Lei Ping is associate professor of Chinese Studies at The New School in New York. She has written extensively on China and the global city of Shanghai and served on the editorial board of Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism.

The publication of Shanghai Mundane is timely, as the city’s fraught experience of Chinese and global modernity promises to shed light on China’s current dilemma. The book’s themes and arguments are compelling and well-researched, bringing to focus the survival of urban middle-class values and life-forms under revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras. Blending observations on cultures high and low, and juxtaposing ideologies and social positions in radical opposition, the author presents a complex and vivid picture of an ongoing historical drama at the center of the epic struggle for the future of China.

• Introduction Part I: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai National BourgeoisieChapter 1: Historical Rationale and Limitations of Mao’s “Utilizing, Restricting, and Transforming” Chapter 2: “Remolding” and “Remolded”: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai Capitalists in Literature and CinemaPart II: Life and Death of Shanghai Longtang Everyday LifeChapter 3: Survival of Shanghai Bourgeois Heritage and Urbanite Culture in the Mao EraChapter 4: Demolition of a Distinctive Shanghai Habitus in the Post-Mao Era Part III: Cultural-Capitalist Spaces of New Shanghai Middle ClassChapter 5: The Interior: Advertising Bourgeois Sentiments through Middle-Class Homeownership DreamChapter 6: The Exterior: Exhibiting Class Identity through Social Media Wanghong DakaEpilogue: From “Cultural Self-confidence” to Economic Stimulus: Shanghai Mundane under Xi’s Sino-centric Socialism Appendix: Chinese Journals, Magazines, and NewspapersBibliography

Lei Ping is associate professor of Chinese Studies at The New School in New York. She has written extensively on China and the global city of Shanghai and served on the editorial board of Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism.

The publication of Shanghai Mundane is timely, as the city’s fraught experience of Chinese and global modernity promises to shed light on China’s current dilemma. The book’s themes and arguments are compelling and well-researched, bringing to focus the survival of urban middle-class values and life-forms under revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras. Blending observations on cultures high and low, and juxtaposing ideologies and social positions in radical opposition, the author presents a complex and vivid picture of an ongoing historical drama at the center of the epic struggle for the future of China.

• Introduction Part I: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai National BourgeoisieChapter 1: Historical Rationale and Limitations of Mao’s “Utilizing, Restricting, and Transforming” Chapter 2: “Remolding” and “Remolded”: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai Capitalists in Literature and CinemaPart II: Life and Death of Shanghai Longtang Everyday LifeChapter 3: Survival of Shanghai Bourgeois Heritage and Urbanite Culture in the Mao EraChapter 4: Demolition of a Distinctive Shanghai Habitus in the Post-Mao Era Part III: Cultural-Capitalist Spaces of New Shanghai Middle ClassChapter 5: The Interior: Advertising Bourgeois Sentiments through Middle-Class Homeownership DreamChapter 6: The Exterior: Exhibiting Class Identity through Social Media Wanghong DakaEpilogue: From “Cultural Self-confidence” to Economic Stimulus: Shanghai Mundane under Xi’s Sino-centric Socialism Appendix: Chinese Journals, Magazines, and NewspapersBibliography

Lei Ping is associate professor of Chinese Studies at The New School in New York. She has written extensively on China and the global city of Shanghai and served on the editorial board of Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism.

The publication of Shanghai Mundane is timely, as the city’s fraught experience of Chinese and global modernity promises to shed light on China’s current dilemma. The book’s themes and arguments are compelling and well-researched, bringing to focus the survival of urban middle-class values and life-forms under revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras. Blending observations on cultures high and low, and juxtaposing ideologies and social positions in radical opposition, the author presents a complex and vivid picture of an ongoing historical drama at the center of the epic struggle for the future of China.

• Introduction Part I: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai National BourgeoisieChapter 1: Historical Rationale and Limitations of Mao’s “Utilizing, Restricting, and Transforming” Chapter 2: “Remolding” and “Remolded”: Socialist Transformation of Shanghai Capitalists in Literature and CinemaPart II: Life and Death of Shanghai Longtang Everyday LifeChapter 3: Survival of Shanghai Bourgeois Heritage and Urbanite Culture in the Mao EraChapter 4: Demolition of a Distinctive Shanghai Habitus in the Post-Mao Era Part III: Cultural-Capitalist Spaces of New Shanghai Middle ClassChapter 5: The Interior: Advertising Bourgeois Sentiments through Middle-Class Homeownership DreamChapter 6: The Exterior: Exhibiting Class Identity through Social Media Wanghong DakaEpilogue: From “Cultural Self-confidence” to Economic Stimulus: Shanghai Mundane under Xi’s Sino-centric Socialism Appendix: Chinese Journals, Magazines, and NewspapersBibliography