AccScience Publishing / JCAU / Volume 1 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/jcau.v1i1.710
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Survival of Shanghai Urbanite Culture in the Mao Era: Bourgeois Aspirations and Practice of Longtang Everyday Life

Lei Ping1
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1 The New School, New York, United States
Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism 2019, 1(1), 710 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.v1i1.710
© Invalid date by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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
Funding
The research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
References
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“Yuan” here refers to jinyuanquan or “jinyuan paper currency.” It was first issued on August 20th, 1948 by the Nationalist Party (GMD) and was phased out 10 months later due to inflation and economic crisis. One jinyuanquan was equivalent to three million fabi (legal currency).

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Known as “luosike li zuodaochang” in Chinese. Metaphorically refers to a meticulous and enjoyable way of managing everyday life in a compact living space.

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