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"Another word for 'modern,' or 'new' in early twentieth century China was 'Shanghai',â[euro] wrote David Strand ("New Chinese cities,â[euro] 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 nationhoodâ[euro] (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 "traditionâ[euro] (Beyond the Neon Lights, 1999). The lilong dwellers had long left the rural hinterland behind and the "traditionâ[euro] 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...