SPATIAL AND SOCIAL DICHOTOMY BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER QUARTERS IN SHANGHAI

1 Spatial and social dichotomy in contemporary Shanghai

The photos, that were taken in Luwan district in shanghai, depict the gap between the “lower quarters” on the left and

the “upper quarters” on the right, which are only one block away from each other. Photo: Mustafa Obaid.

Mustafa Sahib Obaid, Urbanism in China, Bauhaus University Weimar

SPATIAL AND SOCIAL DICHOTOMY BETWEEN UPPER AND

LOWER QUARTERS IN CONTEMPORARY SHANGHAI

ABSTRACT

As early as 1930, Shanghai became a huge cosmopolitan metropolis that was considered

the fifth largest city in the world and was called “The Paris of Asia” and “The bright pearl of the

Orient” (Lee 1999: 3). However, while many writers, visitors and residents described the glory

of that city, only few noted the presence of a “darker” and “less romantic” face (Lu 1999: 109).

This aspect of city’s urban growth was represented by dozens of so-called “Shantytowns” (Lu

1999: 109) or “Lower quarters” (Pan 2004: 110); in which around one fifth of the poor and

unprivileged Chinese population lived by the year 1950 (Lu 1999: 127). On the other hand,

modern and centrally located “upper quarters”, the international settlement and the French

concession, contained the foreign residents and the Chinese elite (Pan 2004: 112). This situation,

which started during the colonial period in the past, continues to the present and forms

contemporary Shanghai (Pan 2004: 110). Taking into consideration the role of the colonial

powers, society itself and the party-state policies after 1949, this paper intends to investigate the

main factors behind the initiation and continuation of the spatial and social segregation in

Shanghai between upper and lower quarters.

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the first Opium War (1839-

1842) and signing the Nanjing treaty,

Shanghai was a medium size fishing and

market town with its own local ports and

commercial hubs. This town was one of the

extra ports opened for the unrestricted

foreign trade in China due to the unequal

treaties, which Britain forced the Chinese

government to sign in 1842. Respectively,

the first group of British traders arrived in

Shanghai in 1843, and was followed by the

French in addition to seven other foreign

nationalities later (Arkaraprasertkul 2010:

233).

As the newly arrived traders were

willing to settle down in the city and get

access to its vibrant ports, it was gradually

divided into two parts; the British

settlement, which became the international

settlement in 1863, and the French

concession established in 1849

(Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 233). In the 1860s,

Shanghai, which offered better job

opportunities, attracted an increasing


number of Chinese immigrants into the city

(Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 235). However,

while the foreign settlements kept growing,

enjoying their central location and newly

built modern infrastructure, Chinese labors

were living on the fringes of the settlements

with low quality of life (Lu 1999: 109).

Despite of the fact that there was no

single master plan of Shanghai by that time,

foreign planning was dominating the city.

This planning helped establishing dominant

foreign settlements, in addition to low-rise

row housing called lilong housing, to

accommodate a part of the Chinese workers

within the enclaves of the foreign

settlements (Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 235).

On the other hand, shantytowns and slums,

where around one million of the poor

factory workers lived in 1950, dominated

the periphery of Shanghai (Lu 1999: 127).

Within these circumstances Shanghai

was divided into two parts mainly; the

“upper quarters”, which consists mainly of

the international settlements and the French

concessions area, and the “lower quarters”

presented in the shantytowns. This

dichotomy wasn’t only connected to the

living conditions and environment, but also

related to a kind of prejudice against the

poor residents living in the slums (Pan 2004:

113).

Despite of the nationalist government

plan of 1929, which aimed at diminishing

the power and the presence of foreign

settlements and enclaves, the same urban

structure of Shanghai continued to exist and

dominate the city until 1949

(Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 242). After that

year, the communist party-state attempts to

eliminate the gap between the poor lower

and the rich upper quarters in Shanghai,

wasn’t successful and the distinction

between different quarters and their

socioeconomic and physical characters are

still a part of contemporary Shanghai (Pan

2004: 113).

Nowadays, Shanghai is mapped out

into upper and lower quarters, in which the

upper represents “uptown” or the “right side

of the tracks”, while lower is “downtown” or

“wrong side of the tracks” (Pan 2004: 110).

Therefore, the people of the city created

spatial terrains that are connected to the

socioeconomic status of the residents. The

Shanghainese reflected the relationship

between the social and the spatial in the city

by using the term jiao. This term means

literally “locality”, and consists of two

layers of meaning: locale, which represents

the settings in which social relationships are

formed; and location, the geographical area

that provides the settings of social

interaction as defined by other economic

processes in the macro scale, in addition to

the “sense of place” and the “local structure

of feeling” (Pan 2004: 110-111).

COLONIZATION’S ROLE IN THE

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE

DICHOTOMY IN SHANGHAI’S URBAN

STRUCTURE

During the period between 1843 to

1943, Shanghai was divided on the political

level into two worlds; the Chapei district in

the far north and the southern Chinese part,


which were both separated by the foreign

settlements and concession (Lee 1999: 5).

Though the foreign settlements, built after

signing the treaties in 1842,weren’t

supposed to colonize Shanghai in the

traditional sense, foreign authorities have

ruled the city, controlled its planning and

imposed a number of discriminatory policies

targeting the Chinese population

(Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 235). Therefore,

foreign policies set a hierarchy within the

city that was represented on ground by the

urban fabric, in which the location and the

type of buildings reflected different

socioeconomic and political status of the

residents (Lu 1999: 110).

Housing, for instance, consisted of

three main layers;first of all was the

western-style houses and apartments, and

new style alleyway houses, which were

considered the best type of housing and

concentrated mainly in the western part of

the city and the foreign settlements. The

second layer consisted of the middle-level

housing; such as the shikumen and old

alleyway houses spread all around the city.

The poorest type of housing was the

shantytowns, one story houses and shacks

mainly in the periphery of the city. As the

high-class housing was occupied by the

foreigners and the Chinese elite, middle-

class was dwelled by Chinese workers with

stable jobs and middle income. Shanty

towns, however, were the places, where new

immigrants and poor workers settled (Lu

1999: 110-113). Nevertheless, it is important

in this context to mention that, though some

Chinese made it to the foreign community,

most of the three million Chinese residents

in Shanghai were poor by the year 1930.

Physical boundaries, such as walls and roads

represented the physical distinction between

the foreign concessions and the Chinese

areas (Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 236).

As noticed above, building style and

architecture played a role inconsolidating

this dichotomy. Therefore, modern foreign

buildings were made always according the

style and urban form that was derived from

the foreigner’s origin. While mixed Chinese-

western style and Chinese traditional

buildings were accommodated by the

Chinese themselves (Arkaraprasertkul 2010:

240).

Though Chinese and foreigners lived

in a mixed company, they led two

completely separate lives (Lee 1999: 8).

Living conditions in Shanghai’s shantytowns, source: Lu1999:

128

The Bund in the 1930s, Source: Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 24.


Nevertheless, some discriminatory policies

against the Chinese were introduced by the

foreign authorities, such as the historically

common regulation prohibiting “Chinese

and dogs” from entering public parks, that

was abolished as late as 1928 (Lee 1999: 7).

Other kinds of discrimination targeted the

shantytown dwellers, which had no access to

electricity or water supplies. Poor slums’

residents were considered as “uninvited

outsiders”, to the extent that an injunction

was issued to “clean” the city from the

“loafer” population of the slums (Lu 1999:

113).

In around a decade of its presence in

Shanghai, colonization initiated a hierarchal

system, which has constructed a modern city

with a stratified society. This hierarchy was

drawn between foreigners, who were the

superior rulers of the city, and Chinese from

one side, and between Chinese rich elites

and the poor, which was connected to the

imperial structure the city has been built

upon.

POSTCOLONIAL PARTY-STATE

STRATEGIES IN SHANGHAI

While many writers praised Shanghai

during the colonial period, leftist Chinese

writers, scholars and communists described

it as a “bastion of evil” and a “city of shame

for all patriots”(Lee 1999: 4). This tendency

continued after 1949, as the period after the

Opium Wars was described as “the century

of humiliation” by the official text books

(Pan 2004: 109). In the same period, as

Shanghai was turned into a socialist city, the

communist party aimed at achieving social

equality and reducing the gaps between

classes (Arkaraprasertkul 2010: 242).

However, on ground, a sense of

contradiction appeared when the leaders of

the communist party dwelled in the former

foreigners’ prestigious houses in the French

concession, which were considered as a part

of the imperial hierarchy set by the

colonizers. By doing this, communists

revived the colonial stratification of society

by using the same buildings that symbolized

the superiority of the foreigner settlers in the

past, and thus the upper quarters gained back

their previous status (Pan 2004: 114).

Socially, many strategies were aiming

at “civilizing” the marginalized low quarter

slums and promoting the social and “cultural

citizenship”1

(Pan 2006: 96). On the

planning level, city administration tried to

redefine the districts by combining low

quarters with upper quarters; such as the

district of Luwan, which contained three

upper and one lower quarter at the same

time (Pan 2004: 114). This attempt, though

helped removing the boundaries between the

rich and the poor corners from the map,

wasn’t successful enough to eliminate the

differences on ground; since sub-district

street governments represented the

socioeconomic gab between the residents

(Pan 2004: 113).

1In the case of Shanghai, Tianshu Pan describes

“Cultural Citizenship”, as a combination of “first

world citizenship”; in terms of access to material and

symbolic sources, in addition to a historically defined

locality-based citizenship.


The death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and

the reforms of Deng Xiaoping led to a

significant change in China’s political life.

Local historians and writers started to

rewrite Shanghai colonial history, which is

represented by the so-called “Shanghai

Nostalgia”. This nostalgia was not about

city’s recent revolutionary past, but on the

contrary, about the colonial heritage. It

served, therefore, the aims of elites and

government officials who played an

important role in the process of

privatization, liberalization and stratification

of the city’s urban life (Pan 2004: 109).

Thus, this “cultural industry” was related to

all what was connected to the upper quarters

and is not attributed to the everyday life of

ordinary people (Pan 2004: 111). In this

context, the colonial nostalgia played a

complementary role, side by side with what

officials did in Mao’s era, which helped

reviving the “location based cultural

citizenship” of the prestigious upper

quarters and the poor lower quarters (Pan

2006: 97).

Lower quarters became, respectively,

distorting elements to Shanghai image as a

“global city” (Pan 2004: 116). Therefore,

they should be hidden, changed and

“civilized” under any circumstances to cope

the new-old role of the city (Pan 2006: 96).

However, this task was not that simple;

especially after the increase of Shanghai’s

“floating population” after the reform (Pan

2004: 117).

The reform era, with its open door

policy, led to a process of gentrification that

struck both upper and lower quarters of the

city. In the upper quarters, the gentrification

process took the form of renovating and

restoring old buildings, in addition to the

construction of new skyscrapers. In many

lower quarters it created new high-rise gated

communities, following the desire of the

new technocrats who took control over those

areas and were pleased by the presence of

such complexes, which will attract people

with more “prestigious kinds of cultural

citizenship”. One of the examples, in this

case, is the low quarter of Bay Bridge,

which is situated only a few blocks away

from the former French concession in

Luwan district, where the Volkswagen

Town was built. Those gated communities,

which were imposed in the middle of the

low quarters, were described by Tianshu Pan

as “the spouts of capitalism grown out of the

debris of socialism” (Pan 2006: 117-118).

One of the poor neighborhoods in Shanghai hidden from street

view by the black building on the right and a garden on the left.

Photo: Mustafa Obaid.


As a result Bay Bridge was

transformed from a re-imagined socialist

community to a number of walled and gated

communities representing different

socioeconomic levels. This notion reminds

residents of the pre-revolutionary

inequalities of the imperial past; as social

and cultural citizenship became not equally

accessible to all (Pan 2006: 119-120).

The postcolonial era has contributed,

in general, to the hierarchal urban structure

that found its basis during the colonial

period. It helped the unequal cultural

citizenship to gain its importance again in

Shanghai, on the political, socioeconomic

and even on the historical level through the

pre-revolutionary nostalgia. Nevertheless,

gentrification has increased the gap within

the city and contributed to the creation of

upper quarters within the lower quarters, as

in the case of the gated communities in Bay

Bridge.

A SOCIALLY DRIVEN

PREJUDICE

While most of the aspects tackled

above were relevant in political and

economic dimensions, social tensions played

a pivotal role in the construction and

maintenance of such urban hierarchy within

the city. This social aspect is represented by

the structure of Shanghai’s population itself,

which consists of an overwhelming majority

of migrants2.

From the mid-19th

century, Shanghai

has attracted a huge number of immigrants,

coming mainly from three regions: Canton

province, Jiangnan and Subei, also called

Jiangbei (both Jiangsu province). People

from Jiangnan, which is one of the

wealthiest agriculture regions, constituted

the elites. While people coming from Subei,

a region labeled by poverty and

backwardness, formed the underclass. In

addition, Subei people spoke a distinctively

different dialect than native Shanghainese

and Jiangnanese, who spoke the Wu dialect,

from which Shanghainese was derived. On

the economic level, Subei people were less

skilled than the Jiangnan immigrants, which

2 Statistics show that native Shanghainese accounted

for around (19-26%) of the total city’s population in

the period between 1885 and 1935 (Honig 1990:

274).

A residential block in Bay Bridge, in which the Volkswagen

Town, the high-rise building on the background, was built.

Photo: Mustafa Obaid


prevented the former from gaining good jobs

and helped the latter getting better

opportunities and higher income (Honig

1989: 259).

These differences were represented

again on ground, where Subei immigrants,

that became a social category with a number

of symbolic characteristics and meanings,

formed the stereotypical body of the lower

quarter residents in Shanghai, which were

even called Jiangbei shack settlements, (Lu

1999: 130) while migrants from Jiangnan

became a part the elites of the upper

quarters. Therefore, the class differences

that were already present outside Shanghai

were reproduced within the city by the

migrants who held these values and mapped

them within city’s urban hierarchal

structure, where a new social element was

introduced: the native-place identity based

prejudice against the Subei people (Honig

1990: 274).

Subeiren, as they are called, formed

around 80% of shantytowns population in

Shanghai (Honig 1990: 280). They

combined the three elements that the

prejudice in Shanghai is based upon: local

origins, class and the neighborhood in which

the one dwells in the city. Subei are looked

at by other classes of society as poor,

unskilled, ignorant, dirty, and tasteless; and

were considered the scum of Shanghai

(Honig 1990: 274-277). This kind of

prejudices wasn’t identified and treated by

the communist party, which aimed at

eliminating the inequalities in the Chinese

society in terms of class and ethnicity, and

didn’t consider such a native-place identity

based prejudice. Therefore, describing a

person as a Subei is still one of the most

common curses in the Shanghainese dialect

(Honig 1990: 282).

Though many of the Subei were assigned in

high positions in the city administration, are

not poor, have no distinctive physical

appearance and managed to speak the

Shanghainese dialect, the prejudice against

them continued until today. Marrying from a

Subei or even attending their Opera is still

considered inappropriate. Thus, the

prejudice, that started in the places of origin

and took its place again in Shanghai, has

taken many shapes throughout the history

(Honig 1990: 291). Emily Honig described

this by saying:

“The prejudice is therefore not simply a

remnant of the past, but rather is actively perpetuated

and reproduced by contemporary social conditions”.

(Honig 1990: 281)

CONCLUSION

All in all, the dichotomy that is

present in Shanghai’s upper and lower

quarters today, was not a mere product of

foreign or local political and economic

dimensions. The Segregation between

different groups of Chinese immigrants

contributed to the social and spatial

dichotomy that was investigated within this

paper.

While the colonization of Shanghai

helped building the modern city, it imposed

a hierarchal urban structure, which was

based upon its power and dominance.

Chinese immigrants arriving to Shanghai

represented different classes and different

socioeconomic statuses, according to which

they have taken their part within the city. As

Shanghai was spatially segmented between


the foreigners and Chinese settlements, lines

were also drawn between the Chinese

themselves.

However, after the communist took

control of power, they contributed to this

structure and replaced the foreign hegemony

by a local one. Society, on the other hand,

didn’t change its attitudes towards the Subei

people either. Thus, though the economic

gap was at its lowest level during Mao’s era,

it was still present on the political and the

social level. The reforms, initiated by Deng

Xiaoping in 1978, brought back the

economic gap again and reproduced the old

urban hierarchal structure of Shanghai.

Therefore, all the three factors: society,

colonization and the party state played

crucial roles in creating and maintaining the

dichotomy between the upper and the lower

quarters in Shanghai. Understanding this

phenomenon without taking those three

factors into consideration is hardly possible.

REFERENCES

Arkaraprasertkul, Non (2010) Power, Politics, and the

Making of Shanghai. In: Journal of Planning History, Vol.

9. (Sept., 2010), pp. 232-259.

Honig, Emily (1989) The Politics of Prejudice: Subei

People in Republican-Era Shanghai. In: Modern China,

Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 243-274.

Honig, Emily (1990) Invisible Inequalities: The Status of

Subei People in Contemporary Shanghai. In: The China

Quarterly. No. 122 (Jun., 1990). Cambridge University

Press. pp. 273-292.

Lee, L.O.F. (1999) Shanghai Modern: the Flowering of a

New Urban Culture in China, 1930– 1945, Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Lu, H.C. (1999) Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday

Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century, Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press.

Pan, Tianshu (2004) Historical memory, community-

building and place-making in neighborhood Shanghai. In:

Ma, Laurence J.C.; Wu, Fulong (eds.) Restructuring the

Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy and Space.

London: Routledge, pp.109-123.

Pan, Tianshu (2006) “Civilizing” Shanghai Government

efforts to cultivate citizenship among impoverished

residents. In: Vanessa L. Fong and Rachel Murphy

(eds.)Chinese Citizenship: Views from the margins. New

York: Routledge, pp.96-122.

SPATIAL AND SOCIAL DICHOTOMY BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER QUARTERS IN SHANGHAI

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