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Shanghai : The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City 1842-1949
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $11.25
Your Save: $ 3.75 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 950
EAN: 9780060934811
ISBN: 0060934816
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2001-06-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: 2001-05-22
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Reviews:
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Transformed from a swampland wilderness into a dazzling, modern–day Babylon, the Shanghai that predated Mao's cultural revolution was a city like no other: redolent with opium and underworld crime, booming with foreign trade, blessed with untold wealth and marred by abject squalor. Journalist Stella Dong captures all the exoticism, extremes, and excitement of this legendary city as if it were a larger–than–life character in a fantastic novel.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good historical assessment
Comment: on the rise and fall of Shanghai from 1842 to 1949. Starting out with warlords, three separate entities (International Settlement, French Concession, Chinese Territory), gambling, arms, guns, opium, prostitution, rags to riches, white Russian women, David Sassoon family (Iragi Jews), Hardoon garden, Hsu Chi-mo, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, Soong three sisters, T.V. Soong, H. H. Kung, mob-figure Tu Yueh-sen (Al Capone of the orient), Mao Tse-dong, Chou En-lai, 40,000 Jews in Shanghai ghetto (Hongkow), Wang Ching-wei, rape of Nanking, Japanese took over in 1943, 8,000 foreigners (British, Americans, etc) in Bridge House (concentration camp), Germans could not kill the Jews in Shanghai, 500,000 ounces of gold moved to Taiwan.... to Communist taking over in 1949. Many of these events were clearly researched and documented. It is a worthwhile read. If anyone will make a movie, it will be fascinating.
I was born in Hongkow, Shanghai. I learned about these events in bits and pieces when I was growing up in Taiwan. Of course, I only got one side of the story from Chiang Kai-shek, that everyone is bad except him. Now I look at the whole picture, Wang Ching-wei is not a bad guy after all. He was able to accomplish one government (no more three separate entities) while none of the others could.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining History of Shanghai
Comment: I read this shortly after my return from a trip to Shanghai and found it to be an engrossing, fast read. I prefer travel literature to straight history, so I'm not overly concerned with whether something is perfectly accurate (which no history is, anyhow). If you want to get a flavor for Shanghai as it was and pick up a number of entertaining facts (or factoids) along the way, read this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy Reading
Comment: Very informative, easy ready, learned a lot in just the first 10 pages. Great author.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Decadent pleasures
Comment: Stella Dong's bid to enter the ever-burgeoning world of "lite" cultural histories of important world cities (such as the city studies of Jan Morris) is nothing if not entertaining, and her account of life in the "Old Shanghai" from between the Opium War and the Communist Revolution moves along with a wealth of all sorts of interesting social tidbits about a city that was notorious site of decadence and pleasure-seeking for decades in the West and East alike. Because the work is somewhat gossipy and lightweight in nature it might have benefitted from a sharper sense of humor and irony, or from a more personal point of view (all of which we see in Jan Morris's work). At the very least, it needs at least some photographs of its primary locales and figures, and also clearer chapter subdivisions--at times, the book just seems to grind along somewhat from topic to topic with little direction. But it still is a fun overview of a very fascinating site for the colonialist imagination
Customer Rating:
Summary: Misses the mark, but has its positives
Comment: I live in Shanghai part time and this book is interesting to me because I can walk around the city and imagine... but the book seems very biased and is more interested in sensationalizing the city then a true analysis of the wonder that is Shanghai. In a way I am saddened by her reflection because it runs down the same path as most 'Westernized' views of China; I realize that this sells books, but when will authors take the responsibilty of serious reflection about place and significance rather than feed the reader with exotic half-truths. Before I ramble more (my highscool grammar teacher will cry if she reads this), I would suggest that one decide what they want out of a this book before purchasing... If you want a decently engaging story - this is ok... If you want to know about Shanghai's 'essence' look elsewhere, Stella Dong misses the real story and the real city.
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