Wu Renshu, Paul Katz, Lin Meili (eds.), Cong chengshi kan Zhongguo de xiandaixing (The city and Chinese modernity)

This richly empirical volume, which grew out of a conference held at the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica, sheds new light on Chinese cities (Beijing, Suzhou, Shanghai, and Chengdu) from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The essays are organised under two headings: “urban life and culture” and “social groupings and urban dynamics.” The volume cuts across the 1839 divide to examine the evolution of consumer culture in pre-modern and modern Chinese cities. It also cu..