Away from Nanking Road Small Stores and Neighborhood Life in Modern Shangha g HANCHAO LU A CHINAS LEADING"TREATY PORT"CITY, Shanghai has long been stereotyped as the prime bridgehead for foreign encroachment on China and as the most westernized city of the country(Tang and Shen 1989: introduction). Recent scholarship in the West still refers to Shanghai as"the other China, ""in China but not of it, "a foreign city even in its own country"(Bergere 1981; Murphey 1992: 346; Clifford 1991:9). In the first half of the twentieth century, was the influence of the West Shanghai so strong that the city was alienated from the rest of China? Was Shanghai firmly in the grip of modernization, which in China was often associated with a tendency to change toward things Western? Or, alternatively, was Shanghai ome to a strong and vibrant current of traditionalism, a traditionalism that can be equated with continuity or persistence of things indigenously Chinese? The answers these questions can be very diverse, depending in large measure on the dimensions one chooses to examine. Most of our assumptions and judgments on this issue have been drawn from broad and sweeping political or economic perspectives with little attention paid to the everyday lives of ordinary people. How the common people continued to live their everyday lives is, I believe, most relevant to the question of the impact of modernity (or of the West)upon urban China This article invites the reader to look into ordinary neighborhood stores on the narrow alley where most Shanghainese lived. Nanking Road, the commercial center of the city, and its adjacent riverside(known as the Bund)with its business and municipal edifices have long been regarded as symbols of the city in much the ame way that the Manhattan skyline symbolizes New York, the Eiffel Tower,Paris or Big Ben, London. Nanking Road and the Bund-as the places where foreigners exercised their political and economic power and enjoyed special privileges, and as the places from which emanated modern, Western cultural influences--were particularly powerful symbols of the Western intrusion in China. However, the story of small neighborhood stores shows that Nanking Road and all it symbolized remained largely irrelevant to the daily lives of the common people of Shanghai Our stroll through the alleyways of Shanghai reveals the remoteness of Western Hanchao Lu teaches history at Georgia Institute of Technology In pinyin, Nanjing Road. Since"" was the original romanized street, I use Nanking Road rather than Nanjing Road in this article The Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 1(February 1995): 93-123 o 1995 by the Association for Asian Studies, IncAway from Nanking Road: Small Stores and Neighborhood Life in Modern Shanghai HANCHAO LU ASc~1ivA.SLEADING "TREATY PORT CITY, Shanghai has long been stereotyped as the prime bridgehead for foreign encroachment on China and as the most westernized city of the country (Tang and Shen 1989: introduction). Recent scholarship in the West still refers to Shanghai as "the other China," ."in China but not of it," "a foreign city even in its own country" (Berghe 1981; Murphey 1992:346; Clifford 1991:9). In the first half of the twentieth century, was the influence of the West in Shanghai so strong that the city was alienated from the rest of China? Was Shanghai firmly in the grip of modernization, which in China was often associated with a tendency to change toward things Western? Or, alternatively, was Shanghai home to a strong and vibrant current of traditionalism, a traditionalism that can be equated with continuity or persistence of things indigenously Chinese? The answers to these questions can be very diverse, depending in large measure on the dimensions one chooses to examine. Most of our assumptions and judgments on this issue have been drawn from broad and sweeping political or economic perspectives with little attention paid to the everyday lives of ordinary people. How the common people continued to live their everyday lives is, I believe, most relevant to the question of the impact of modernity (or of the West) upon urban China. This article invites the reader to look into ordinary neighborhood stores on the narrow alleyways where most Shanghainese lived. Nanking Road,' the commercial center of the city, and its adjacent riverside (known as the Bund) with its business and municipal edifices have long been regarded as symbols of the city in much the same way that the Manhattan skyline symbolizes New York, the Eiffel Tower, Paris, or Big Ben, London. Nanking Road and the Bund-as the places where foreigners exercised their political and economic power and enjoyed special privileges, and as the places from which emanated modern, Western cultural influences-were particularly powerful symbols of the Western intrusion in China. However, the story of small neighborhood stores shows that Nanking Road and all it symbolized remained largely irrelevant to the daily lives of the common people of Shanghai. Our stroll through the alleyways of Shanghai reveals the remoteness of Western Hanchao Lu teaches history at Georgia Institute of Technology. '1n pinyin, Nanjing Road. Since "Nanking" was the original romanized name for the street, I use Nanking Road rather than Nanjing Road in this article. TheJournal of Asian Studies 54, no. 1 (February 1995):93- 123. O 1995 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc