China's changing views of its past

Subtle shifts in Shanghai reveal a greater change in historical perception.

from the May 14, 2007 edition

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There were also sites such as a wax museum devoted to local history that portrayed the treaty-port era in a relatively positive light. The main impression I got from the museum's displays was that the period was a mixed blessing. Yes, it was a time when Chinese residents were sometimes slighted by foreigners but also one that gave Shanghainese the cosmopolitan outlook and entrepreneurial spirit that were serving them well at the dawn of this new century.

While visiting Shanghai this past March, I saw signs that Chinese visions of the past had shifted again. This time a bookstore made the biggest impression on me. Shanghai's City of Books has long had a large section devoted to local topics, with shelves arranged in a V-shape. On one side of the V are books about "Old Shanghai" and on the other are those about "New Shanghai." The difference this time was that the historical break between "old" and "new" was no longer 1949, the year of "Liberation" that saw the Communist Party take power.

Now, a map of Shanghai in 1956 was included in the "old" section. Some of the decades following 1949 are slipping into the "Old Shanghai" category. Soon, I think, only events and buildings that postdate the 1990s will be seen as belonging to the "new" side of the local-topics section. The '90s are when Pudong (East Shanghai) was transformed from a district without tall buildings to one distinguished by its forest of modern skyscrapers.

I saw further evidence of this shift in historical perception in two recently published books. "A Changing Shanghai" and "A Changing Shanghai II," show black-and-white shots of local settings as they looked in bygone times paired with color photographs of the same places today.

Similar publications have been appearing in Shanghai for at least a dozen years. But previously, the black-and-white photographs always showed the city before liberation in 1949. In these new books the black-and-white shots were all taken around the time I first went to Shanghai just 20-odd years ago.

Though China hasn't been completely transformed, its society and economy have come a long way since the '80s. In Shanghai and other rapidly changing parts of China, even the past is not quite what it used to be.

• Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom's latest book, "China's Brave New World – And Other Tales for Global Times," will be published in June. He's a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.

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