Book description
In the dazzling global metropolis of Shanghai, what has it meant to call this city home? In this account-part microhistory, part memoir-Jie Li salvages intimate recollections by successive generations of inhabitants of two vibrant, culturally mixed Shanghai alleyways from the Republican, Maoist, and post-Mao eras. Exploring three dimensions of private…
Why read it?
1 author picked Shanghai Homes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
At this point in a list, it isn’t bad to note connections between works, so I’ll begin with those. This is the only book other than Champions Day that is by an academic, but Li, like Carter, is one who knows how to write for general audiences in a compelling and accessible way. Hers is another book, like Zia’s, that is partly an effort to reconstruct the history of the author’s own family, as key figures in this author’s reconstruction of the changing (and enduring) rhythms of life in a Shanghai neighborhood in the 1950s and beyond are relatives she…
From Jeffrey's list on twentieth-century Shanghai.
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