Shanghai

  Shanghai, China
Saturday, December 1, 2007

Shanghai  上海 Shàng hǎi   
 
Shang·hai 1 n.  (sh ng-h , shäng -)
A city of eastern China at the mouth of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) southeast of Nanjing. The largest city in the country, Shanghai was opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking (1842) and quickly prospered. France, Great Britain, and the United States all held large concessions in the city until the early 20th century. Shanghai is located in Jiangsu province but is administered as a separate governmental unit. Population: 9,110,000.

Nanjing Rd Evening 2a

shang·hai v.  (sh ng-h , sh ng h )
tr.v. shang·haied, shang·hai·ing, shang·hais
1. To kidnap (a man) for compulsory service aboard a ship, especially after drugging him. [After Shanghai, from the former custom of kidnapping sailors to man ships going to China.] 2. To induce or compel (someone) to do something, especially by fraud or force: We were shanghaied into buying worthless securities.
shang·hai er n.
 
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
 
 
Shanghaied - Charlie Chaplin's 46th Film Released Oct 04 1915
http://www.archive.org/details/CC_1915_10_04_CharlieShanghai ed  
Synopsis A shipowner intends to scuttle his ship on its last voyage to get the insurance money. Charlie, a tramp in love with the owner's daughter, is grabbed by the captain and promises to help him shanghai some seamen. The daughter stows away to follow Charlie. Charlie assists in the galley and attempts to serve food during a gale.  

Charlie Chaplin's Shanghaied 1

Charlie Chaplin's Shanghaied 2

History of Shanghai
 
Shanghai's territory has a recorded history of more than 5,000 years starting with the Songze Culture from 4000-3000 BC, with significant archaeological resources before that time.  The area, known as  Shen, Hu and Hu Du throughout the centuries before its present name, lies at the mouth of the Yangtse River on the Eastern Coast of China.
 

Pottery 2

Shanghai translates as "Above the Sea".  The city has been a world class sea port for 1000 years. inseparable from its geographic setting.  Its early name "Hu Du" comes from the ancient fishermen who invented a bamboo fish trap called the "Hu" along with the Chinese word for "creek", "Du".
 
The name "Shanghai" surfaced during the Song Dynasty (960-1276), when Shanghai was developing into an important trade port.  One of the 18 creeks that empty into the Yangtse River here was called "Shanghai Creek" (close to "The Bund").
 
By the Ming Dynasty of the 14th century, Shanghai had become China 's largest textile center and still represents one of China's largest garment industries.  It was prosperous enough in the 16th century to build a perimeter defensive wall, not a small commitment for any town.  And in the 17th century, a complex web of canals was built to drain the region east of Shanghai now known as Pudong.
 
Development continued at a moderate pace through the mid 19th century with a Customs Bureau, port improvements and general industrial enterprises.
 
Some reports suggest that Shanghai was only "a small fishing village on the edge of the muddy Huang Pu River" in 1843 when the British set up a "concession" in Shanghai.  That's probably not the real situation given its prominence noted above, but before you think that concession had anything to do with trading, the concession was really on China's part for being so naïve in the 19th century to think that they could maintain their isolation.
 
China broke onto the world stage in the mid 19th century thanks to opium.  Britain invested heavily in India to develop a world wide opium market, thinking that it was destined to cure humanity's woes.  By the 1830's, when they realized that it was instead devastating their own country, they decided they better take it off shore, and where better than China - large population, easily intimidated, and they just so happened to have a trade deficit because the British liked Chinese tea.  That was actually Britain's justification for demanding that China allow opium sales after China resisted in light of their own devastating drug epidemic.  

Shanghai Map 1

By 1839, China had had enough and the government proceeded to seize and destroy 20,000 chests of opium from British traders in the southern city of Canton, which, of course, upset the Brits who proceeded to beat the bejeezuz out of China in a no contest war, then demanded compensation for their loss.  When China couldn't come up with enough penalty, Britain took a "concession" in Shanghai, which meant that they opened China's back door for their opium trade.  The US and France also thought that was a pretty good idea, so they followed suit within a few years.  China was not allowed to regulate traffic into Shanghai, and it became the main importation point for China for opium and most every other trade commodity.   Britain called it "an open port", with good reason.  By 1870, opium accounted for 43 percent of China's total imports.  Cotton was second at 28 percent.
 

Shanghai Museum 2b

Chinese Imperial officials protested vigorously against the British, but they also took kickbacks and smoked the drug themselves.   Opium spawned 2 wars in China.  The trade became massive with an estimated 10% of China's population smoking opium by 1890.  The concession lasted until 1945, when China reclaimed Shangahi as part of the World War II settlement.   
 

Pottery 3

During that time, while  Shanghai and neighboring Tietsin became the world's leading refiners of opium, Shanghai also became the most important port in Asia and hosted the world's largest trading and banking firms who set up shop along the Bund, a commercial area near the harbor.  Shanghai's Astor House Hotel claims to have installed the first electric light bulb in Asia.  Tea, silk and porcelain sailed out, opium came in.  Free enterprise.  There were no requirements for visas or passports which, of course, attracted all the world's leading citizens to its gates, and established Shanghai as the world's most exotic, and sleaziest, port of call. 
 

Shanghai H Street

Shanghai's economic history was such a successful formula - little government control along with an open international investment policy - that it was formally developed as China's system of Special Economic Zones, now popularly characterized at China's highest levels as "One Country, 2 systems".  It was the model for Hong Kong and China's 12 other specially designated trade areas.  Today, these zones host the world's major industrial activities.
 

Site of 1921 Communist Party Convention 2

Shanghai was instrumental in many critical political developments in 20th century China.  In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, at the head of the Nationalist (Kuomintang) army, along with the Chinese Communists, captured Shanghai in one of their first major victories during their efforts to establish a new government in China following the failure of Imperial and then foreign dominated rule. Japan invaded Shanghai in 1932 with some success, and again in Aug., 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and this time hung around until they lost the big one.  The first congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in Shanghai in July 1921, until the French got wind of it and then Mao and his 12 buddies had to high tail it upriver where they finished the meeting on a pleasure boat.  Dr. Sun Yat Sen, China's intellectual political power, social gadabout, and designer of the Mao jacket, lived in Shanghai and spread his influence from there throughout China and the world.   
 
World War II was not fun in Shanghai.  Japan started bombing in 1937, with intent to expand their take in China, having occupied Manchuria for the previous 30 years.  Foreigners as well as locals evacuated in response to the Japanese invasion, while 20,000 European Jews immigrated as a place of refuge.   By 1943, the Allied governments had abandoned Shanghai, signing their "concessions" over  to Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang government. 
 

Shanghai City Model

After the war, a "free" Shanghai went through a dismal period of about 40 years in which her industries were nationalized in response to the war devastation and foreign activity came to a halt.  The Communists introduced a campaign of eradicating slums, rehabilitating hundreds of thousands of opium addicts and stamping out child and slave labor. For the West, the Shanghai party was over.
Beginning in the 1960s, Shanghai was the center of radical Maoism, from which Mao and the 'Gang of Four' rose to prominence.   Shanghai suffered through the Cultural Revolution and famine as did every other part of China.
 
Then in 1976, the Deng Xiaopeng government sparked a commercial revival that has made Shanghai one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Asia, with a metro population of over 17 million.   Not without consequences, certainly, since it is plagued by chronic poverty and it is one of the world's most polluted cities offering daily advisories for those with respiratory problems.
 

Shanghai Alley 1

Yet the pace of Shanghai's current development appears to be robust - new train stations, highways, stock exchange, airport, bridges, and perhaps Asia's most powerful modern architecture.  They have a museum dedicated to Shanghai's municipal planning and its programmed future, which makes New York look random.  

Shanghai model 1

The Shanghai Maglev Train, the world's first, makes the 30km trip between from Pudong International Airport in only 7 minutes at a top speed of 430 km/hr.  A least that's what they publish - the day I came in the top speed was 408 kph, and going out it only got up to 302 kph.  Still an impressive ride - Blodgett to Corvallis in 8 minutes.
 

Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Xintiandi Tower

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is the highest in Asia, and 3rd highest in the world, at 468 meters.
 
Shanghai predicts they will overtake Hong Kong as China's industrial and financial capital over the next 20 years.

History of Shanghai
http://www.shanghai.alloexpat.com/shanghai_information/history_of_shanghai.php

Wikipedia Shanghai
http://wikitravel.org/en/Shanghai

Charlie Chaplin's Shanghaied
http://www.archive.org/details/CC_1915_10_04_CharlieShanghaied

Interesting history of Opium
http://www.talesofoldchina.com/shanghai/business/t-opium.htm