Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity (State & Society in East Asia)

Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity in recent decades, now ranking with New York and London as a hub of global finance. But that transformation has come at a grave human cost. This compelling book is the first to apply the concept of domicide-the eradication of a home against the will of its dwellers-to the sweeping destruction of neighborhoods, families, and life patterns to make way for the new Shanghai. Here we find the holdouts and protesters, men and women who have stubbornly resisted domicide and demanded justice. Qin Shao follows, among others, a reticent kindergarten teacher turned diehard petitioner; a descendant of gangsters and squatters who has become an amateur lawyer for evictees; and a Chinese Muslim who has struggled to recover his ancestral home in Xintiandi, an infamous site of gentrification dominated by a well-connected Hong Kong real estate tycoon. Highlighting the wrenching changes spawned by China's reform era, Shao vividly portrays the relentless pursuit of growth and profit by the combined forces of corrupt power and money, the personal wreckage it has left behind, and the enduring human spirit it has unleashed. To see the author's blog post on Asia Society, please click here. Review An extraordinary book that documents the contemporary history of housing demolition and relocation in Shanghai. . . . As a historian, Qin Shao is extremely sensitive to historical details and pays particular attention to the oral history of the everyday experiences of those residents who suffered from housing demolition. She turns these narratives into an account of conflict and resistance in the histories of urban development. . . . The book contains very rare and detailed materials and reveals the enormous suffering caused by 'domicide'--the eradication of homes against the will of their dwellers--in the process of rapid urbanization and housing development. The book devotes its narrative to concrete events and the words of ordinary people, and preserves memories that would otherwise disappear quickly along with the old homes. . . . The narrative of this book is full of surprises--even for those who believe they are 'familiar' with Chinese cities. . . . Shanghai Gone is an extremely fascinating book for those who are interested in Chinese cities as well as the general public interested in urban histories and social well-being.--China Quarterly Put simply, if Shanghai is China's face to the world, this book pulls off its mask to reveal the activities of powerful and unaccountable players in the city's drive to modernity, as well as the human cost associated with it. . . .Shao's book provides a rich texture complementing the canonical work on China's urban transformation by authors such as Fulong Wu, Anne Broudehoux, or John Friedmann, to name but a few. Filling the gap in interpretive approaches to China's complex and fascinating urban landscape, Shanghai Gone is a remarkable book that will interest both China-watchers and urban scholars, as well as those interested in protest and global civil society movements.--E-International Relations Qin Shao offers, with remarkable detail, the struggles of evictees against commercial developers and the local government in Shanghai. Alternatively gripping and painful, thoroughly honest and, at times, impassioned and even humorous, Qin's account provides the closest approximation available to a record of socio-legal cases or textual documentation of housing disputes in urbanizing China. . . .Qin's book is a testament to tenacity in research methods and goals, just as it is to the struggles of her informants. It sets a bar for empirical fieldwork on political issues in contemporary China. Students and scholars of modern history, urban studies, law and society, and anthropology will find in Shanghai Gone a vivid account of the best and worst in reform-era China.--China Information Shanghai grew rapidly in the decades before the