Description: Rejecting conventional demands, this book examines how ordinary men and women, Chinese as well as foreign, endured the Japanese military assault and occupation of Shanghai during the Chinese War of Resistance (1937-1945). Instead of presenting their stories in terms of heroic resistance versus shameful collaboration with the enemy, the volume reveals how the city's dwellers mobilized a variety of social networks to circumvent enemy strictures. They employed strategies that kept alive a culture and an economy that were vital to the survival of the brutalized population.
Review Quotes: "Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh ask what the war years 1937-1945 meant to the civilian population of the great metropolis. They ask how the brutality of siege and occupation changed 'civic patterns of authority and association' and how they reconfigured 'the material landscape of the city?' To the credit of editors and essayists alike, this sweeping study of Shanghai under Japanese occupation answers those questions and many others and illuminates our understanding of wartime struggle and survival in China's most modern and international city."