Shanghai Gone

Book excerpt: “One of the best accounts of the reality of gentrification and urban development in China . . . grounded with solid historical, ethnographic and legal evidence” (Urban Studies). In recent decades, the centuries-old city of Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity. With its world famous skyscrapers, it now ranks with New York and London as a hub of global finance. But that transformation has come at a grave human cost. In Shanghai Gone, Qin Shao applies the concept of domicide—the eradication of a home against the will of its dwellers—to the sweeping destruction of neighborhoods, families, and life patterns that made way for the new Shanghai. Shao gives voice to the holdouts and protesters who resisted domicide and demanded justice. She follows, among others, a reticent kindergarten teacher turned diehard petitioner; a descendant of gangsters and squatters who has become an amateur lawyer for evictees; and a Chinese Muslim who has struggled to recover his ancestral home in Xintiandi, an infamous site of gentrification dominated by a well-connected Hong Kong real estate tycoon. Highlighting the wrenching changes spawned by China’s reform era, Shao vividly portrays the corrupt and rapacious pursuit of growth and profit, the personal wreckage it has left behind, and the enduring human spirit it has unleashed.