Hotel And Shanghai City Life (1843-1949)

This thesis tries to break through the view of food culture,study the restaurant against the background of the development of Shanghai,and explore how it has reflected the development of Shanghai society,the spread of the city space,the section of city function,and the change of city life.It studies the restaurant,focusing on reviewing Shanghai society through the restaurant.It makes analysis of the food in the restaurant,and further examines the social space of the restaurant.It finds out the particularity of Shanghai,and is supposed to explore the city development in China from the relationship between restaurant and Shanghai city,and the relationship between food and the city development.The restaurants in this paper include small restaurants for the general public, caiguan and jiulou where the middle and upper class dine,as well as the Western-style restaurants,corresponding to the "restaurant" in English.As for the hotel introduced into Shanghai in modern times,this paper also takes its food into consideration,but doesn't lay a strong emphasis on it.The time involved in the paper is from 1843 to 1949.The former studies are mostly focused on the food,or just limited themselves within the introduction of restaurants,exploring the rises and falls of various Chinese cuisines,and analyzing the relationship between food and Shanghai society.As for the Western-style food,many articles and books have been contributed to describing its introduction,prevalence,and anecdotes.Depictions of certain famous Western-style restaurants are in numbers.Researchers have also been guided toward the transformation of society structure under the influence of restaurants,the change of food customs,and the introduction of sanitation system.Someone study restaurants from the point of city space,thinks that the restaurant offers a place for communication,social-relation developing,group gathering,social community defining,arbitrage,negotiation,boasting,entertainment,and releasing life pressure. Based on these studies above,the thesis tries to explore the development of Chinese restaurant,analyzes the relationship between the distribution of restaurants and the change of city space.It studies many functions of the restaurant and the evolvement of its function.It points out that the restaurant reflected the change of Shanghai city life.The available literature comes from archives,newspaper,magazines,guidebooks, directories of enterprise,diaries,novels,ect.Modern Shanghai gathered various Chinese cuisines.This paper studies these restaurants from time and space.In the diachronic view,it explores the historical progress of the Chinese restaurant flourishing in the development of city economy, and point out that it had been affected by the war,and the diversity of food was drawn from the dense population.In the view of space,this paper analyzes the distribution of Chinese restaurant that was enlarged with the city expansion,from county to the foreign concession,from south to north,from east to west,but the restaurants constantly assembled in the main commercial centers.This paper studies the development of all the regional restaurants,exploring the underlying causes of its prosperity and decline.The Western-style food is introduced into Shanghai as foreign food when the city became a treaty port in 1843.In the beginning Chinese people went and ate occasionally,and subsequently the young people and rich merchants liked to eat with belles or their wives.By the end of the 19^th century,it had been accepted by Shanghai as the food fashion.After the Repbulic of China(1912-1949),the Western-style food became much more popular,when office employee took it as daily food.After the 1930s,a lot of Russian emigrants came to Shanghai.They lived in Avenue Joffre and ran inexpensive Russian restaurants.The Western-style food became more common. The popularity of the Western-style food should be contributed mainly to its adaption into Chinese society.Besides,its cleanliness and the simple manner were also important reasons.At first,the Western-style food restaurants opened around Yang King Pang where Chinese used to trade with foreigners.Later,there is no place like Foochow Road that gathered so many Western-style food restaurants ran by Chinese. The hotels ran by foreign people also provided Western-style food.These hotels stood alongside Huangpu River.Russian Western-style restaurants are mostly seated in Avenue Joffre where Russian dwelled.But there is almost no Western-style restaurants in county.In a word,Western-style restaurants ran by Chinese assembled in the main shopping centres of foreign concessions.Western-style food restaurants ran by foreign people assembled the place where foreign trade prospered and foreign people resided.The Western-style food is adapted into Chinese life.Chinese cuisine began to see the separate dining and attached importance to the nutrition of food.The Western-style restaurants ran by Chinese adopted the Western facility,while reserved Chinese drinking habitude.All these phenomena reflect the interaction and reciprocal influences between Chinese culture and Western culture.As a social space,the restaurant has many functions in Shanghai city life.As a food and drink space,it offers daily diet for people who have to eat outside.As a society activity space,it offers room to feast,drink,recite poem,negotiate,and make friends.As a entertainment space,its programs change with times,from inviting prostitutes to wait on when people drink,to offer the singing of the swan,band accompaniment,farce,and magic.The restaurant is a window which shows the change of social fashion,the shift of identity,distribution of the population,the change of women's status,and the polarization of the classes.To sum up,restaurant is a window,through which we can understand Shanghai society.We can know the diet life of Shanghai citizen,the economical development of the city,the enlargement of city space,and the change of city life.