Results tagged “history”

Shanghai-born Dr. Liliane Willens will be speaking twice this weekend about her newly published book, Stateless in Shanghai at several venues around the city. But first, a word of explanation about what "stateless in Shanghai" really means:

With the Expo approaching, Shanghai is quickly become more and more official, with roads being paved, mandatory uniforms for taxi drivers, and even rules guiding citizens' subway etiquette, just to name a few of the changes. To keep the changes rolling, the names of Shanghai's official top eight scenic spots have been announced by the Shanghai Tourism Administration, selected from over 1500 suggestions from city dwellers.

Twenty four provinces and municipalities of China unveiled their plans for the Expo at a meeting yesterday. Now we're sure that each province is going to try and outdo each other, but Shaanxi seems to have already taken the cake: they're building imperial robots!

     

We're always fascinated by old pictures of China--we love seeing the tangible change in photographs from eras past. And since we can never get enough, here are a few more pictures from a wonderful photoset taken nearly thirty years ago.

   

Gosh, is there anything we love more than old photographs of China? Chopsticks Café & Bar up in Beijing is organizing an exhibition featuring photos from 1890 to the 1960s. The pictures were organized by the two owners of Beijing postcards, who gathered them over the course of a decade from both private collections abroad and from Chinese flea and antique markets.

Deng Xiaoping's widow, Zhuo Lin, passed away from illness yesterday at 12:30pm in Beijing. According ot the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, Zhuo's medical treatment had failed. She was 93. Zhuo became a member of the Communist Party in 1938 and was married to Deng a year later in front of a cave dwelling in Yan'an. During the Cultural Revolution, she helped him survive a series of political purges, and at one point was sent to live in exile in Jiangxi Province. When she died, the CPC saluted her as a "time honored loyal Communist fighter." Source: Xinhua

Earnshaw Books, your favorite purveyor of China-related reading material, is pleased to announce that it will host an evening of conversation, books and live jazz to celebrate the release this month of two new tomes - Shanghai Story Walks by Yvette Ho Madany and I Sailed with Chinese Pirates by Aleko Lilius, featuring a new foreword by Paul French.

A lot of folks on the Chinese Twitter clone Fanfou have been tweeting about an article regarding the Chinese Academy of Sciences' "blueprint" for China's development from now until the year 2050. Here's our very rough translation followed by a typically snide and cynical commentary.

Jia's film, tentatively titled Shanghai Legend (上海傳奇), is scheduled to be finished towards the end of this year/beginning of next, and will be premiered around April 2010.

Shanghai-based journalist Paul French's latest book is one that ought to excite all you ol' Shanghai history buffs (and press nostalgists as well) - an examination of the convulsive history of the China press corps between the 1820s and leading up to the revolution of 1949.

The folks at Urbanatomy have a great feature up on this very important date in history: when the Communists and Nationalists clashed in this fair city, completely altering its fate forever. It was this day that the Nationalists' final line of defense, up along Suzhou Creek, collapsed. Roughly five months later, Mao Zedong would proclaim the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Earnshaw Books will host an evening of conversation, books and live jazz featuring Graham Earnshaw to celebrate the release of Tales of Old Peking, authored by Shanghaiist contributor Derek Sandhaus!

In a stroke of great news for historical architecture enthusiasts and fans of Shanghai jazz-era fiction, it looks like Eileen Chang's old middle/high school has been saved from becoming another set of skyscrapers!

From the Flickr page (from the Duke University Libraries):

If you've ever been curious about the failures of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, Taiwan is set next month to declassify confidential documents on his many attempts to take back China. Visitors, including us mainlanders, will be allowed to visit Back Tzuhu, a previously restricted section of Chiang's Mausoleum in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. The area was a wartime command center during the 1960s. From 1964 to the early 1970s, Chiang tried repeatedly to launch naval attacks, only to have each of them fail spectacularly. With each failure, Chiang's confidence in retaking the mainland eroded, and by 1972 the project had been abandoned. Source: South China Morning Post

You know what's longer than the Great Wall of China? Apparently, the Great Wall of China! According to the BBC, two-year government study has now found that China's symbol of "Get out! Intruders!" actually stretches a good 3,800km more than previously thought. The newly-discovered sections of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) and go from Hu Mountain in Lioning province to Jiayu Pass in Gansu province. The project will continue for another 18 months, presumably in an attempt to discover more wall and give marathon runners a loooot more ground to cover.

Satisfying our craving for old China photographs, the BBC has put up some online versions of rare 19th Century prints that recently went on display in Beijing.

Let's make this as short and sweet as possible. You've had three weeks to pony your lazy arse to Lit Fest, so if you miss it, don't blame us for not keeping you blissfully well-informed. And if you miss out, you really ARE missing out--if not just for the fabulous view out the window of Glamour Bar in broad daylight.

When we first arrived in Shanghai a long, long time ago, all there was to do on weekends was vogue at Bar Rouge---balancing champagne glasses and tottering around on stilettos while trying to not catch our hair on fire. Well, things have changed. Champagne is no longer as popular and now there is a Barbie shop to vogue around at, plus this weekend our Pearl of the East has oystered out an arts scene involving more than the usual bomb shelters, beer and beavers.

Here's an interesting mash up between a Cultural Revolution-era Long March opera and "Ninja" by Jay Chou, created - if the video's to be believed - by Lee Tang (李唐) from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art two years back. Is the song choice supposed to be a little ironic, considering one of the parties the Long March ended just around the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War?

Tibetan lawmakers have designated March 28 as an annual "Serfs Emancipation Day" to mark the liberation of about one million serfs in the region and the end of what the Chinese government says was a system of feudal oppression 50 years ago. This CCTV report carries the official party line of what life in pre-Liberation Tibet looked like for serfs. It portrays them as having suffered immensely under a theocratic system and the despotic rule of lamas and aristocrats, and how they were often subjected to judicial mutilation such as the gouging out of eyes, and the cutting off of hands or feet.

The Travel Film Archive takes us on another journey back in time with this look at how life was like in 1938 in the then province of Manchuria (Manchukuo) under the Japanese.

Another great newsreel from Quirky Beijing entitled Ghosts of Empire: Peking dated 1931 from the Port O’Call series by William M. Pizor. [h/t to Danwei]

"In 10 years its population doubles to a seething 7 million people!"

• Why Is Prof. Yang Shiqun Being Investigated? Read His Class Syllabus [China Digital Times]
• Reclaiming Old Shanghai? [The China Beat]
• China: 08 Charter, signers arrested and questioned by police [Global Voices Online]

by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China's "blueprint for a worldwide revolution" according to the US Navy in 1964. [h/t to Mutant Palm]

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom

While searching the web for Tianma Shan, we stumbled upon this helpful site by Robin Zhang, "the software designer of JetPhoto." Clicking around a bit, we found this neat panorama of the University of Shanghai (沪江大学) in the 1920s. We also found these current photos of the old University of Shanghai buildings, which are now part of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology [official site | map] in Yangpu District on the Huangpu River. We found this all kind of interesting — we had never heard of the University of Shanghai, which was founded in 1906. We probably should have, since we have a friend who recently graduated from USST. Here's what she said:

Via Andrew Sullivan we learn of this extraordinary project: