The Chinese Nationalists' Attempt to Regulate Shanghai, 1927-49 Author(S): Frederic Wakeman, Jr
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Licensing Leisure: The Chinese Nationalists' Attempt to Regulate Shanghai, 1927-49 Author(s): Frederic Wakeman, Jr. Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 19-42 Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058949 . Accessed: 23/03/2014 13:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Association for Asian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Asian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.132.173.206 on Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:05:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LicensingLeisure: The ChineseNationalists' Attempt to RegulateShanghai, 1927-49 FREDERIC WAKEMAN, JR. Shanghaihas oftenbeen called the Parisof the Orient.This is onlyhalf true. Shanghaihas all the vicesof Parisand morebut boastsof noneof its cultural influences.The municipalorchestra is uncertainof its future,and the removalof thecity library to its newpremises has only shattered our hopes for better reading facilities.The RoyalAsiatic Society has beendenied all supportfrom the Council forthe maintenanceof its library,which is the onlycenter for research in this metropolis.It is thereforeno wonderthat men and women, old or young,poor or rich,turn their minds to mischiefand lowlypursuits of pleasure,and the laxity ofpolice regulations has aggravatedthe situation. (China WeeklyReview, June 14, 1930) INTHE THREE DECADES BEFORE THE NATIONALIST REGIME SEIZED POWER in Shanghai in 1927, China'sgreatest city experienced the riseof modernindustrial entertainment. As Shanghaichanged from a pre-electriccity of pleasure,centered on teashopsand courtesans'quarters, to a garishlyilluminated metropolis of night-lifevice in cabarets, dancehalls, and bordellos,its inhabitants'leisure-time activities shifted correspondingly fromthe elite parlorto the mass movie theater; fromgames (majiang, huahui) to gambling(casinos, canidromes, horse racing); fromfixed regional pastimes (local opera in native dialect) to a more eclectic department-storeculture, where customers shopped for entertainmentby moving fromone floorto anotherin multi-storiedamusement centers that offereda wide varietyof merchandisedperformances; fromcourtesans to prostitutes; fromSino-foreign segregation to intermixedsocial intercourse; from"soft" pre-modern intoxication with opium and wine to "hard" industrial addictionto acetylatedheroin and distilledalcohol. As the domesticrituals of the householdgave way to the social moresof the racetrackor nightclub,private punctiliousness deferred to public policing. The new Nationalist leaders welcomed this opportunityto regulate Chinese Shanghai's entertainmentindustries, both to raiserevenue and to proveto the imperialistswho FredericWakeman, Jr., is the Haas Professorof AsianStudies and Directorof the Instituteof East AsianStudies at theUniversity of California,Berkeley. TheJournal of Asian Studies54, no. 1 (February1995):19-42. C) 1995 by the Associationfor Asian Studies, Inc. 19 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.206 on Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:05:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 20 FREDERIC WAKEMAN, JR. controlledthe French,international, and Japanesesectors of the city-each patrolled by separatesemi-colonial police forces-that the Chinese were perfectlycapable of maintaining"order" (zhixu) themselves.Indeed, fromthe very beginningof the establishmentof a Nationalistmunicipality in Shanghaiin 1927, the Guomindang insistedthat if it could bringlaw and orderto the city,then it deservedto recover sovereigntyand abolishextraterritoriality in the foreignconcessions (Wakeman 1988). Even afterthe April 1927 purgeof the leftwing, the leadersof the Nationalist regime consideredthemselves revolutionaries. As such they were committedto modernizationwithout undue Westernization,which theyregarded as potentially corruptingand corrosive.They correctlyidentified Shanghai's "vice industry"as an extractivemechanism that could be used by the imperialiststo fleeceChinese citizens. It was thereforea sacredduty of patriots to police urbansociety by overseeingproper dressrules, guiding public demeanor, licensing places of entertainment, and regulating communicationsand traffic.Punishments for the "infringementof police [rules}" (weijing)had a direct impact on Shanghai's Chinese citizens. During the twelve monthsbetween July 1929 and June 1930, forinstance, the Nationalists'Public SecurityBureau detained,fined, or reprimandedmore than 29,000 Shanghainese fordisorderly conduct, disturbing communications, harming public customs,injuring others'persons and property,destroying evidence, and disturbingthe peace (Shanghai shi gong'anju yewu baogao 1931, table afterp. 108). The Chinese police force'sinterference in urbanites'personal lives represented the new state's effortto createa civic culture. This determinedquest to createa modernmunicipal culture was thus part of a national effortto make "citizens" (gongmin)out of "people" (renmin).Although some historiansnow claim to see the emergenceof a "public sphere"in late nineteenth-centurycities like Wuhan (Rowe 1990), the evidencefrom Shanghai of a strongendogenous "civic culture"in the 1920s and 1930s is not so compelling. There were collectivemovements, to be sure, but the appearanceof a civic culture-a strongmunicipal identity-was a creationfrom the top down: part of a largerplan, drawn fromSun Yat-sen's testamentfor national reconstruction, to build a new Shanghai(Shen Yi 1970). The Guomindangauthorities, striving to combatCommunist and National Salvationistmass movements,contrived their own municipal demonstrationsand political rituals. These symbolicevents, however, were ultimatelycorporatist occasions, arranged and led by partyand police agents, whose musical bands headed the paradesthrough Chinese Shanghai'sstreets. The Nationalists'effort to police societyculminated in the New LifeMovement in 1934. In a culturalpotpourri such as Shanghai,the justificationfor a conformist moral rearmamentcampaign seemed obvious. Afterall, how could the authorities hope effectivelyto licenseacceptable forms of leisurewhen "good" culturalevents wereonly one floordown from "bad" culturalactivities in theGreat World amusement centeron Tibet Road? The distinctionbetween "good" and "bad" leisure,between entertainmentsuch as modernfilms and storytellingand vices such as gambling and prostitution,was neverclearly drawn in RepublicanShanghai. This was partly because of conservativenativists' identification of "bad" leisurewith Westernizing influences,partly because a metropolissuch as Shanghai condensesand amplifies urbansubcultures, and partlybecause the cityitself was divided into fourdifferent sectors,each with its own definitionof political and social morality(see Fischer 1975). The necessityof whippingtogether an altogetherNew Life by combining traditionalNeo-Confucian fussiness with the barracksdiscipline of Chiang Kai-shek's This content downloaded from 130.132.173.206 on Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:05:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CHINESE NATIONALISTS' ATTEMPT TO REGULATE SHANGHAI 21 Whampoa cadets seemed an attractivealternative to decolletage, expectoration, permanentwaves, and unbuttonedtrousers. Needless to say, when it came to discipliningShanghai's rowdy and restless urbanites,this intrusivedressing-down of casual habits, provocativeclothing, and slovenlycomforts only sufficed to arouseresentment. Even ifgood bourgeoiscitizens believedthat by not spittingon the sidewalkthey would be helpinggird the nation forwar withJapan, the police regulationof privatemores-however well meaning- was compromisedby other formsof maintainingthe regime'sversion of probity: the overwhelmingcensorship, especially after 1932, of books,newspapers, magazines, and movies. As authoritiesincreasingly linked moral licentiousness with political subversion, the formalpreservation of law and orderturned out to be mainlythe maintenance of order.Since law enforcementonly requires the assessmentof guilt, whereasorder maintenancealso entails"a disputein whichthe law must be interpreted,standards of rightconduct determined, and blame assigned," actions betweenthe Shanghai police and its citizenrymainly invoked the former(Wilson 1976:85). This police interferencenot only provoked mass resentment; it also, in the context of the National Salvationmovement of the 1930s, ran counterto the collective nationalismof Shanghai'surbanites. And because therewas a fatefulconfusion by the Guomindang authoritiesbetween anti-Japanesepatriotism and anti-Chiang radicalism-a confusionabetted by the Communists'claims of leadershipwithin the National Salvation movement-the Nationalists'attempts to regulatepublic lifewere identified by manypatriotic Chinese as a reactionarydefense of theprivileges of Shanghai's"playboys" against the city's immiserated"black insects." The Shanghaipolice authoritiesthemselves were sullied as well by chargesof collusionwith the Japanese. The Chinesepolice's readiness to controlNational Salvation demonstrationsin orderto avoid handingthe