Shanghai spectacular: visions of the new urban order (4/20/2010) - part i

In this talk, Dr. Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor of History at UC Berkeley and Director of the Institute for East Asian Studies, explores the imagery from early twentieth century Shanghai that enabled a mobile and a 'disembedded' consumption of the glamour and abundance of modernity. Shanghai, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, was a place of migrants from across China and abroad. These individuals transformed the city into a place of glamour with their talent and labor. The lure of 'old Shanghai,' to which we now turn with nostalgia, was once the excitement of everything new.