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1 From Grand Balls to Jazz Cabarets Westerners and Jazz-Age Culture in Shanghai, 1919–1926 The Western world often calls the years following the end of World War I in 1918 and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 the Jazz Age. For America, an era of hedonism and wild abandon as the country celebrated the end of the Great War and the emerging global dominance of its power, industry, and culture characterized it.1 For China, on the other hand, the Jazz Age signaled a period of war, calamity, and violent revolution, as the young Republic struggled with the burdens of domestic warlordism and foreign imperialism. The 1920s witnessed a vital period of growth for the two political parties that would shape the course of China’s history over the next century: the Nationalists or GMD under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), and the newly formed CCP. In 1924, the two parties joined forces until the Nationalist Revolution of 1927, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who had wrested control over the Nationalist movement following Sun’s death, orchestrated a violent purge of the CCP in an episode known as the White Terror, much of which took place in Shanghai on April 12. Ironically, Sun initially agreed to allow the fledgling CCP to join ranks with the more powerful GMD in Shanghai.2 During this era, a troubled maelstrom of war and calamity swirled around Shanghai as local and regional warlords fought for dominance over the Yangzi Valley area, China’s most fertile, wealthy, and economically productive region.3 While they kept safe from the wars that raged around the city, the Westerners who occupied its two settlements lived in a state of permanent anxiety and uncertainty over the future of their presence in China.4 In the 1920s, a series of political, economic, and social movements organized by students, workers, and other Chinese citizens of the new Republic including the May Fourth Movement of 1919–1923, the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, and the Nationalist Revolution of 1927 beset Shanghai. They challenged the “semi-colonial” order of the treaty port system established in the previous century by the British, French, Americans and other nationalities . Supported by the ideals of national independence and sovereignty and reflecting a heightened consciousness of the impact of Western-style Shanghai.indb 19 2010/5/11 11:47:32 AM 20 · Shanghai’s Dancing World imperialism on non-Western countries that owed partly to a growing intellectual and political interest in Marxism, Chinese intelligentsia and leaders of both parties denounced the treaty port system that had given Western imperialism a foothold in China.5 By this time, the flagship treaty port city of Shanghai called itself home to nearly three million Chinese residents. None of these people had any real decision-making power over the governing bodies of the two foreign settlements —the International Settlement and the French Concession—although nearly half of them lived there as opposed to only several thousand Westerners .6 Since the late nineteenth century, Westerners in the city had wielded enormous power and received extensive privileges that the growing forces of modern Chinese nationalism continuously challenged during the Jazz Age. They had also enjoyed many of the institutions and amenities that could be found in their own home countries. Within this uncertain context, China’s own Jazz Age dawned. A growing number of Westerners in Shanghai relieved their stress and tensions in this age by dancing the foxtrot, Charleston, or rumba in flashy nightclubs and posh ballrooms. For them, the nightlife of the Jazz Age blossomed as part of a global consensual fantasy that had come forth since the dawn of the twentieth century in cities such as Paris and New York. It allowed patrons to escape the sorrows or boredom of everyday life, in an indulgent rush into a world of fantasy, pleasure, and fun. Yet the Euro-American-style entertainment that developed in the city during this era engaged the ideal of a more democratic order that rose from the ashes of World War I, which encouraged greater parity and more social mixing among the disparate classes, ethnicities, and nationalities of people living there. Lewis Erenberg argued that cabarets in New York broke down barriers of class and ushered in the new more permissive and democratic culture of the Jazz Age.7 I argue that the same held true for Shanghai. The jazz cabarets and nightclubs that appeared in the city during the...

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