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Seventh, the Oriental Magic City of 6 Strange Monsters

To put it mildly, the general impression of China in the Western world during the Republic of China era was basically an ignorant, turbulent, and hopelessly backward country, even compared with black Africa.

Indeed, although China still had an ancient and brilliant civilization at that time, in the eyes of Westerners, it had long ceased to be glorious and was abandoned by the times. Everywhere there are dilapidated medieval villages, greedy and barbaric warlords and bandits, and miserable poor people who are completely out of touch with modern life and are constantly struggling to die - just as we modern Chinese look at Africans with a sense of superiority.

The few exceptions are a series of "civilized" islands located in treaty ports, or more precisely, foreign-governed concessions. In the eyes of Westerners, these concessions are seen as a bridge between the two worlds of the "modern West" and "traditional China".

Among them, the largest and most prosperous and dazzling "bridge" is none other than the "Ten Mile Ocean Field" in Shanghai.

So, what kind of face is Shanghai, the oriental magic capital of the Republic of China?

At that time, the old Shanghai was known as the "Oriental City that never sleeps", and was also called the "Paris of the East" and the "Adventurer's Paradise".

-- The jingling trams, the Waibaidu Bridge on the Suzhou Creek, the neon-lit ten-mile ocean, the curry-smelling Indian Ahsan, the Annam patrol in a rattan hat and leggings, the swaggering foreigners in suits and leather shoes, the gold-rimmed comprador who speaks a foreign language fluently, the modern girl in a cheongsam and holding a pet dog, the swarthy and thin rickshaw driver who walks the streets and alleys, the rap vendor who sells white orchids and pear paste candy, the wharf coolie with a full face of vegetables, the Kunqu opera and Peking opera broadcast on the radio, and the use of "Standard Oil" The shanty houses in Zhabei built with tin buckets, the rural beggars in ragged clothes who secretly peel the bark of trees to satisfy their hunger, and the big smokers with yellow faces and thin muscles and gloomy expressions......

When the Chinese countryside in the Republic of China era was in complete ruins, not only did the peasants have a difficult livelihood and starvation, but even the landlords went bankrupt in large numbers, Shanghai, the magic capital full of modern atmosphere, was obviously particularly attractive. Therefore, almost every year, many outsiders come to Shanghai to make a living. The expansion of Shanghai Tang from a barren reed beach in 184o to China's largest city in the 2o century is also due to the continuous influx of population and wealth from the whole country - although it is not as good as the "Shenzhen degree" of later generations, it can be regarded as a rapid development.

In addition, in the Republic of China era, those warlords and politicians who lost power and went into the wilderness, the former Qing princes, in order to guard against the aftermath of the former enemies and enjoy a modern high-quality life, also liked to drill into the concessions of Shanghai and Tianjin in a bunch (such as the heroine's father in "Deep Love and Rain", the fictional northeast warlord 6 Zhenhua), once the situation changed, they could immediately go out again, just like modern overseas political refugees - but at that time, the land of Chinese was full of foreigners' territory, Therefore, it is enough to run a few steps to evacuate.

In short, in addition to the absence of the Internet and television, all kinds of modern necessities of life are basically available in Shanghai, and modern people will not have too much discomfort when they travel through the past. Although the public security in Shanghai was far worse than that of later generations, and gangsters like Huang Jinrong and Du Yuesheng ran rampant for decades and no one could govern them, compared with the arrogance of the Sichuan Pao brother who broke into the Chengdu Municipal Government to tie up the meat ticket, Shanghai's social order in the Republic of China was already quite good.

However, this qiē modern and civilized way of life from the West is mainly concentrated in the Shili Yangchang in the concession. And the downtown area of Shanghai outside Shiliyangchang is not so beautiful.

First of all, it should be noted that although Shanghai was the most modern and prosperous city in the Far East at that time, unlike Shanghai with excellent infrastructure today, in addition to the public concession, a considerable number of Shanghai citizens living in China did not have electricity or running water.

Do you know? In the shantytowns of Zhabei in Shanghai during the Republic of China, almost everyone knew how to penetrate the wall!

-- In the thirties of the 20 th century, due to the massive impact of foreign goods, the rural areas in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were generally bankrupt, while the cities were abnormally prosperous. As a result, tens of thousands of bankrupt peasants and even bankrupt landlords flocked to Shanghai in search of food. But these people have neither education nor skills, and after entering the city, there is not one in a hundred who mix well. Most people can only carry large bags, sell cigarettes, pull rickshaws, work as domestic servants, or work as small workers in factories, and their income is very low, and they are very unstable. Therefore, buying a house is a luxury, and renting a house is also difficult.

At that time, the female spinning workers who had just been recruited into the factory had a daily salary of three cents, and it was only 9 yuan a month. And the old workers who are very skilled are about 14 silver dollars a month. The maid of Lu Xun's family has a monthly salary of only 3 yuan in addition to food and accommodation...... Therefore, to say that the monthly salary of female textile workers in the Republic of China era can reach twenty or thirty oceans is complete nonsense - either this "female textile worker" is actually a foreman or a technical backbone of the "gold-collar family", or she is actually holding a golden yuan coupon...... What kind of pit is this, you can Baidu by yourself, in short, after less than a year, many people like to use gold yuan coupons instead of toilet paper to wipe their butts, because it is cheaper than toilet paper.

What's worse is that only a small part of the wages set by those companies on the surface often fall into the hands of workers, because there are so many villains in the middle, and all of them are extremely vicious.

For example, in the early twenties, the Shanghai Feixing Rickshaw Company implemented a fixed salary, with each driver paying four dimes a day and a monthly salary of 12 yuan. But the coachman only got a dime and a half cents, and he didn't even drink enough porridge, and most of the remaining half was deducted by the foreman with a gang background. If you refuse to be filial, your hands and feet will still be light, and there will be many sacks thrown into the Huangpu River.

At that time, almost all the recruitment markets in Shanghai were occupied by gangs (mainly green gangs), and enterprises had to pay a lot of filial piety to these gangs in order to recruit workers, and they couldn't get around it. Sometimes you have to tolerate these gangs stuffing a bunch of idle people into the business, or they will be smashed (with the exception of hard-nosed people with deep backgrounds such as Japanese yarn mills). Therefore, these unearned foremen not only brutally exploit the workers, but also can blackmail their own bosses in turn - in front of these ruthless people who do all kinds of evil, capitalists with no background are actually no different from exploited workers.

In this kind of situation of being controlled by others everywhere, even if entrepreneurs have the intention to treat workers well, they are unable to do anything because they are oppressed and coerced by the underworld.

In the thirties of the twentieth century, a small pavilion of seven or eight square meters with brooms and miscellaneous items at the bottom of the corner of the stairs was rented for more than 1o oceans! If you borrow the kitchen, you will have to pay more! You let those low-income out-of-towners rent a house, and the rest of the money is only enough for him to drink the northwest wind. What should I do if I can't afford to rent? Either learn to live on the streets, or go to live in slums.

At that time, Zhabei in Shanghai, as well as the suburbs of many other large cities, were slums with no end in sight, as seen in present-day Mumbai in India and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The modern Brazilian poor can still build a hut out of tin sheets, asbestos tiles and plastic sheeting. But China's industry was backward in those years, and even the above-mentioned industrial products were not available to the poor, so they could only build their nests in more primitive ways.

At that time, peasants from all over the country who came to Shanghai to make a living brought moso bamboo, reed mats and slices from the countryside, roasted and bent the moso bamboo, inserted it into the ground, and built a semi-arched shelf, covered with reed mats, tied with thatch around it, cut out the door on the sunny side, and spread a piece of rotten cotton wool on the ground, which was the family's residence. This simple shack, commonly known as the "rolling dragon", is only as high as the waist of an adult man, and must be bent deep to enter and exit, and when you go back at night, you will not see the entrance, and if you are not careful, you will enter through the wall - as if you have learned the art of piercing through the wall.

Such rudimentary "rolling dragon" shacks are usually illegal construction, and naturally there is neither electricity nor running water, at most, hundreds of households can be allocated a communal water tap, and every morning they queue up to take turns to fetch water -- many of them are said to be privately connected from fire hydrants -- and fires often break out at night because of kerosene lamps overturning, making it neither safe nor comfortable to live in.

According to records, there was once a migrant worker who lived in the "Rolling Dragon" who had a grudge against others, and was eating against the thatched wall at night, when he was suddenly stabbed in the heart by a long knife - it turned out that his enemy was standing outside the wall and gave him a knife! If you don't know the architectural structure of the slums of Shanghai at that time, you will definitely think that this is the plot of a martial arts novel.

If someone could collect many drums of "Mobil Oil" or "Standard Oil" (the two largest companies that imported kerosene lamps to China at the time) and cut the tin sheet to make a roof, then they would already be considered a "mansion" in the slums

-- Compared with the slums of the Republic of China, the so-called dirty and messy "urban village" is like paradise!

However, compared with the poor people in Indian cities who have no slums to live in, can only sleep on the road and lay on the floor, and then are run over by cars in the middle of the night in their sleep, the slums in Shanghai during the Republic of China are also less than the above.

Although bankrupt farmers from all over the country flocked to Shanghai at that time, trying to make a living in this seemingly prosperous metropolis. But in fact, although in the early Republic of China, Shanghai's light industry was once very prosperous. However, in the thirties of the twentieth century, due to the impact of the Great Depression of the world economy, a large number of industrial and commercial enterprises in Shanghai closed down, suspended production and reduced production, and the employment of residents was always very bad. According to a survey conducted in 1935, more than 60,000 workers out of a population of 40,000 in the city were unemployed.

In those years, when the economy was at its most miserable, many starving and frozen corpses could be found on the streets of Shanghai every morning, and the number of floating corpses in the Suzhou River is estimated to be comparable to that of the Ganges River in India today (Indians are accustomed to water burials) -- now we understand why our party was able to organize a workers' uprising in Shanghai!

In old Shanghai, it was the tertiary industry such as the service industry that really maintained its abnormal prosperity: thanks to the large number of wealthy people living in the Shanghai Concession, the consumption power of Shili Yangchang has always been very strong, and finally gave the poor people a chance to survive pulling rickshaws, working as hawkers, shining shoes, and gangsters.

Of course, most of today's Republic of China background novels, especially romance novels, once the protagonist reaches that era, he usually automatically reincarnates as a young lady and young master from a large family, at least a petty bourgeois literati and writer, most of the places where they live are in the public concession, and they experience wind and snow, bright lights, fragrant car beauties, grievances and hatreds...... As for the dirty and dilapidated shantytowns, I am afraid that they often don't bother to write even a single fragment.

So, let's talk about life in the Shanghai Public Concession.

Through the old movies and photos of the Republic of China, as well as the life essays written by some literati of that era, we can know that the Shanghai Concession at that time was a place where suits and leather shoes and robes and horse coats rubbed side by side, and the Quartet native language and European and American languages were mottled - there were rich children who spent a lot of money, female college students who wore puffy skirts to participate in masquerade balls, there were unprecedented group weddings, famous singers and their fan bases who were popular with half the sky, and there were models and women who posed seductively to shoot pajama advertisements. There are special reports and lectures by experts and scholars, there is a bustling stock exchange market, the newsstand on the street is full of foreign-language magazines with beautiful covers, and the movie theater has trendy blockbusters delivered from Hollywood airmail...... In short, from the outside, this seems to be a modern era that is not much different from today's world.

Many people who pursue petty bourgeois sentiment, from the articles of Lin Huiyin, Zhang Ailing, Yu Dafu and others, imagine a romantic era with diverse social values and the freedom and liberation of human nature, and believe that this is the real petty bourgeois style.

However, after all, we human beings cannot live only on romance and emotion. At that time, the petty bourgeois literati in the concession were actually no less stressed than the white-collar workers in today's society, and their living standards were far worse than now.

For example, Shen Congwen once wrote in a novel about a petty bourgeois couple in the Republic of China era, a male graduated from the University of Political Science and Law and worked as a small clerk in an agency in Shanghai; The female graduated from Beijing Women's Normal University, worked as a full-time housewife, and gave birth to 4 children. In Shanghai at that time, the monthly salary of the average company employee was about 2O silver dollars, but this husband had a monthly salary of 6O yuan, so he must have been in a very oily unit.

However, due to the high prices in Shanghai, which are ten times higher than in Beijing, Rao is a man who is already very profitable, and the life of the petty bourgeois couple is still very difficult - because they cannot afford to rent an entire apartment, their family of six has to live in half an apartment, separated by a wooden plank, and the other half lives Shen Congwen, which is not even 2o square meters when spread out. And even such a half apartment, due to the better location, had to charge a monthly rent of 13 yuan (later increased to 2o yuan), and a monthly water and electricity bill of 1o oceans. With these two things alone, half of the monthly income has been gone, and the rest of the money is used for eating and buying Western milk powder for the children, which has been used up, and there is still no money left after eight years of marriage.

-- In the Shanghai Public Concession at that time, the average electricity per kilowatt-hour was charged. 3～o。 5 silver dollars, which is equivalent to 12 to 2o yuan today, is obviously much more expensive. Fortunately, there were no air conditioners, refrigerators, microwave ovens, and other power-hungry items at that time, so it should be okay just to listen to the radio with the lights on.

Therefore, the petty bourgeoisie of those years did not look out of the door as suits and leather shoes, gold wire glasses, and a piece of fluent foreign literature. Occasionally, I will attend some banquets, dance with Western women, and live a very fashionable life. But when I really go home, I'm afraid most of them still live in the pavilion, eating pickles and rice, and there are children's diapers hanging on their heads...... It's similar to the contemporary "snail dwelling" and "ant tribe". If you are poorer, you will have to go to Zhabei to live in a shantytown.

Of course, compared to the bankrupt landlords in the countryside of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who could not even afford to eat rice, had to eat dried sweet potatoes to survive, and had to worry about peasant riots, the "ant tribes" in Shanghai were already very happy -- although the petty bourgeois literati who could mix with professors were obviously happier.

But after all, not many people want to live such an embarrassing life forever, especially when they are still in a fancy world like Shanghai. Many Shanghai citizens with a little savings, just like us in modern times, have invested their savings in the stock exchange in an attempt to get rich overnight, but the result is often nothing to return to - the creed of capitalism is to defraud the gullible of their wealth and satisfy the desires of the greedy. Retail investors and small investors are always the targets of large investors and market makers in the stock market. The "rubber stock crisis" at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the stock bubble burst crisis in 1922 made all the shareholders in Shanghai suffer enough. The world economic crisis of 1929 caused the bodies of bankrupt shareholders to float all over the Huangpu River after committing suicide......

In addition to stocks, there was another profitable investment channel at that time, which was government bonds. From the Beiyang government to the Nationalist government, as well as the warlords and marshals in various places, they are all willing to raise funds from public bonds in Shanghai, and they often sell them at a discount, that is, the bonds of 100 yuan are only sold for 70 or 80 yuan, but after maturity, they can return 120 yuan to you with interest, which seems to be very generous.

But don't forget, the focus of the government's work during the Republic of China was basically nothing but war or war, so these public bonds are not the construction bonds we buy today, but war bonds with extremely high risks. The Beiyang government itself collapsed and reorganized in three days in the midst of the war, and the prestige of the government was naturally greatly reduced. Investors who buy the bonds of the winning side will naturally make good returns, but if they accidentally buy the bonds of the defeated side, then they are doomed to become a pile of waste paper - everyone has already fallen into the wilderness, who should you go to pay for your bonds?

At that time, every time a round of warlord wars ended in China, a group of frustrated speculators in Shanghai were about to jump off the building -- of course, if they were time-travelers, they might have been able to make huge profits in the bond market by virtue of their foresight of history, and even earn the title of "god of investment".

Although most of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals in Shanghai are not doing well, those young ladies and young masters from large families still have the conditions to enjoy the world of flowers. It is also common for some prodigal children with solid backgrounds to spend thousands of dollars in order to make a name for themselves in the theater. And in Shanghai's nightclubs, there are always beauties from all over the world, especially the Russian Yanma -- in the twenties after the founding of the Soviet Union, it is said that millions of "White Russians" fled the country and engaged in some unacceptable activities all over the world. Just like the nineties after the collapse of the USSR.

Therefore, compared with the miserable rich people in the Middle Ages who could not live a good life even if they were rich, the Chinese tycoons who hid in the concessions during the Republic of China were still able to live more or less chicly. The only trouble is...... Where does the money come from?

During the period of the Beiyang government, although the civil war in the north continued, the economies of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai were still prosperous, and the life of entrepreneurs was still nourishing. However, after the thirties, although the so-called "golden decade" was nominally entered, due to the large-scale dumping of foreign goods, the sharp contraction of overseas markets in the Great Depression, and the absence of protective tariffs, the factories in Shanghai went bankrupt one after another, and the investment industry gradually became unprofitable.

And it was not easy to do business, because the so-called Republic of China at that time was actually more like a big platter. Chairman Chiang's authority was acceptable in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but it would be discounted in Jingxiang, while Sichuan and Chongqing had almost become independent kingdoms, and cards were set up everywhere along the river to collect money, and the tax rate was generally as high as 2o% or even 4o%. There are also those thieves and thieves who run rampant in the ditches and ditches, and the gangsters who mingle in the dock market, which will make the middle businessmen bankrupt in the blink of an eye.

At a time when the outlook for industry and commerce was bleak, the capitalists did not invest in the same way as they do today, either investing in real estate or engaging in financial speculation, and then creating a bigger and bigger bubble...... Many warlord marshals who originally looted a lot of people's fat and ointment, and planned to enjoy their old age in the Shanghai Concession, were deceived by black-hearted agents because they were dizzy to invest in finance, and as a result, they lost all their money and lost their money, and almost became vagabonds.

So, if China's billionaires wanted to keep their fortunes in those turbulent times, the best thing to do was to invest overseas and find a way to convert their money into American stocks and bonds...... As for investment in other countries and regions, it was bound to be steamed during World War II.

In addition, it is also necessary to be careful that the security in Shanghai at that time was extremely chaotic, basically like the Hong Kong and Taiwan underworld movies, or even more terrifying. Gangsters fight gunfights at night, and foreigners show off their might during the day. The patrol in the concession is also very arrogant, and it is not taken seriously to kill a few people at random.

Due to the social unrest and the proliferation of gun control at that time, many banks, hotels, dance halls and wealthy villas in Shanghai were guarded by armed guards, and they had to be searched when entering and leaving, and even students went to school with guns, similar to Kabul in modern Afghanistan or Baghdad in Iraq.

At that time, the wealthy people of old Shanghai often traveled to party with three steps, one post, five steps and one sentry, which was not a showmanship, but a lesson learned from countless bloody kidnappings, assassinations and bombings.

As for the police and patrols on the streets, they only serve as a deterrent in theory, and they are very good at making excuses to extort money or something, and they often run faster than you when they encounter gunfire in the streets - responsible detectives are always only a handful......

As for the public security situation in Shanghai at that time, we can give an example here: In the early thirties of the 20 th century, the Los Angeles Police Department, which was famous in American public opinion for "being able to torture raccoons to the point of admitting that they were rabbits" and had always used violent methods, once selected a team of "elite soldiers" who had suppressed strikes and demonstrations and quelled black riots, and went across the ocean to the Ministry of Industry Bureau in the Shanghai Public Concession to conduct an internship and inspection, so as to be ready to show off the prestige of the American cowboy...... As a result, after only two months, these self-proclaimed elite Los Angeles police officers fled back in tears.

-- According to their descriptions, Shanghai Tang in those years was simply a chaotic and disorderly battlefield, not only the fierce battles between the major gangs and drug dealers for three days, but also the "quasi-war" confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the Japanese agents...... Fortunately, China should not have had an RPG bazooka at that time......

In short, it is very exciting to watch all kinds of explosive crime shootout movies in the cinema, but if we really live in the world of Hong Kong and Taiwan underworld movies, suffering in the rain of bullets and swords every day, the vast majority of ordinary people are afraid to have a nervous breakdown.

However, even so, the old Shanghai Shili Yangchang in the Republic of China era was already one of the most suitable places for the common people to survive in China at that time, attracting bankrupt peasants and fugitive soldiers from all over the country...... It can be seen from this that the social order of old China has become so sad.