Shanghai is a city freighted with clichés. Lurid accounts of its urban zeitgeist under nationalist rule conjure up a whore of the Orient where East met West for a fin-de-siècle bout of decadence and depravity against a backdrop of violence and poverty. Others celebrate the cultural and economic dynamism that once made Shanghai China’s most diverse and cosmopolitan…
Christopher Rea
Christopher Rea is a professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia and the author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (University of California Press, 2015).