Shanghai Tai Chi: The Art of Being Ruled in Mao's China

by Hanchao Lu

Overview

Shanghai Tai Chi offers a masterful portrait of daily urban life under socialism in a rich social and political history of one of the world's most complex cities. Hanchao Lu explores the lives of people from all areas of society - from capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals to women and youth. Utilizing the metaphor of Tai Chi, he reveals how people in Shanghai experienced and adapted to a new Maoist political culture from 1949. Exploring the multifaceted complexity of everyday life and material culture in Mao's China, Lu addresses the survival of old bourgeois lifestyles under the new proletarian dictatorship, the achievements of intellectuals in an age of anti-intellectualism, the pleasure that urban youth derived from reading taboo literature, the emergence of women's liberation and the politics of greening and horticulture. This captivating, epitomizing, and vivid history transports readers to history as lived on Shanghai's streets and back alleyways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009180962
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/16/2025
Series:	Cambridge Studies in the History of the People's Republic of China
Pages:	378
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Hanchao Lu is Professor of History at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Director of the China Research Center in Atlanta. He is the author of three award-winning books Beyond the Neon Lights (1999) Street Criers (2005), and The Birth of a Republic (2010).

Table of Contents

List of Figures; List of Maps; List of Tables; Notes on the Text; Introduction; Part I. The Condemned: 1. The upper crust; 2. The stinking number nine; Part II. The Liberated: 3. The power of Balzac; 4. Alleyway women's detachments; Part III. Under the French Parasol Trees: 5. Everyday flora; 6. In the eyes of foreign onlookers; 7. The essential does not change; Conclusion; Appendix: List of Informants; Character List; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

‘This is a very thoroughly researched study of Shanghai and its citizens’ everyday lives during the Mao period, with many vivid personal observations and reminiscences of interviewees and other sources, well illustrated with historic photographs.’ Michael Sheringham, Asian Affairs

‘The Mao years undoubtedly left their mark on the city and its people, but in Shanghai Tai Chi Hanchao Lu invites readers to regard these decades as an interruption, an extended but ultimately temporary flickering of the neon lights that once again illuminate its skyline.’ Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, The China Quarterly

From the Publisher