Tuesday 26 May 2009
Shanghai in bid to shake off its negative image
After decades of putting up with criticism and ridicule from other parts of the mainland, the largest city has spoken out against its detractors. A survey sponsored by the local government and conducted by one of its affiliated think-tanks lashes out at the stereotyping of Shanghainese as stingy, arrogant and henpecked.
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Shanghai in bid to shake off its negative image
Martin Zhou
25 May 2009
Shanghai has decided it has too much pride to put up with all this prejudice.
After decades of putting up with criticism and ridicule from other parts of the mainland, the largest city has spoken out against its detractors. A survey sponsored by the local government and conducted by one of its affiliated think-tanks lashes out at the stereotyping of Shanghainese as stingy, arrogant and henpecked.
“I am proud that the survey might help dispel some long-held myths about Shanghainese,” said the study’s main author, Zhang Jiehai , a native of Anhui who has worked in Shanghai for years.
If the city is to become an international financial centre, it must first clear up its image at home. But the results of the survey, published last Monday by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, have not quite had the desired effect. A sarcastic nationwide backlash simply means the debate refuses to go away.
Perhaps the most eye-catching conclusion Professor Zhang and his colleagues reached was that Shanghai husbands were not more obedient to their wives than those from other parts of the mainland.
The study cited anecdotal evidence provided by two surveys in 2003 and last year that found husbands from other parts of China were more willing to wash their wives’ underwear.
The research also concluded that Shanghai couples tended to make joint decisions over major family purchases, in a similar manner as other mainlanders, although it conceded that only 20 per cent of Shanghai families’ daily expenditure was controlled by the husbands - roughly half the national average.
As for the stereotype that Shanghainese were obsessed with money, the survey indicated that other mainlanders paid more attention to wealth and finances.
“Shanghai is changing for the better, but all these stereotypes have been reinforced by the media, theatre and cinema,” said Professor Zhang. Even so, it appears that the long-standing image of Shanghai residents as a bunch of self-important, narrow-minded sissies dies hard.
“They may be more polite on the surface, but the discrimination against non-Shanghainese runs deep, and it’s something that leaks out every once in a while,” said Chang Ling , an information technology engineer who has studied and worked in Shanghai for the past decade. “But at least I don’t see people deliberately speaking the Shanghai dialect in a show-off manner.”
Speaking the dialect to test where strangers are from was one of the notorious scenarios illustrating local chauvinism. The offence has done enduring damage.
So now that the survey allows Shanghai to feel better about itself, what do other Chinese think?
“The study was self-comforting at best ... in fact, it was masturbation,” the Beijing Evening Post said.
Its satirical tone was echoed throughout Chinese-language cyberspace, where some less-emotional commentators pointed to the survey’s lack of statistical integrity.
The authors claimed the paper was based on surveys of 300 people in 2003 and 380 last year, and all the respondents had a higher education and were aged between 25 and 45.
“Would a sample as limited as that convince any reasonable minds? Obviously not,” wrote one post on Sohu.com.
Yu Hai , a professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, tried to put the study in perspective.
“I think the declaration and the discussion it has stoked in town speaks for a growing local patriotism,” Professor Yu said. “Shanghai used to be unquestionably the No. 1 city in China before 1949, and then it lost 40-odd years to isolation, political radicalism and, later, hesitancy in reform until Beijing granted the opening up of Pudong in 1992.
“It was understandable that during the years of frustrating isolation, Shanghai became narrow-minded and obsessed with past colonial glories, which gave ground to the stereotyping. But now it’s equally natural for Shanghai to regain its pride.”
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