Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870–1930. By Di Wang. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 376 pp. £48.50. ISBN 0-8047-4778-4.]

Extract

The last 15 years have witnessed a small flood of books on the physical, political, social and cultural transformation of the modern Chinese city covering paved streets and sewers, rickshaws and streetcars, public parks and meeting halls, monuments and museums, theatres and markets, police and gangsters, municipal government and public hygiene, bankers and businessmen, factories and publishing houses, newspapers and movies, law suits and protests, workers, students and prostitutes. Most of this literature has focused on the coastal cities (especially Shanghai), and the approach has usually been top–down: how the state and urban elites have constructed a new Chinese version of modernity.

Wang's book stands out as a careful historical ethnography of a provincial capital in the Chinese interior, Chengdu, at the turn of the 20th century. In contrast to previous top–down studies of urban elites and the rise of urban governance and police, this provides a bottom–up view from the street, and the richness of street culture pervades the entire book. Superbly researched and aided by a wonderful collection of illustrations, the book shows us peddlers and artisans patrolling the neighbourhoods, beggars and hooligans harassing residents, religious rituals and entertainment, and, above all, the vibrant life of the teahouse. In a similar book on coastal Shanghai, Lu Hanchao (Beyond the Neon Lights) unforgettably describes the housing projects known as Stone Portals (shikumen) as a locus for the daily life of Shanghai urbanites. In this book, the Chengdu teahouse repeatedly appears as a critical venue of social interaction, popular entertainment, dispute mediation, political discussion and police surveillance.