Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870-1930 (review)

This well-researched book paints a colorful tapestry of street life in a major metropolis in southwestern China. It also chronicles, after Gramsci and Geertz, the shifting alliances, struggles, and resistance among the state, local elites, and the subaltern within popular culture.¹

This contest was waged on the streets of Chengdu, a city of over 300,000. Urban elites had "always sought opportunities to shape the values and habits of the lower class" (131), but the book analyzes the radical changes and continuities of the modern period in four stages. Part One reconstructs "traditional" public space—the streets, neighborhoods, markets, fairs, and the vibrant commercial and urban culture of opera, teahouse, ritual, and popular religion. Relatively free from official supervision at a time when there was no municipal government, local elites sought to control the uncouth and uneducated. In this exercise of cultural hegemony and informal governance, they often had the blessing of local officials, a symbiosis that furnished the basis of urban autonomy, something that had once been thought lacking in China.

Part Two focuses on the critical period of the early twentieth century, when China was condemned to modernize under the pressure of foreign imperialism. In the first stage, the reigning Manchu dynasty sought to strengthen itself through reforms, creating institutions that gave local elites the authority to refashion Chengdu through "modern" policing institutions of public order, discipline, and hygiene using "Western" science and medicine. The commoners resisted this uncritical imposition of "modernity" with what Scott characterized as "weapons of the weak"—from gossip to flaunting to daily resistance.² Little had been achieved by these reforms when the confrontation between local elites and commoners entered a suspended stage during the 1911 Revolution and its aftermath. Both became united against what they saw as a callous Manchu state infringing upon their lives, using popular culture to mobilize the masses.

Part Three chronicles the fourth stage in the ever-shifting alliance between the state, local elites, and the commoners during the Republican period as the chaos of warlordism and civil war engulfed the country. While paying a staggering price for "modernity" and "revolution," popular culture on the streets of Chengdu continued.

Wang is at home with a wide range of Chinese sources, oral tradition, and the latest theoretical developments in history, anthropology, and sociology. With the precedent of this book, the field can move to more sophisticated comparative studies on popular culture in China and elsewhere.