Many of us grew up watching Chinese-language dramas depicting the world of 1920s and 1930s Shanghai. In television series such as THE BUND (TVB 1980) and its remakes and imitators, Shanghai is presented as a curious mixture of Chinese and European culture...of the ancient and the modern. It was colorful, violent, decadent, and romantic at the same time.
But what was the real Shanghai of that era actually like? Most history books dealing with this period of Chinese history discuss the major struggles among the various warlord groups, the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party, and the foreign imperialists. What was the reality of daily life in Shanghai like seventy or eighty years ago? Do the gangster dramas come even close to depicting what it might have been like?