A Shanghailander in Seoul Part 1: Touched Down and Settling In

I'm sitting in the study room of a serviced apartment in the middle of a corporate office zone in a neigborhood called Sangam-dong. Outside it's raining, dark, and grey. I'm surrounded by nearly identical corporate buildings identified with huge numbers on them. I could be in any big city in the capitalist world. There's a Matrix-like feel to the neighborhood. But somehow it also reminds me of Fight Club. Maybe it's the corporate art sculptures next to the coffee shops.
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Two Plays Now Showing in Shanghai: God of Carnage and Deer Cauldron Tale

The rainy season is upon us. For the past two weeks the skies over Shanghai have been grey and drizzly, with occasional downpours like angry outbursts of a mad god. This is a good time to escape the rainy day depression by exploring the world of theatrical entertainment that Shanghai offers. Over the past week I have seen two staged plays at Shanghai's Dramatic Arts Center (上海话剧艺术中心) on Anfu Lu. The first was an adaptation into Chinese of the play God of Carnage written by Yasmina Reza, which was performed in Zurich, London, on Broadway, and now here in Shanghai. The second which I saw last night was Lu Ding Ji 鹿鼎记, which I translate here as "Deer Cauldron Tale." This play started out at the Shanghai Drama Theater in 2008 and has since been shown all over China. It is back in Shanghai now and soon moving on to Taiwan. What a contrast between a contemporary story involving two upper middle class urbanite couples, and a historical drama involving a Chinese secret society, a happy-go-lucky son of a whore, and the Manchu Emperor Kangxi.
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Land of Rice Wine and Stinky Tofu: A Weekend in Shaoxing

Other than the obvious choices of Suzhou and Hangzhou, one of my favorite towns to visit within driving distance of Shanghai is Shaoxing. Famous for its rice wine and stinky tofu, this old watertown is located about three hours south-southwest of Shanghai by car or by train. Despite its rampant modernization, with cranes, shopping malls and tall buildings rising up everywhere, the city of four million residents retains a small-town feel. Low hills topped with pagodas grace the city and canals and waterways criss-cross the otherwise urban environment, giving it a quaint beauty that many other watertowns in the Zhejiang-Jiangsu region have either lost or are trying too hard to preserve. In Shaoxing the waterways and their old houses seem to integrate well with the city's more modern features. Tourism in Shaoxing is much bigger than it was six years ago when I first visited the town, but not surprisingly it is geared primarily for domestic rather than international tourists. The city and its environs feature monuments and homages to Wang Xizhi, Lu Xun, and Lu You, all legendary figures of Chinese literature and arts.
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Resurrecting the Ghosts of Old Shanghai: The Execution of Mayor Chen

As readers of this blog and my book know, I have dedicated a good part of my career to resurrecting the ghosts of Old Shanghai. I'm a grave digger of sorts, an archeologist of urban history, whose job is to recover and reconstruct stories and times that have passed into collective oblivion. One story that I have chosen to focus on in future research is the tale of 陳公博 Chen Gongbo. Anybody who knows Republican Era history well ought to be familiar with this ghost of Shanghai's past. Chen Gongbo started his political career as a founding member of the CCP and was at the First Congress honored by the museum located ironically in the heart of Xintiandi, the city's leading entertainment and nightlife complex. Who better to embrace this contradiction than Chen Gongbo himself? Patriot, playboy, poet, romantic, revolutionary, and ultimately arch traitor, Chen personally embodied the many contradictory and conflicting impulses of Republican Era China.
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Mao on Maoming Road: A Tour of the Chairman's Old Shanghai Haunts

Yesterday I brought two groups of NYU students out on separate field trips which converged at the famous Old Jianjiang Hotel. This hotel is famous for hosting high level parties and delegations of officials from China and abroad. Mao used to stay there during his visits to Shanghai. It is also the place where Nixon and Kissinger and their team met with Zhou Enlai and other top officials to sign the Shanghai Communique. The hotel is located on Maoming South Road. A few blocks north of the hotel is a historic house and museum dedicated to the memory of Chairman Mao.
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Playing with Noise: A Weekend of Art and Rock in Beijing

Beijing is the capital of the PRC. Most folks know the city as the political center of the Chinese world. And of course the seat of the 2008 Olympics. Fewer people living abroad are aware that Beijing is also a leading center of a growing arts and live music culture that is also global in its orientation and scope. This weekend while on a trip to reconnect with bands and other people who appear in my film Down: Indie Rock in the PRC, I also reconnected with the amazing world of art that this city offers.
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Shanghai has Sprung: Walking through Historic Parks, Remembering Lu Xun and Waltzing with Mao

I thought Saturday was a busy day, and it was (see my previous blog for details), but Tuesday was just as big.  Fortunately I was feeling much better, and the weather was fantastic.  Spring has finally come to Shanghai and it was time to get out and see the flowers blooming in the parks and gardens of this great city.  

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Touring the French Concession and Screening Down: Indie Rock in the PRC

What a Saturday!  I awoke around 7 am, still groggy from the Bob Dylan concert of the previous night and a night of tossing and turning to some sort of intestinal infection, and readied myself for my alternate job as tour guide.  I had a 9 am appointment at the new Peninsula Hotel on the Bund for a tour group called the International Collectors Forum organized by a locally based tour guide agency called Shanghai Far East Expeditions.  I caught a taxi to the Bund and had the driver stop at Suzhou Creek where I took this morning shot of the iconic Garden Bridge (外百渡桥) overlooking the Pudong Skyline.

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上海纽约大学奠基仪式 NYU Shanghai Campus Groundbreaking Ceremony

Today I attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new NYU campus in the Pudong district of Shanghai.  The campus will consist of a building erected in the middle of a cluster of other skyscrapers and office towers off of Century Avenue in Pudong.  John Sexton, NYU's president, was there to give a speech.  The Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng was there as well along with many other dignitaries from the Shanghai government and from East China Normal University, which has partnered with NYU in setting up this new campus.  

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Shanghai's Dancing World favorably reviewed in the American Historical Review

I was very pleased to receive a message today from my publisher with a PDF file of a highly favorable and attentive review of Shanghai's Dancing World.  The review was published in the most recent issue of the American Historical Review.  Please click here to download the PDF file of the review.  The reviewer is Xiaoqun Xu of Christopher Newport University.  

有朋自遠方來 不亦樂乎： Receiving honored guests from Tokyo and Harvard, resurrecting the ghost of Zhang Ailing, and exploring rooftops on the Shanghai Bund

Confucius says, "Isn't it wonderful to receive old friends from afar?" The past few days have been filled with visits from old friends and colleagues from abroad.  First James Farrer, my colleague and dear friend, and my co-conspirator in the writing of our new book Shanghai Nightscapes, who teaches sociology at Sophia University, and his wife Gracia, who also teaches sociology at Waseda University, and their daughter Sage flew over here from Tokyo where they live and work.

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穆時英 上海的狐步舞， “Shanghai Fox-trot”

This story first appeared in the journal Xiandai (“Modern”) Vol. 4 no. 2 1934.  It has been reprinted many times, for example in Wu Huanzhang, ed. Haipai xiaoshuo jingpin (“The best of Shanghai-stylestories”)  (Shanghai:  Fudan Daxue chuban she, 1996) 525-535.  Translation from Chinese into English by Andrew Field—words in bold appear in English in the original text.

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Shanghai’s Nighttime Phantasmagoria: Haunting Nightlife Spaces Old and New

The other night (Thursday March 17) I took my Global Nightlife students and a few of their friends from the NYU Shanghai program on their second tour of Shanghai’s nightscapes.  This time we started at the famed Paramount Ballroom, the finest and most celebrated ballroom of the Golden Age of Shanghai nightlife, the 1930s.  The ballroom is the only one from the 1930s that today is still operating as a commercial dance establishment.

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