Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era Ping Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism 2019 Volume 1 Issue 1: 1-18 Research Article Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era: Bourgeois Aspirations and Practice of Longtang Everyday Life Lei Ping The New School, New York, United States Corresponding author: Lei Ping, 66 W12th Street 6th Floor, New York NY 10011, USA. Email: [email protected]. Citation: Ping L, 2019, Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era: Bourgeois Aspirations and Practice of Longtang Everyday Life. Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, 1(1): 710. http://dx.doi.org/10.26689/jcau.v1i1.710 ABSTRACT This essay studies an often overlooked and understudied topic – the survival of Shanghai vernacular longtang (alleyway house) urbanite culture in the Mao era (1949-1976). It discovers how bourgeois sentiments embodied by the Shanghai national bourgeoisie were aspired to and inherited by the longtang petty urbanites (xiaoshimin) and their quotidian practices of Shanghai- styled (haipai) everyday life. By delving into archives, newspapers, and urban cultural studies, the essay particularly examines how urbanite culture was revitalized by the mode of Shanghai everyday living and how it resiliently co-existed with socialist revolutionary culture through a type of distinctive material culture particularly manifested in housing and food. It investigates the dialectical and conflictual relationship between the discourse of revolution and that of everyday life. It challenges the problematic incompleteness of Socialist Transformation project and searches for a new understanding of historical viability and sustainability of Chinese socialism, as Chinese socialism did not succeed in eradicating bourgeois sensibility as an oppositional historical force in Shanghai in the Mao era. In this context, the essay argues that Shanghai maintained a privileged urban center while its urbanite culture persisted by means of self-preservation of the longtang everyday life and fetishized bourgeois materialism and aspirations under Maoist Chinese socialism. Keywords: longtang, urbanite culture, Mao era, everyday life, Shanghai, haipai Copyright: Ping L. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing PTY LTD 1 Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era Ping 1. INTRODUCTION unequivocally distinctive tradition as the The entrenched resilience of Shanghai cradle of Chinese communism in 1921 and bourgeois ideology, culture, and value the left-wing radicalism during the Cultural system under Maoist socialism has largely Revolution, Shanghai remained to be a city remained as an intellectual conundrum. that had been entangled with the historical Socialist Transformation of the Shanghai development of capitalism since forced open Capitalist Industry and Commerce project in as one of China’s five treaty ports after the the socialist transition period (1949-1956) first Opium War (1839-1842). This kind of might have profoundly remolded the mode Shanghai’s relation to bourgeois sensibility and force of production, it however, left the lies at the core of what I call the “myth of task as to how to fundamentally transform Shanghai.” The tension-charged combat the residual bourgeois thought and life- between the two oppositional and world unfinished. Mao Zedong’s profound antagonistic cultures, traditions, beliefs, rejection of capitalism and growing fear that value systems, and political discourses, China would suffer a “bourgeois restoration” namely, the bourgeois vis-à-vis the socialist, eventually led to the outbreak of political the mundane vis-à-vis the sublime, thus radicalism culminated by the Great requires critical scrutiny. Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966- As part of a larger research project on 1976).[1] His populist critique of capitalism the historical transformation of Shanghai and radical belief in the “advantages of vernacular architecture and urban identity, backwardness” theory greatly determined this essay studies an often overlooked and the direction of Chinese socialism. In other understudied topic – the survival of words, without achieving or simply Shanghai longtang (alleyway house) bypassing the prerequisite of orthodox urbanite culture in the Mao era (1949-1976). Marxist understanding of socialism – a full- It foregrounds the socio-spatial significance fledged capitalist mode of production and of the Shanghai longtang architecture, at the means of subsistence, China prematurely same time, discovers how bourgeois embarked on the practice of socialism. What sentiments embodied by the Shanghai believed was the moral and social virtue bourgeoisie were aspired to and inherited by inherent in the backwardness of Chinese the longtang petty urbanites (xiaoshimin) society precisely encountered the irony of and their quotidian practices of Shanghai- Chinese socialism vis-à-vis bourgeois styled (haipai) everyday life. By delving influence on the Eve of the founding of the into archives, newspapers, and urban People’s Republic. In contrast to the utopian cultural studies, the essay particularly prospect of Maoist socialism, capitalist examines how urbanite culture was modernity embodied by the lure of the revitalized by the mode of Shanghai Shanghai modern seemed to suggest a more everyday living and how it resiliently co- enchanting way of everyday life to the existed with socialist revolutionary culture Shanghai ordinary urbanites. through a type of distinctive material culture As a city fundamentally defined by its particularly manifested in housing and food. class-coded culture, bourgeois heritage, and It investigates the dialectical and conflictual quotidian everyday practice, Shanghai has relationship between the discourse of been labeled as a modern metropolis that is revolution and that of everyday life. It somehow culturally and ideologically semi- challenges the problematic incompleteness detached from its post-1949 socialist of Socialist Transformation project and Chinese nation-state. Despite the searches for a new understanding of Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing PTY LTD 2 Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era Ping historical viability and sustainability of unscrupulous businessmen who directly or Chinese socialism, as Chinese socialism did indirectly make living under the power of not succeed in eradicating bourgeois foreign capital, swindlers who fraud western sensibility as an oppositional historical force medicine, whores, hooligans, pornographic in Shanghai in the Mao era. In this context, fictions,…there are only very few youthful the essay argues that Shanghai maintained a students who hold on to their idealism. privileged urban center while its urbanite Under this circumstance, [they] do not have culture persisted by means of self- power to conquer the external environment, preservation of the longtang everyday life but only the one to remain self-defensive.”[3] and fetishized bourgeois materialism and If the modern history of Shanghai is aspirations under Maoist Chinese socialism. often overdetermined by the phantasmagoric lure of the modern, Chen’s diagnosis of the 1.1. Shanghai Modernity on the Eve dire social problems serves a timely of 1949 Revolution observation and critique of Shanghai While observing the dazzling Shanghai modernity – a type of modernity that is modern splendor in the Republican era, the tremendously entangled with feudalism, left-wing writer Mao Dun writes the colonialism, and imperialism. The encounter following passage in his realist novel of the “Old Shanghai” and the socialist Midnight, revolutionary forces on the eve of the “The sun had just sunk below the liberation day of the city in 1949 was bound horizon and a gentle breeze caressed one’s to carry the weight of an unprecedented face…Under a sunset-mottled sky, the course of history. towering framework of Garden Bridge was mantled in a gathering mist. Whenever a 1.2. Clashes between Communism and tram passed over the bridge, the overhead “A Big Dyeing Cat” cable suspended below the top of the steel In her studies of modern Shanghai history, frame threw off bright, greenish sparks. Marie-Claire Bergère insightfully points out Looking east, one could see the warehouses that Shanghai did not destroy communism of foreign firms on the waterfront of Pudong but was obliged to submit to it; and neither like huge monsters crouching in the gloom, did Communism destroy Shanghai, it simply their lights twinkling like countless tiny eyes. changed it.[4] The transformation of To the west, one saw with a shock of Shanghai from a colonial cosmopolitan wonder on the roof of a building, a gigantic metropolis was never an overnight magic. neon sign in flaming red and phosphorescent The austere socialist revolutionary culture green: LIGHT, HEAT, POWER.”[2] embodied by the Democratic Dictatorship of This kind of modern glamor, energy, the People (renmin minzhu zhuanzheng) and vitality notwithstanding, Shanghai, as ceaselessly battled with Shanghai urbanite early as in 1922, was denounced by the May culture. Once the policing was relaxed in an 4th New Culture Movement leader and co- already liberated city, the characteristics of founder of the Chinese Communist Party the bourgeois “Old Shanghai” immediately (CCP) Chen Duxiu. To Chen, the