The Dianshizhai Pictorial, Shanghai Urban Life 1884-1898

While twentieth-century Shanghai has received extensive scholarly treatment, the nineteenth century has remained understudied, even though it encompasses the first half-century of Shanghai's growth as a treaty port and the early years of Chinese-foreign contact. Published in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Dianshizhai Pictorial provides a record of the new urban popular culture that emerged in Shanghai's foreign settlements during this period. brDIVDIVYe Xiaoqing has based this study on the IDianshizhai'sI detailed illustrations of everyday life at home, in commercial establishments, and in Shanghai's public areas. Her introduction to the more than one hundred drawings presented here points to the social background, lifestyle, and intellectual outlook of the IDianshizhai'sI literati writers and artists, the weakness of gentry control in the foreign settlements, and the commercialization and "modern" material culture that made Shanghai distinctive.