Shanghai Badlands: Temporary Terrorist Activities and Urban Crime, 1937-1941

Author: (American) Rui Zhanming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: "Shanghai History Studies Translation Series" selects classic works on modern Shanghai history by top overseas scholars, combining readability and academic rigor, translated by domestic experts. Overseas scholars offer unique perspectives, exclusive materials, and original insights to reinterpret Shanghai's history differently, covering a wide range of topics such as the Shanghai governor, police, prostitutes, industrialists, expatriates, hometown associations, fire brigades, and the people from northern Jiangsu. In the memory of old Shanghai, "dangtu" referred to the western districts where thugs roamed. From 1937 to 1941, various forces—Japanese invaders, the (Wang Jingwei puppet regime), foreign concession authorities, and the Kuomintang government—became entangled in Shanghai, forming complex and tense relationships. The western dangtu frequently witnessed assassination and other acts of terror, while gambling and other urban crimes were rampant. As a major work by the renowned American scholar of Chinese studies— (), and a classic in the field of overseas Shanghai history research, this book vividly recreates this special yet difficult period in Shanghai through a unique perspective, thorough materials, and accessible language, bringing the wartime terror and urban violent crimes of Shanghai to life as if they were unfolding on the screen before the readers.