Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:42:49.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Building a ‘Lofty, Beloved People's Amusement Centre’: The socialist transformation of Shanghai's Great World (Dashijie) (1950–58)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

WENMING XIAO
Affiliation:
Boya (Liberal Arts) College, Sun Yat-sen University Email: [email protected]
YAO LI
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Based on a detailed case study of the socialist transformation of the Shanghai Great World Amusement Centre (Dashijie), this article documents state-building efforts during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Between 1950 and 1958, the Communist regime incrementally transformed the power configuration within Dashijie, promoting dramatic changes in its personnel, institutional structures, drama performances, and physical space. Over the course of this process, Dashijie seemed to become a ‘loftier’ cultural organization in accordance with the aims of its transformation. This transfigured Dashijie, however, fell out of favour with the people of Shanghai. This multifaceted transformation process reflects considerable state capacities on the one hand and illustrates the complexity of state capacities—their unevenness and the limitations of a strong state—on the other. The complexity of state capacities thus shaped and was embedded in the process and outcome of this socialist cultural transformation. Since the Chinese state is once again making strenuous efforts at culture-building, an overview of cultural transformation in the early PRC era has important contemporary implications.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are very grateful to two anonymous reviewers and editors (especially Dr Ruth Rogaski) for their valuable suggestions and thoughtful comments. This article is based upon work supported by the Chinese National Social Science Foundation under grant no. 19BSH009.

References

Bergère, Marie-Claire. 2009. Shanghai: China's Gateway to Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loic J.D.. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Jeremy, and Pickowicz, Paul G.. 2007. ‘The Early Years of the People's Republic of China: An Introduction’. Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China 118.Google Scholar
Cao, Juren. 1996. Shanghai History. Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press.Google Scholar
Chan, Ning Jennifer. 2005. ‘From Race Course to People's Square: Remapping the Shanghai Recreation Ground, 1946–1951’. Institute of Modern History Bulletin 48:97136.Google Scholar
Chen, Yinyan. 2008. ‘The Creation and Narrative of Shanghai “Hostesses” in Late Qing and Early Republican China’. Zhongzheng Historical Journal 11.Google Scholar
DeMare, Brian. 2012. ‘Local Actors and National Politics: Rural Amateur Drama Troupes and Mass Campaigns in Hubei Province, 1949–1953’. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 24(2):129178.Google Scholar
DeMare, Brian James. 2015. Mao's Cultural Army. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamant, Neil J. 2000. Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, Michael. 2005. Policing Chinese Politics: A History. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Feng, Xiaocai. 2012. ‘Identities, Rituals, and Politics: The Chinese Communist Party's Thought Reform of Capitalists after 1956’. Journal of East China Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) (1).Google Scholar
Friedman, Edward, Pickowicz, Paul, Selden, Mark, and Johnson, Kay Ann. 1991. Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gao, James Zheng. 2004. The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
He, Shengming. 1990. Dictionary of Finance. Beijing: China Financial & Economic Publishing House.Google Scholar
Hershatter, Gail. 1997. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooper, Beverley. 1986. China Stands Up: The End of Western Presence, 1948–1950. Sydney, London, and Boston: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Howlett, Jonathan J. 2013. ‘“The British Boss Is Gone and Will Never Return”: Communist Takeovers of British Companies in Shanghai (1949–1954)’. Modern Asian Studies 47(6):19411976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hung, Chang-tai. 1993. ‘Reeducating a Blind Storyteller: Han Qixiang and the Chinese Communist Storytelling Campaign’. Modern China 19(4):395426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hung, Chang-tai. 2003. New Culture History and Chinese Politics. Taipei: Yifang Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Hung, Chang-tai. 2010. Mao's New World: Political Culture in the Early People's Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Andrew F. 2001. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kaple, Deborah A. 1994. Dream of a Red Factory: The Legacy of High Stalinism in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kwok, D. W. 1965. Scientism in Chinese Thought,1900–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Li, Jingzhi. 1994. ‘Prostitutes in Hankou in the Old Society’. Wuhan Literature and History Information (2).Google Scholar
Link, Perry. 2007. ‘The Crocodile Bird: Xiangsheng in the Early 1950s’ in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China., edited by Brown, J. and Pickowicz, P. G.. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ma, Jun. 2005. 1948: Shanghai Dancer Riot—A Case Study of Women's Violent Collective Protests in the Nationalist Era. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Press.Google Scholar
Migdal, Joel S. 2001. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, Elizabeth J. 1994. ‘Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957’. The China Quarterly 137(137):1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, Elizabeth J. 2012. Anyuan: Mining China's Revolutionary Tradition. Vol. 24. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rogaski, Ruth. 2004. Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shen, Hongxin. 2010. Zhou Xinfang. Beijing: China Theatre Press.Google Scholar
Shen, Liang. 2011. Dashijie: The Management of Entertainment Organizations. Press of Shanghai Shudian.Google Scholar
Shue, Vivienne. 1988. The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Shue, Vivienne. 1991. ‘Powers of State, Paradoxes of Dominion, China, 1949–1979’ in Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries, edited by Lieberthal, K., Kallgren, J., MacFarquhar, R., and Wakeman, F.. Armonk: ME Sharpe, pp. 205225.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 1985. ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’ in Bringing the State Back In, edited by Rueschemeyer, D., Evans, P. B., and Skocpol, Theda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Aminda M. 2013a. ‘The Dilemma of Thought Reform: Beijing Reformatories and the Origins of Reeducation through Labor, 1949–1957.Modern China 39(2):203234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Aminda M. 2013b. ‘Thought Reform and the Unreformable: Reeducation Centres and the Rhetoric of Opposition in the Early People's Republic of China’. The Journal of Asian Studies 72(4):937958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Steve A. 2006. ‘Local Cadres Confront the Supernatural: The Politics of Holy Water (Shenshui) in the PRC, 1949–1966’. The China Quarterly 188:9991022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eddy, U. 2007. Disorganizing China: Counter-Bureaucracy and the Decline of Socialism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wakeman, Frederick. 1995. ‘Licensing Leisure: The Chinese Nationalists’ Attempt to Regulate Shanghai, 1927–49’. The Journal of Asian Studies 54(1):1942.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. 2009. Global Shanghai, 1850–2010: A History in Fragments. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 2015. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Xiao, Wenming. 2013. ‘State Capacity and Cultural Governance: A Case Study of Shanghai in the Early PRC Era’. Thinking 39(4).Google Scholar
Xue, Yu. 2015. Socialist Transformation of Buddhism in China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 2003. Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuan, Xuefen. 2002. Exploring the Meaning of Life and Art. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.Google Scholar
Zhang, Jishun. 2006. ‘Transformation and Continuity: Cultural Consumption and Shanghai Grassroots’ Reflection to the West’. Shilin (3).Google Scholar