ABSTRACT
The foreign settlements contributed to an economic boom in Shanghai and also created for the Chinese sojourners a “foreign place” ( yichang ), free from the administration of mandarin rulers. After the 1860s, many business-minded sojourners arrived and played crucial roles in the development of the settlements. Aside from trading, cultural exchanges between the Chinese and Western communities were relatively rare in the nineteenth century but the Chinese sojourners actively appropriated and domesticated “things modern” as well as reinvent old ideals. Like the Shenbao literati, these sojourners were intoxicated by marvels in the yichang , which eased their sense of displacement from home; their ultimate dream life was also found in the city’s courtesan houses, which conceptually and practically became their surrogate “home”—one that parodied as well as subverted the traditional ideal of the household.
