Shanghai Before the Foreigners(jaapgrolleman.com) |
Shanghai Before the Foreigners(jaapgrolleman.com) |
Population of Shenzhen:
1950 3,000
1960 8,000
1970 22,000
1980 59,000
1990 875,000
2000 7,193,000
2010 10,223,000
2020 12,357,000
Btw, interesting depiction of Shanghai - exterritorial status of the foreign concessions for example - in 1937 in the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eight_Hundred . In the West we sometimes miss that the 2nd Sino-Japanese war can be naturally considered part of the WWII which thus de-facto was already going in the 1937.
Taipan by James Ckavelk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_(novel)
I had read it some years ago. Interesting depictions of that period, Hong Kong, interactions between the British and Chinese then, and more. Good writing, IMO.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clavell
Excerpt:
>Clavell wanted to write a second novel because "that separates the men from the boys".[21] The money from King Rat enabled him to spend two years researching and then writing what became Tai-Pan (1966). It was a huge best-seller, and Clavell sold the film rights for a sizeable amount (although the film would not be made until 1986).[22]
King Rat was also good.
Also this
> Clavell admired Ayn Rand, founder of the Objectivist school of philosophy
Never meet your heroes, I suppose..
Nice to see some familiar spots. About 21 years ago I used to go to the Jing'An temple for lunch on weekends and chat with the monks. They had excellent vegetarian food in the temple, and often the monks would buy me lunch.
If you want to look at hydro-engineering wonders, the nearby grand canal is amazing. I would post a wayback machine link of a trip I did up there circa 2005 but archive.org are still half down right now.
Can't stand Shanghai - no nature.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_International_Settl... The Americans/British and other European powers held and administered sovereign territory in Shanghai. Truly remarkable considering the historical implications.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Factories
Also the “factories” in Canton each administered by a foreign power or “Hong” (i.e. Jardine Mathieson (worth a google if you are unfamiliar), the portraits on the wiki link paint an otherworldy romantic picture of what was a remarkably profitable and wild trade…
And before that, the Ming banned coastal trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin
It is documented in the Tang Dynasty that boats from Japan bound for China would sometimes land along the coast of Jiangsu then the occupants would move inland. IIRC if riverborne the first small town they would reach was Nantong, and the first major town up-river would be Yangzhou. Approaching overland, they would no doubt be escorted directly to Yangzhou. Jiangsu seems to have essentially consisted of a vast canal network and agricultural lands. Presumably the Koreans hit Shandong (dodging pirates), and the South (India) and Southeast Asians (Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia) hit Guangdong or Guangxi. Fujian, in the middle of these landing zones, had sometimes in history a flourishing trading culture, with Quanzhou IIRC the town from which historically attested Chinese Zhenghe expeditions departed as far as Southeast Asia, India, Arabia and Africa, and global religious communities are attested.
Zhenghe was himself a sufi muslim Eunuch born inland in the Himalayas at ~2200m altitude, last bastion of the purged Mongol-era ruling family of Yunnan, descended from the pre-Mongol invasion Emir of Bokhara, Uzbekistan, and through his family thought to be fluent in Persian, which was then something of a pan-regional lingua franca.
Despite this, the modern Chinese state narrative is that everyone is flat "Chinese". Further leaning on the Central Asian cultural nexus, it is worth re-stating that Li Bai, arguably classical China's most famous poet, was actually born in Kyrgyzstan and after moving to China lived primarily in the then-remote province of Sichuan, quite peripheral to northern Chinese culture, in fact the province was contemporaneously successfully invaded by the Tibeto-Burman rival kingdom of Nanzhao, whose still visible legacy includes undeniably Hindu grottoes carved in Sanskrit.
If you want to learn history, don't look at modern textbooks.
Bullet train takes nearly 2 hours. So I assume it would take about half a day by boat. But still good point.
They won't be. Twisting and erasing history is part and parcel of Chinese education.
Another thing to consider is the long historical record of Yangtze flooding and the depositing of silt and debris in the delta. Until good flood control structures were built, Shanghai is not really in a good place to grow.
I don't think this can really be a complete description of the situation. You can't stop smuggling as a phenomenon, because you can't oversee everything that happens everywhere. So, as much as you might wish it would, the law doesn't really apply to random smugglers.
But by the time you're one of the 100 richest men in China, the law certainly does apply to you. A ban on trade that's "less than 100% effective" is more than enough to stop someone from doing so much trade that they become personally more powerful than the court, as long as "less than 100%" still means "more than 0%".
Is that condescending tone improving the discussion quality, what do you think?
I have read at least Tai-Pan, Shogun and Gai-Jin. In Shogun it's harder to point out, but in the others sure. But they describe Western trade houses operating in Asia, so the themes you mention fit them quite well.
It's been a while since I read the books, and I might feel differently if I read them now with the randian perspective in mind.
By randian perspective I mean reading the books while particularly focusing on themes of liberalism, individualism and the like. Of which there is certainly plenty, but not limited to.
In reality, the people who were trading mostly continued to do so, becoming pirates and smugglers themselves in the process, and Ming China simultaneously lost a bunch of tax revenue from trade as well as tying up a huge part of the labor force in enforcing a sea ban.
The Qing policy was more successful but also required all property destroyed within 30 miles of the coast or face the death penalty, which is extreme to say the least.
[0] https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/01/14/the-trickl...
Metropolitan areas are usually computed by working outward until the density drops. Look at the Pearl River area in satellite imagery. It's a roughly circular high density region, and then farmland appears.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area