“Another word for ‘modern,’ or ‘new’ in early twentieth century China was ‘Shanghai’,” wrote David Strand (“New Chinese cities,” in Esherick (ed.), Remaking the Chinese City, 2001, p. 213). Shanghai and Chinese modernity were inextricably linked, but what did this mean in practice and what was Shanghai modernity? In Mapping Modernity in Shanghai Samuel Y. Liang argues that modernity arrived in Shanghai in the second half of the 19th century. This modernity, he argues, was primarily experienced as a reconfiguration of the urban spaces of everyday life, as opposed to the “imagined space of Chinese nationhood” (p. 1). These urban spaces were home to shifting social and gender relationships. Liang argues that scholars such as Leo Lee (Shanghai Modern, 1999) have overstated the importance of Western influence in shaping Shanghai modernity. He also rejects Hanchao Lu's characterization of lilong life in Republican Shanghai as representing Chinese “tradition” (Beyond the Neon Lights, 1999). The lilong dwellers had long left the rural hinterland behind and the “tradition” that they represented was actually a new form of urban modernity. Liang is arguing for a more fluid conception of modernity, and for a modernity that arrived in Shanghai before the great cultural movements of the Republican Era which have long been the focus of scholarly attention.

Liang uses space as a vehicle for understanding modernity; he sets his arguments in contrast to other recent influential works (including Mittler, A Newspaper for China?, 2004, and Des Forges, Mediasphere Shanghai, 2007) which for him embody a historicism that focuses too much on human activity within Hegelian narratives of progress and change. In contrast to positivist Western historical narratives with their focus on man overcoming nature, Liang posits a redemption of Chinese “traditionalism” as a means of understanding the historical process. This involves an emphasis on the teachings of the ancients, on the arts of pleasure and entertainment, and folk beliefs. He argues that traditional Chinese views of historical progress centred on cyclical themes and recycling. Using this understanding of historical progress nature is not overcome, but rather industrial culture comes to be portrayed as “new nature” (pp. 2–5, 73). Liang's intention is not to exclude Western influences at the expense of a Sino-centric narrative, but rather to explore the history of Shanghai with a focus on its everyday space, visual and material cultures. His sources, chiefly travel notes, guidebooks, journalism and lithographed drawings, are represented as “fragments” charting the city's spatial dimensions rather than attempting to form a temporal narrative.

In chapter one the author develops his key theme; that “modernity is embodied in the spatio-temporal strategy of capitalist development, which is marked by fragmentation and contingency rather than (the positivist notions of) totality and progress.” An “artificial order of modern industrial culture” was imposed on traditional order embodied in different urban and rural, private and public, and sacred and secular spaces which were disrupted as a result. Many “traditional” elements, such as the bohemian literati, itinerant merchants and courtesans played just as important a role in forming “hybrid modernity” as did Western influences (p. 8).

It is the literati that form the focus of chapter two. In their new urban literature, which was transformed by Western-style publishing, these writers and journalists presented a city of new phenomena and change, in contrast to traditional portrayals of the world as being timeless. Chapter three examines courtesan houses as places where modernity was shaped and contested as gender dynamics played out in an environment increasingly influenced by material culture. Chapters four (on evolving urban architecture), five (a wonderfully illustrated exploration of public culture) and six (on commercial spaces) explore how the changing fabric of the city impacted on its residents and how the activities of the sojourners impacted on the city's developing spatial order. Liang focuses in particular on leisure, entertainment and spectacle. Shanghai's transformation, he concludes, was “generated from within the community of Chinese sojourners, who actively appropriated or domesticated new technology and products rather than passively reacting to Western influences” (p. 181).

The great strength of this book is its focus on the special rather than the temporal; Shanghai's urban spaces are brought vividly to life. The book contributes greatly to our understanding of what modernity really meant to the Chinese residents of Shanghai. Yet the book's self-conscious focus on fragmentary sources will perhaps also be considered its greatest weakness by those who like their histories purposeful, event-driven and firmly temporal. Similarly, those who struggle to be engaged by historical accounts so clearly informed by the language and theorizing of the field of cultural studies may find the book hard going at times. The contributions Liang makes to on-going debates on issues from the development of modernity to the effect of foreigners on Shanghai's publishing world and on concubinage are extremely valuable, but a more direct style of prose might have brought these contributions to the fore a little more obviously.