Shanghai Gone

Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity in recent decades, but that transformation has come at a grave human cost. This compelling book is the first to apply the concept of domicide—the eradication of home against the will of its dwellers—to the destruction of neighborhoods, families, and life patterns and the first to study grassroots resistance to domicide in China. Qin Shao follows, among others, a reticent kindergarten teacher turned diehard petitioner; a descendant of gangsters and squatters who has become an amateur lawyer for evictees; and a Chinese Muslim who has struggled to recover his ancestral home in Xintiandi, an infamous site of gentrification. Shao vividly depicts the relentless pursuit of growth and profit by corrupt power and money, the personal wreckage it has left behind, and the enduring human spirit it has unleashed.