Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai

Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai
Author: James Carter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393635953

How a single day revealed the history and foreshadowed the future of Shanghai. It is November 12, 1941, and the world is at war. In Shanghai, just weeks before Pearl Harbor, thousands celebrate the birthday of China’s founding father, Sun Yat-sen, in a new city center built to challenge European imperialism. Across town, crowds of Shanghai residents from all walks of life attend the funeral of China’s wealthiest woman, the Chinese-French widow of a Baghdadi Jewish businessman whose death was symbolic of the passing of a generation that had seen Shanghai’s rise to global prominence. But it is the racetrack that attracts the largest crowd of all. At the center of the International Settlement, the heart of Western colonization—but also of Chinese progressivism, art, commerce, cosmopolitanism, and celebrity—Champions Day unfolds, drawing tens of thousands of Chinese spectators and Europeans alike to bet on the horses. In a sharp and lively snapshot of the day’s events, James Carter recaptures the complex history of Old Shanghai. Champions Day is a kaleidoscopic portrait of city poised for revolution.

The Last Kings of Shanghai

The Last Kings of Shanghai
Author: Jonathan Kaufman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735224439

"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

Ambitious and Anxious

Ambitious and Anxious
Author: Yingyi Ma
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231545568

Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduate students—mostly self-funded—has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. This privileged yet diverse group of young people from a changing China must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the two most powerful countries in the world. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does this experience mean to them? What does American higher education need to know and do in order to continue attracting these students and to provide sufficient support for them? In Ambitious and Anxious, the sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of this new wave of Chinese students based on research in both Chinese high schools and American higher-education institutions. Ma argues that these students’ experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from transformative social changes in China. These students and their families have the ambition to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also considers policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.

The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)
Author: Linda Jaivin
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1615198210

Journey across epic China—through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. As we enter the “Asian century,” China demands our attention for being an economic powerhouse, a beacon of rapid modernization, and an assertive geopolitical player. To understand the nation behind the headlines, we must take in its vibrant, tumultuous past—a story of “larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation.” The Shortest History of China charts a path from China’s tribal origins through its storied imperial era and up to the modern Communist Party under Xi Jinping—including the rarely told story of women in China and the specters of corruption and disunity that continue to haunt the People’s Republic today. A master storyteller and exacting historian, Linda Jaivin distills this vast history into a short, riveting account that today’s globally minded readers will find indispensable.

The War for China’s Wallet

The War for China’s Wallet
Author: Shaun Rein
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-12-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1501507516

With Chinese-led initiatives such as One Belt One Road (OBOR) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) combined with uncertainty due to US shifts in policy and apparent commitments over the past decade, the stakes are high for companies looking to profit from the world’s newest superpower. Post-financial crisis, China has emerged as the largest or second largest trading partner for most countries. It has become the second largest market for Fortune 500 companies like Starbucks, Apple, and Nike and drives growth for Hollywood and commodity products. Yet the profits come at a price for countries and companies alike—they must adhere to the political goals of Beijing or else face economic punishment or outright banishment. Using primary research from interviews with hundreds of business executives and government officials, The War for China’s Wallet will help companies understand how to profit from China’s outbound economic plans as well as a shifting consumer base that is increasingly nationalistic. The countries and companies that get it right will benefit from China’s wallet but those that do not will lose out on the world’s largest growth engine for the next two decades. Click here for information on the author's MSNBC interview: https://mobile.twitter.com/OARichardEngel/status/1147861623211798528 Check out the interviews at Bloomberg, Forbes, and Marketplace on this book: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-12-05/those-who-heed-china-s-political-ambitions-will-benefit https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2017/11/28/how-to-profit-from-chinas-rising-nationalism/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/18/world/shaun-rein-interview Financial Times subscribers can read this review of The War for China’s Wallet: https://www.ft.com/content/b6bb55c4-e4b4-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da The book's review in South China Morning Post can be read at: http://m.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2126477/book-review-war-chinas-wallet-readable-if-one-sided-view-chinas

Middle Class Shanghai

Middle Class Shanghai
Author: Cheng Li
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: China
ISBN: 9780815739098

In Middle Class Shanghai, Cheng Li, who grew up in Shanghai during the oppressive years of Mao's Cultural Revolution, argues that American policymakers must not lose sight of the expansive dynamism and diversity in present-day China. The caricature of China as a monolithic Communist apparatus set on exporting its ideology and development model is simplistic and misguided. Drawing on empirical research in the realms of higher education, avant-garde art, architecture, and law, Li's unique study highlights the strong, constructive impact of bilateral exchanges. Combining eclectic human stories with striking new data analysis, Li's book addresses the possibility that the development of China's class structure and cosmopolitan culture--exemplified and led by Shanghai--could provide a force for reshaping U.S.-China engagement. Both countries should build upon the deep cultural and educational exchanges that have bound them together for decades. Li concludes that U.S. .

Remembering Shanghai

Remembering Shanghai
Author: Isabel Sun Chao
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9781954854031

"A volume that demands to be held." --Los Angeles Review of Books True stories of glamour, drama, and tragedy told through five generations of a Shanghai family, from the last days of imperial rule to the Cultural Revolution. A high position bestowed by China's empress dowager grants power and wealth to the Sun family. For Isabel, growing up in glamorous 1930s and '40s Shanghai, it is a life of utmost privilege. But while her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from civil war and Japanese occupation, they cannot shield the family forever. When Mao comes to power, eighteen-year-old Isabel journeys to Hong Kong, not realizing that she will make it her home--and that she will never see her father again. She returns to Shanghai fifty years later with her daughter, Claire, to confront their family's past--one they discover is filled with love and betrayal, kidnappers and concubines, glittering palaces and underworld crime bosses. Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations from a hardscrabble village to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity, loss, and redemption against an epic backdrop. WINNER OF 20 LITERARY AND DESIGN AWARDS, INCLUDING: Writer's Digest GRAND PRIZE Rubery Book Award BOOK OF THE YEAR IAN Independent Author Network OUTSTANDING MEMOIR IPPY Independent Publisher Book Awards BEST FIRST BOOK Reader Views GLOBAL AWARD

Foul Lady Fortune

Foul Lady Fortune
Author: Chloe Gong
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2022-09-27
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1665905603

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends comes the “equal parts intoxicating and dazzling” (Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Wolves) first book in a captivating new duology following an ill-matched pair of spies posing as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders in 1930s Shanghai. It’s 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue. Four years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging—and allows her to heal from any wound. In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption for her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country. Code name: Fortune. But when the Japanese Imperial Army begins its invasion march, Rosalind’s mission pivots. A series of murders is causing unrest in Shanghai, and the Japanese are under suspicion. Rosalind’s new orders are to infiltrate foreign society and identify the culprits behind the terror plot before more of her people are killed. To reduce suspicion, however, she must pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy, Orion Hong, and though Rosalind finds Orion’s cavalier attitude and playboy demeanor infuriating, she is willing to work with him for the greater good. But Orion has an agenda of his own, and Rosalind has secrets that she wants to keep buried. As they both attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the two spies soon find that there are deeper and more horrifying layers to this mystery than they ever imagined.

The World Turned Upside Down

The World Turned Upside Down
Author: Yang Jisheng
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 768
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374716919

Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.

The Problem of China

The Problem of China
Author: Bertrand Russell
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1922
Genre: History
ISBN:

A European lately arrived in China, if he is of a receptive and reflective disposition, finds himself confronted with a number of very puzzling questions, for many of which the problems of Western Europe will not have prepared him. Russian problems, it is true, have important affinities with those of China, but they have also important differences; moreover they are decidedly less complex. Chinese problems, even if they affected no one outside China, would be of vast importance, since the Chinese are estimated to constitute about a quarter of the human race. In fact, however, all the world will be vitally affected by the development of Chinese affairs, which may well prove a decisive factor, for good or evil, during the next two centuries. This makes it important, to Europe and America almost as much as to Asia, that there should be an intelligent understanding of the questions raised by China, even if, as yet, definite answers are difficult to give.