Shanghai : Crucible of Modern China. [Shanghai Before the Coming of Foreigners; The Opium War & The Opening of Shanghai as a Treaty Port; The Revolution of 1911; The Nationalist Era; Shanghai after 1945; etc]

Hong Kong ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1988., 1988. Very Good. xi, 299 pp., [16] pp. of plates : illustrated ; 22 cm. ; 2nd printing ; ISBN: 0195853407 ; LCCN: 87-22127 ; OCLC: 16582277 ; color pictorial stiff paper wrappers ; "...[A] good story told with wit, verve and a sharp eye for the details of compelling local history, such as a British geological survey that found that the subsoil of Shanghai could only stand buildings of six floors, whereas London could take sixty, and New York and Hong Kong any number, a fetching snapshot of Daisy Wang, Miss Shanghai 1947, the price of rice, or the pseudo-urbanization that happened when a lumpen proletariat descended on Shanghai....She gives a sanitized version [of Chiang Kai-shek's 12 April 1927 massacre of communists and leftists] in which a total of 16 5 people were executed. There is no sense here that Chiang's men butchered for an eight-hour day and bled trade unionism dry..."--Herman Mast III (University of Connecticut) ; "A Chinese city which owes a great debt to Western influence, Shanghai is the largest city in Asia, and one of its most fascinating. Complete with anecdotes and vignettes of everyday life, this vivid biography traces the city's transformation from treaty port to the commercial, industrial, and financial centre that played a vital role in the development of China's political and social consciousness." ; slight mark on textblock, else VG [This online listing has Chinese fonts]