Chapter 2 1. Zuiwo "Ten Mile Foreign Market"

The inventor of the word "Magic City" is the Japanese ronin writer Sokaze Muramatsu, who became very interested in the city of Shanghai after reading "Travel to China" by his predecessor Ryunosuke Akutagawa.However, his impression of Shanghai is quite different from the "barbaric city" described by Akutagawa.Akutagawa doesn't like the semi-colonial Shanghai, and thinks it is far away from the "poetic China" he imagined.However, in Muramatsu's mind, the rotten factor that Akutagawa loathes is precisely the decadent mood he is obsessed with. Muramatsu is intoxicated in Shanghai, the magical city, and fully enjoys the "five major entertainments" of eating, drinking, whoring, gambling, and playing-"Standing in the middle, I jumped for joy. Dazed by its beauty, rotten by its sensuality, in indulgence Desperate, I'm completely lost in all this demonic life. So, joy, wonder, sadness, I feel a thrill I can't name. Why? I don't quite understand now. But what draws me, is The free life of man. There is no tradition here, instead, all shackles have been removed. People can do whatever they want. Only the feeling of freedom is alive and squirming."

From this, he truly experienced the two characteristics of Shanghai as a "Magic City": one is "its disorder and no unity";These two characteristics, summed up in the current words, are confusion and stimulation.The former is objective and the latter is subjective. What is the semi-colonial Shanghai that fascinated and fascinated the Muramatsus? Old Shanghai refers to Shanghai during the period from the opening of the "five-port trade" in 1843 to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.After the opening of the port, a large number of foreign businessmen settled in, and a series of wars such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in China forced the wealthy landlords along the way to move to the Shanghai Concession with their family assets for refuge. The characteristics of living together with foreigners have made it a famous "Magic City" in the Far East.

Since the second half of the 1870s, between the British Consulate at the northernmost end of the Bund and the French Consulate at the southernmost end, there have been Jardine Matheson, British Shipping Company, Liru Bank (Oriental Bank), Qichang Bank, and HSBC. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were also neoclassical buildings such as the British Shanghai Headquarters, Sassoon Building, and HSBC. The industrial strength of the United States was also gradually displayed. More than 30 buildings including American-style buildings including bank buildings, restaurants, apartments and department stores appeared on the Bund, among them the 24-storey International Hotel designed by Czech-Hungarian architect Hudec.

The commercial center of modern Shanghai is on Nanjing Road (Da Ma Road), the main road of the public concession. Its specific location is between the Bund and the racetrack, including Xianshi, Yongan, Xinxin and Daxin The Big Four", most of them integrate leisure, shopping and entertainment. In the department stores on the main road, the "Western wind" blows in bursts.The "Western view" not only falls on the buildings on the Bund like the Museum of All Nations and the department stores lined up, but also shows cafes, dance halls, parks and racetracks, and of course, the "pavilions" where literati lived.

It was in this "pavilion room" that Mu Shiying completed his "Shanghai Foxtrot", which gave us a glimpse of the Shanghai Bund at that moment. The "Shanghai Stories" series report of "Nanfengchuang" vividly described the customs and corruption of old Shanghai through Mu Shiying's "foxtrot dance": "Shanghai's Foxtrot" itself is impressionistic, it is almost a combination of shots - first it plays a line of subtitles "Shanghai. Heaven built above hell!", and then plays a picture: Huxi.The big moon climbed in the sky, shining on the big wilderness.The light gray field is covered with silver gray moonlight, embedded with dark gray tree shadows and piles of shadows in villages.In the field, the railroad track draws an arc, stretching along the horizon to the horizontal line there.The camera's line of sight followed the speeding of the car, and saw "the legs of the white-painted street trees, the legs of electric poles, and the legs of all still life... like a revue, a girl who stretched out her powdered thighs crossed They..." until they stopped in front of a small villa-style house. After the owner of the villa entered the house, his wife Liu Yanrongzhu, who could be his wife, asked him for money, and his son Xiaode also asked him for money. Go ballroom dancing.

The new Buick car in 1932 carried the intimate son and stepmother to the ballroom, and brought the audience's attention there by the way. The blue dusk enveloped the audience, and a Saxophone stretched its neck and opened its mouth wide, whining Shouting at them, on the smooth floor in the middle, the flowing skirt, the flowing skirt, the delicate heel.Shaggy hair and a man's face.White collar of men's shirts and smiling faces of women.Outstretched arms, emerald pendants dragged to the shoulders, the team of round tables is neat, but the chairs are messy.In a dark corner stood a waiter in white.The smell of wine, perfume, British legs and eggs, smoke...

Next, the camera scanned the sailors on the rickshaw, the Indian patrol, the tide of people and cars, the female secretary standing outside the window, the activists and partisans carrying large bags of leaflets, and the blue-eyed and black-eyed prostitutes, Staying on the construction site in the dark night: in the open space, there are horizontal and vertical ditches, steel frames, and piles of rubble.People walked in the ditch carrying big wooden pillars, dragging long shadows.The foot in front slipped and fell, and the wooden post crushed the spine.Broken spine, a mouthful of blood... arc lights... touch!The wooden stakes slipped up the wooden frame again...the naked child rolling copper on the cinder road...the arc lights on the top of the big wooden frame looked like the moon in the night sky...the daughter-in-law picking up cinders...there are two moons... ...the moon was swallowed by the tengu—the moon was gone.The dead bodies were moved away, and new dance halls, restaurants and hotels were built on the bloody ground. Finally, the camera returned to the dreamy Shanghai——Shanghai, a paradise built on hell!

In the eyes of intellectuals like Mu Shiying, what they see is more of Shanghai's "Western view".At the beginning of Mao Dun's novel, Wu Sunfu's father, a tycoon in the Shanghai beach silk industry, who had taken refuge from the countryside, saw Shanghai just like that when he went to the city on the pier, so Mrs. Wu died suddenly due to the excitement. However, it is precisely this "Shanghai that is a mixture of prosperity, decay, and liberalism" that has become a place of yearning for some intellectuals who are trying to get rid of centralized rule. Chen Sihe, a professor at Fudan University, believes that "in Japan, it is increasingly 'modernized'. At the same time, it is also increasingly moving towards a centralized state with the emperor as the apex with complete centripetal force." Therefore, "the Japanese writers Muramatsu Sokaze, Inoue Hongmei, Kaneko Mitsuharu, etc., who are indulging in the magical capital, are probably in this sense." The prodigal sons of Xiongfei'".

Liu Jianhui, a scholar living in Japan, in his book "Shanghai, the Magical City--"Modern" Experience of Japanese Intellectuals", generally uses "Magic City" to describe the Japanese imagination of Shanghai.Chen Sihe thinks, "We used to call Shanghai 'Oriental Paris', 'Adventurer's Paradise', etc., and the meanings are probably similar, but none of them are as appropriate as the term 'Magic City'." He explained: "The prosperity of Eastern colonial cities is because some cities are regarded as the central cities for Western plundering of colonial resources, and they must have the same modern living standards enjoyed by Western developed societies; The result of the colonists’ moral indulgence. This is how Shanghai’s huge demonic nature was rapidly formed in the process of modernization. The word “Magic City” contains extremely rich and complex connotations, and it is by no means the so-called “modernity” that many scholars praise one-sidedly. So pure and lovely."

Obviously, the "Magic City" Shanghai contains not only the achievements of modern civilization, but also points to the "seduction" of the people in the city hidden under the high-sounding packaging.However, Shanghai's "magic nature" is so-called modern if you only look at its surface. When it comes to modernity, the most likely to be associated with it is naturally Shanghai women.They are modern interpreters and leaders.As a result, the earliest women's fashion magazines in China, such as "Women's Pictorial", were born in Shanghai.In fact, when "Women Pictorial" was first published in April 1933, there was already a "Linglong Women's Magazine" on the beach in Shanghai.Both belong to fashion magazines that introduce women's fashion and beauty, and discuss women's love and marriage.In Zhang Ailing's words, in Shanghai, "female students carry a copy of "Linglong" magazine", "while teaching movie stars the beauty secrets, they also teach 'beautiful' women how to guard against men's attacks".Although Zhang Ailing didn't take this seriously, "Linglong" has indeed won the favor of many female readers. In today's words, it has seized the market opportunity.

And there are countless modern anecdotes about old Shanghai.Li Oufan said that his "Modern Shanghai" is a "modern guide to old Shanghai", and he encourages you to be a "loafer", encourages you to hang out on the main road, go to the movies, go dancing, go to department stores, go to cafes. Moreover, he will tell you "the 114 rooms in the Xianshi Hotel, the Chinese-style room is 1-2.5 dollars a day, and the Western-style room is 2-6 dollars a day"; A cup of clear tea only costs 20 cents"; tell you that "Sullivan, which is purely foreign, has particularly good lemon juice and cold food"; Floors, including dance halls, top-floor bars, cafes, restaurants and casinos, etc."He will tell you everything about modern enjoyment. For example, when he wrote about the month card, he couldn’t help but say, “I’m here to try to interpret a woman on a month card I own”, and the language he interpreted was authentic and anecdotal, and he was also deeply addicted: This month card is of a relatively traditional type, advertising Hardman cigarettes.Its painting technique is a special "wiping brush light color painting" in 1930, which was first used by Zheng Mantuo, a painter in the early Republic of China.The body of the girl in the painting is not elongated like in some long pictures.She is sitting by the water, with a pair of swans swimming by, and the upper right and lower right of the painting are painted with traditional style of grass and branches... She is wearing a simple but tasteful light-colored cheongsam, which was a popular "Manchu dress" at that time. style"...the flowers on her lapel carried a vague passion, a passion made bitter by pity and sorrow...I found the girl's face reminiscent of the famous movie star Ruan Lingyu-she in 1930 Left and right are famous, a great idol and a passionate woman, but in the end she committed suicide because of love. And, he tells you, there is something aesthetically fascinating about these modern pleasures, these decadent sensual urban entertainments.But it is also easy to make people intoxicated and do not know where to go. Looking at it from another angle, how do you get all these exquisite enjoyments, whether in Shanghai at that time or when they have become antiques?Very simple, one word: money.You can enjoy it, but only if you can afford it. The charm of Shanghai lies in its appearance, which looks gorgeous at first glance, but the city has no foundation. The colonial history has made the city's modern civilization not formed slowly, but with the sudden addition of foreign capital, so Wang Anyi thinks Shanghai is "rude". ".She said: "Shanghai used to be a relatively rough city. There were no nobles in it, but capitalists, commoners and hooligans." So this kind of rudeness is also reflected in Shanghai's extraordinary enthusiasm for money. You can find that all things related to Shanghai "Modern" is all about money and material enjoyment, but it has nothing to do with spirit, belief, or politics. This is the biggest difference between Shanghai Bund and Beijing City. Beijing, which has been in the center of power for a long time, is shrouded in a strong political color, so Beijingers love politics and talk about politics.Shanghai is not the case. In fact, it is the opposite. This peaceful city has a strong economic color but a weak political and cultural color.This almost inherent marginality also weakens its rejection of Western culture. Therefore, to say that Shanghai is xenophobic is really unfair.At least, she definitely does not reject the invasion of Western civilization.Moreover, after a large influx of capital brought dazzling material comforts, the city's money-worshiping personality became more and more high-sounding-entering the city, she can provide all the material comforts you need, but you have to exchange them with money ; and, the more you give, the more she laughs.This is also an important reason why the once small seaside town has become a modern metropolis with a blend of Eastern and Western cultures. Before modern times, Shanghai was just an ordinary coastal city in China. Towns were established in the Song Dynasty, counties were established in the Yuan Dynasty, and cities were built in the Ming Dynasty. It was not very eye-catching among many cities in China.According to the research of American scholar Skinner, in 1843, Shanghai ranked twelfth among Chinese cities, followed by Beijing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Xi'an, Nanjing, and Changsha. ,Tianjin.On the eve of modern times, Shanghai was neither a desolate fishing village as some Westerners said, nor was it a particularly prominent city. However, Xiong Yuezhi, director of the Institute of History of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, believes that "compared with Beijing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Fuzhou and other cities, Shanghai before the opening of the port has two special points: first, Shanghai is a port city and a commercial city, but Not a national or regional political and cultural center, Shanghai in Songjiang Prefecture or Jiangsu Province is generally regarded as a place that is heavy on business, rough, and lacks culture. Second, in the urban population, foreign businessmen occupy an important position, and Shanghai locals are exclusive The concept is not strong. These two points have a great influence on the trend of modern Shanghai." "Among the first five treaty ports, the Western powers did not focus on Shanghai from the very beginning. They first fell in love with Guangzhou, which has a tradition of trade, and once placed their hopes on Fuzhou and Ningbo. However, in the end, by chance, Shanghai became a foreign trade center". Xiong Yuezhi said that the reasons for this are complicated, but he believes that the important point is due to Shanghai's special "regional cultural characteristics". "Although Guangzhou has a tradition of emphasizing commerce, as the political and cultural center of Lingnan, Guangzhou also has a tradition of supremacy in China and contempt for Westerners. Therefore, after the opening of Guangzhou, Westerners encountered strong rejection there, and the struggle between entering the city and opposing entering the city continued. This is not the case in Shanghai. After the opening of the port, merchants living in Shanghai paid more attention to commercial interests. Before nationalism became the mainstream ideology, in the eyes of Shanghai merchants, there was not much difference between Western merchants from Europe and the United States and local merchants from Fujian and Shandong. Therefore, they can live in peace with European and American businessmen. Westerners have mentioned more than once: Shanghainese and Cantonese have different spoken languages, and their natural characteristics are also different. "Cantonese are aggressive and fierce, Shanghainese are gentle and elegant; Southerners They are radicals, while Wu people are moderate. Cantonese show strong aversion to foreigners, but Shanghainese are willing to "approach with half-push and half-will". Beijing tore down the ancient city wall because of politics.Shanghai's decision to tear down the wall is based entirely on considerations of economic interests, and its history of re-business has a long history. As early as the thirty-first year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty, Li Ping, director of the General Engineering Bureau of Shanghai Chengxiang, wrote a revolutionary idea of ​​"demolishing the city walls, filling in the moats, building roads, and forming a circular road around the city".But at that time, it was obstructed by conservative forces. After all, the city wall could "preserve the place and eliminate hidden dangers" (Xu Ke's "Qing Barnyard Banknotes").Therefore, the demolition of the city was not really implemented until after the recovery of Shanghai during the Revolution of 1911. At that time, Li Pingshu, Yao Wen and other city demolition factions convened a meeting of northern and southern gentry, merchants, business groups, and members of the fire fighting association in the building of the fire fighting association.Li Pingshu emphasized that the demolition of the city has advantages and disadvantages, and believes that "the time has come today, if you want to demolish it, you will demolish it. If you miss this opportunity, you will never have the hope of demolishing the wall!" More than 2,000 participants agreed unanimously, and no one objected. You can find that Li Pingshu wisely chose to discuss this matter with "North and South Gentlemen, Businessmen and Business Groups".For businessmen, cultural and local hidden dangers and other invisible things are irrelevant. The demolition of the city wall will make it easier for everyone to communicate, which is naturally conducive to doing business, so "no one has any objections." On January 14, the first year of the Republic of China (1912), Li Pingshu announced the decision to demolish the city wall in his capacity as the chief of civil affairs in Shanghai: "On the one hand, for business, the city wall must be demolished to make transportation more convenient. dismantled sooner in order to put it in order" (The Times, January 15, 1912).The city walls of Shanghai were finally demolished one after another in the second year after the Revolution of 1911. From the perspective of Shanghai, this is a piece of history that is not worth mentioning. It will not be like Beijing. There was a Liang Sicheng who cried and said that the demolition of the city wall was "digging my flesh and blood". Many experts and scholars are still angry about the severe demolition of the ancient city of Beijing. uneven.In Shanghai, it seems that as long as the trade is more fluid and making money easier, everything will be fine. Even if we want to recall the past and nostalgia, we only stay on the gorgeous surface of this city.Wang Anyi said: "Now young people are keen to go to bars and cafes to find traces of old Shanghai. In fact, what they are looking for is the fashion of old Shanghai, and any fashion is superficial."