ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to define the emerging 'new' form of gentry and identify those 'men of respectability' so informatively alluded to by the British Consul, Lionel Charles Hopkins. It concerns on gentry classified as being 'urban' and those residing in Dadaocheng and its orbiting areas. The chapter attempts to deconstruct the rigid assembly of gentry formation to instead argue that such constructs were not the norm throughout the Qing Empire. It considers the interconnection of the local gentry and foreign community. The entangled relationship that existed between the foreign and local communities was far more symbiotic as opposed to the perceived rigid hierarchal structures that perhaps existed in other areas throughout China proper. The chapter explores this fascinating arrangement; uncovering the lives of the petition signatories and how the croisée or entangled market-cum-port town of Dadaocheng played a pivotal role in the construction of a public sphere built on new moral, cultural, and political codes.
