[HN Gopher] Shanghai Before the Foreigners
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Shanghai Before the Foreigners
Author : jxub
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-10-19 20:42 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jaapgrolleman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jaapgrolleman.com)
| tmtvl wrote:
| This kinda reminds me of how Edo (nowadays known as Tokyo) was a
| little fishing village back in the Sengoku period.
| contingencies wrote:
| Nice share but after reading the article my existing view that
| the area of greater Shanghai was an agricultural area without
| substantial urban development until the opium wars is
| unchallenged.
|
| Nice to see some familiar spots. About 21 years ago I used to go
| to the Jing'An temple for lunch on weekends and chat with the
| monks. They had excellent vegetarian food in the temple, and
| often the monks would buy me lunch.
|
| If you want to look at hydro-engineering wonders, the nearby
| grand canal is amazing. I would post a wayback machine link of a
| trip I did up there circa 2005 but archive.org are still half
| down right now.
|
| Can't stand Shanghai - no nature.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Nanjing, just an hour or so up the river, is multiple thousands
| of years old and is one of the most important historical cities
| in Chinese history. So it is really no surprise that Shanghai
| was not developed until foreign trade became important.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is also hard to talk about the relatively new coastal
| development without the fact that in the 1600s the Qing
| forcibly evacuated most coastal areas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Clearance
|
| And before that, the Ming banned coastal trade.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That's an interesting pair of policies to mention together.
| The reason for the evacuation of the coast was that coastal
| trade had flourished so much that the Qing weren't able to
| defeat one guy's private navy militarily.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| the Ming policy was never 100% effective and mostly just
| resulted in a lot of smuggling and piracy. The Qing
| attempted to get around this by literally forcibly moving
| everybody.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > the Ming policy was never 100% effective and mostly
| just resulted in a lot of smuggling and piracy
|
| I don't think this can really be a complete description
| of the situation. You can't stop smuggling as a
| phenomenon, because you can't oversee everything that
| happens everywhere. So, as much as you might wish it
| would, the law doesn't really apply to random smugglers.
|
| But by the time you're one of the 100 richest men in
| China, the law certainly does apply to _you_. A ban on
| trade that 's "less than 100% effective" is more than
| enough to stop someone from doing so much trade that they
| become personally more powerful than the court, as long
| as "less than 100%" still means "more than 0%".
| Hilift wrote:
| China is a gold mine for archaeology. It seems like every
| year there are huge discoveries. Like forgotten cities or
| something. https://www.world-archaeology.com/features/the-
| lost-world-of...
| fbn79 wrote:
| Can I suggest you the novel "Maiden Voyage" by Denton Welch. Is a
| portrait of Shanghai in 1930 by an english boy
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I'm enjoying Shanghai Grand by Teras Grescoe , it follows the
| Americans and other foreigners hanging out in the French and
| American concessions in that same era. Really interesting
| period, America itself being in a great depression while
| Shanghai was booming, attracting investors and clout chasers
| from all over the world
| Animats wrote:
| Here's Shenzhen, before and after tech. Shenzhen really was a
| fishing village in 1950, and a small town into the 1970s. All the
| action was in Hong Kong nearby. A local photographer has been
| taking pictures from the same spots every year since 1985.[1]
|
| Population of Shenzhen: 1950 3,000
| 1960 8,000 1970 22,000 1980 59,000
| 1990 875,000 2000 7,193,000 2010 10,223,000
| 2020 12,357,000
|
| [1]
| https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414d306b6a4d31457a6333566d54/...
| janalsncm wrote:
| 100x growth in 20 years starting from 1980 is insane. Would've
| been very interesting to witness.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Shenzhen received, in 1980, the special legal privilege of
| engaging in commerce with Hong Kong. It's not natural growth.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bear in mind that the growth of one fishing village involves
| growing-into aka annexing neighboring villages, I've heard it
| said "Shenzhen did not start as one village, it started as
| thousands"
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| This is a super important point, Chinese city are the
| equivalent of American MSA's.
| olalonde wrote:
| I first visited Shenzhen in 2008 and back then it was almost
| impossible to find anyone who was actually born in Shenzhen.
| It's increasingly common nowadays with the younger generation.
| Also, many Hong Kongers I knew were literally afraid to visit
| Shenzhen and nowadays, Shenzhen feels more modern and safe than
| Hong Kong (IMO). It's mind blowing how fast this city grew.
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