by David Hsieh
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| Tai Wei Foo and Robert Lepage in The Blue Dragon. Photo: Louise Leblanc |
Robert Lepage directs and acts in The Blue Dragon; his character Pierre is
a Canadian expat living in present-day Shanghai. In The Edge of Heaven, Gary Lucas reinterprets Chinese pop songs
created in 1930s Shanghai. Both shows filter this major Eastern metropolis
through Western eyes—befitting, as the history of Shanghai is closely
intertwined with the Western presence in China.
Situated at the mouth of the Yangtze
River in the middle of China’s coastline, Shanghai’s strength lies in its ocean-facing
harbor. But China didn’t have much use of it before the 18th century
since the major north-south shipping route was the Great Canal linking the
Yellow and Yangtze rivers inland. And except for some isolated periods, China
was not a sea-faring empire.
That changed in 1842 with the Treaty of
Nanjing, after the British “fire-spewing ships” streamed up the Yangtze River
and forced China to open five ports for trading, including Shanghai. Although
not a sleepy fishing village like Hong Kong, which China ceded in the same
treaty, Shanghai, by Chinese standards, was not a major city (its official
status was a level below) nor a historical one. It had a population of about
200,000. The city wall, built 300 years earlier, measured only three miles in
circumference. The landscape was as flat as a piece of cardboard and prone to flooding.
But acting on the advice of William Jardine, a ship physician turned opium
merchant turned parliament member, London decided this would be the base for
its future operation in China. Modern Shanghai was born.
