bao Shanghai. Also see Jin Dalu. Normality and abnormality: Shanghai social life in the Cultural Revolution. Vol. 2. 2011, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe.
Ibid.
Wu Xiaoming, Taotie zhi ye. Xinmin Evening Newspaper. January 26, 2004.
Mark Swislocki. Culinary Nostalgia. 2009, Stanford University Press.
Xudong Zhang. Shanghai nostalgia: mourning and allegory in Wang Anyi’s literary production in the 1990s. In Postsocialism and cultural politics. 2008, Duke University Press. 181-212.