Chapter Eight
The Native Place and the State
Nationalism, State Building and Public Maneuvering

Viewing the disarray of the polity in the warlord period, two great architects of the modern Chinese state, Sun Yat-sen and the young Mao Zedong, contemplated the task of nation building. As activists, not merely visionaries, they each sought building blocks in the social realities which surrounded them, through which to begin the construction of the new national unity they imagined. In a 1919 essay written a few months after the May Fourth Movement, Mao expressed great optimism in regard to the Chinese people's capacity for organizing and argued for the creation of a "great union of the popular masses" (minzhong de da lianhe ), an overarching national union of the Chinese people.^[1] The great union was to be built from what Mao referred to as "small popular unions" (minzhong de xiao lianhe ). In response to his rhetorical question as to whether Chinese people had the motivation to build a "great union," Mao celebrated the political associations which had developed since the last years of the Qing and the formation of provincial assemblies, educational associations and chambers of commerce. Mao then noted three types of voluntary associations which could provide a basis for popular mobilization, worker unions, student

[1] Mao Zedong, "Minzhong de da lianhe" (Great union of the popular masses), in Mao Zedong ji (Collected works of Mao) (Tokyo, 1974), 57-69 (originally published in serial format in Xiangjiang pinglun [Xiang River Review], July 21, July 28 and August 4, 1919). Smart Schram translated this essay into English; my own translations are not always identical to his. See Schram, trans., Mao Zedong, "Minzhong de da lianhe" (Great alliance of the masses), China Quarterly 49 (January-March 1972):76-87. I am grateful to David Strand for calling my attention to Mao's early essay.

and educational associations of various sorts, in China and abroad, and tongxianghui, all of these associations made possible by "the recent opening up of government and of thinking" in the Republican period. Based on his observations in the May Fourth movement, Mao argued that political disorder and foreign oppression had begun to motivate such "small unions" to combine into "large unions." Among the several examples Mao provides of "large unions" were two sojourner associations in Shanghai, the Hunan Reconstruction Association (Hunan shanhou xiehui ) and the Shandong Association (Shandong xiehui ). He also noted a commercial federation of fifty-three groups in Shanghai, formed in that year. Mao based the "how-to" portion of his essay not on the western theorists he mentions in passing as possible sources of inspiration (whose works would not have led him to include native-place associations in his own theorizing) but on his personal observations of Chinese realities. As a result, student associations and (among native-place associations) Hunanese figure prominently in his essay.^[2]

When Sun Yat-sen conceived the task of uniting China as a national community in his "Three People's Principles" lectures of 1924, he constructed a similar model for building what he referred to as "a large united body" (da tuanti ). While lamenting that foreigners laughed at Chinese for being "no more than a sheet of loose sand" in regard to national consciousness, Sun stressed that Chinese society did provide other kinds of useful loyalties, family and native-place loyalties, which might be extended to the nation: "If we are to recover our lost nationalism, we need to have unified groups, a very large united body. An easy and effective way to create a large united body is to build on the foundation of small united groups, and the small units we can build upon in China are lineage groups and native-place groups. The native-place sentiment of the Chinese is very deep-rooted; it is especially easy to unite people from the same province, prefecture or village."^[3]

That Mao and Sun recognized the strengths of native-place communities and imagined their integration into a larger national unity is not surprising—their writing was based on their observations of Chinese society and their pragmatism. Although their visions were compelling, their rhetoric was not particularly original—as we have seen from the

[2] Mao, 62-68. Other "large unions" provided as examples by Mao were the national federations of education associations, chambers of commerce, the seventy-two Guangzhou guilds, the fifty-three Shanghai associations and student federations in large cities.

[3] Sun Yat-sen, Sanmin zhuyi (The three principles of the people) (Shanghai, 1927), p. 77.

language of native-place associations involved in nationalist mobilization in the first years of the century. Their words were persuasive precisely because they embraced familiar Chinese social realities and because they repeated ideas of nation building based on popular notions, which constructed the idea of the nation by conceiving local social units as building blocks for broader coalitions.

This chapter begins by examining the role of native-place associations in the May Fourth Movement, as a means of demonstrating that Mao's and Sun's visions of broader nationalist coalitions based—in significant part—on native-place associations were not fanciful. Nonetheless, as the history of the May Fourth moment and its passing make dear, native-place associations united only in a piecemeal and ephemeral fashion and did not (given the loyalties that separated them and the tensions within the communities they encompassed) unite in an enduring fashion to create a new national "popular union." The last part of this chapter contrasts the political possibilities of native-place associations in the May Fourth moment—a period of feeble central government—with their situation during the Nanjing decade, under a reconstituted and considerably more powerful state.

New Culture, Old Habits: Native-Place Organization and the May Fourth Movement

Studies of the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai have not stressed native-place organization. It would be surprising if they did, because the period is celebrated for its themes of iconoclasm, enlightenment, nationalism and modernity, themes that are understood to constitute a rupture with old, "particularistic" social ties. The nationalism of the May Fourth Movement and the self-proclaimed cultural radicalism of the associated New Culture Movement have led sympathetic historians to seek out expressions of new cultural and political forms and to relegate cultural continuities to the status of remnants. In the process we have lost track of some of the social networks and organizations which underlay and facilitated the movement.^[4]

[4] This section appeared originally in slightly different form in Bryna Goodman, "New Culture, Old Habits: Native-Place Organization and the May Fourth Movement," in Wakeman and Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners , 76-107. For a critique of May Fourth historiography along these lines, see Arif Dirlik, "Ideology and Organization in the May Fourth Movement: Some Problems in the Intellectual Historiography of the May Fourth Period," Republican China 12 (November 1986):5.

Although May Fourth historiography has not stressed the role played by native-place associations in providing organizational forms for the patriotic activities of students, businessmen and workers, some notice of several of the most influential of such organizations—the Ningbo, Shandong, and Guang-Zhao huiguan , associations of Zhejiang and Shandong students and seamen's associations of Ningbo and Guangdong, for instance—has been unavoidable.^[5] Moreover, the persistence and adaptability of native-place ties throughout this period and extending into the 1920s have been a focus in other contexts—in studies of the Shanghai bourgeoisie by Marie-Claire Bergère and Susan Mann and, more recently, in Elizabeth Perry's study of Shanghai workers.^[6] Nonetheless, neither the full role of native-place organizations nor the way in which these "traditionalistic" organizations changed over this period has been recognized.

Native-place organization underlay many of the social coalitions that staged the Shanghai student, commercial and worker strikes following the news of the May Fourth arrests of students in Beijing. Moreover, they formed the component elements of the more celebrated, more "modern" organizations of the period—those overarching organizations formed along occupational lines, such as the Shanghai Student Union (Shanghai xuesheng lianhehui ), the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and the more politically activist Shanghai Federation of Commercial Groups (Shanghai shangye gongtuan lianhehui ).

Merchant mobilization preceded the surge of student activism in Shanghai and sustained the political mobilization that followed the news of the arrests of students in Beijing. Merchant-led native-place associations organized for patriotic political activity early in 1919.^[7] On February 6, 1919, seven associations jointly signed a telegram asking the Beijing government to resist Japanese demands and preserve China's sovereignty in the Paris conference. Four of the seven were the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo and the Zhejiang, Ningbo and Shaoxing tongxianghui.^[8] Concern over the disruption of the North-South peace negotiations in

[5] See, for instance, Joseph Chen, The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai (Leiden, 1971).

[6] Bergère, Golden Age , 148-59; Jones, "The Ningbo Pang "; Perry, Shanghai on Strike .

[7] Chen, May Fourth Movement , 194—95.

[8] The other three associations were the Foreign-Goods Trade Association, the Export Trade Association, and the World Peace Federation (WYZS, 144-45).

Shanghai prompted the formation of the Shanghai Federation of Commercial Groups (Shanghai shangye gongtuan lianhehui ) on March 3, 1919, in the Ningbo Tongxianghui building.^[9] The federation of fifty-three organizations which Mao would soon point to as an example of a "large union" was composed primarily of native-place associations and trade associations. The native-place associations involved were:

Ningbo Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Guang-Zhao Gongsuo

Chao-Hui Huiguan

Zhaoqing Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Danyang Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jianghuai Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Wenzhou Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jiaying Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Guangdong Sojourners' Commercial Association

Dapu Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Sichuan Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jiangning Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jiangsu Pottery Trade Association

Shaoxing Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Zhejiang Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Pinghu Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jie-Pu-Feng Huiguan

Hubei Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Jiangxi Lü Hu Tongxianghui

[9] At the rime, two separate governments, the Beijing government and the Guangzhou Military Government, both claimed legitimacy in China and were engaged in a north-south civil war. The purpose of the federation (comprising fifty-three groups) was to exert pressure to end the civil war, resume peace talks and bring a return of political stability needed to foster business.

This group was active throughout April, agitating both for peace within China and for a favorable resolution of the Qingdao question internationally.^[10]

On May 6, the first day of activity after news of the May 4 events reached Shanghai, the Shandong tongxianghui sent a telegram to the Beijing government protesting the failure to protect Qingdao. The Federation of Commercial Groups urged businesses to participate in an urgent upcoming "Citizens' Meeting" (Guomin dahui ) called to discuss the situation. On May 7 and 8 the Federation sent telegrams to the president, the cabinet, and the Ministry of Education in Beijing pressing for release of the students to calm the angered public. The Federation also urged the Chinese delegates at the Versailles conference to refuse to sign the treaty. Finally, the Federation served as a watchdog organization for the more reluctant Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, admonishing it for its less radical stance.^[11]

After meetings held by educators at Fudan University on May 6, and a preparatory meeting at the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, a "Citizens' Meeting" was held on May 7 to protest the loss of Qingdao, the arrests of the students in Beijing, and the actions of the "traitorous" officials. This gathering brought together fifty-seven associations, including representatives of twenty-four schools (several of which, like the Shaoxing Sojourners' School, were sponsored by native-place associations) and eleven native-place associations. These included a number of associations not included in the Shanghai Federation of Commercial Groups, among them:

Henan Tongxianghui

Jiangbei Sojourners' Preservation Society

Anhui Consultative Committee

Sichuan Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Shandong Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Fujian Reconstruction Committee

Hunan Affairs Preservation Society

[10] WYZS, 648-54. At the Paris Peace Conference the powers decided on April 30 to accept Japan's demands for the transfer of all previously German interests in Shandong and to reject China's position. Knowledge of this decision touched off the Beijing University student protests on May 4.

[11] WYZS, 158, 171-73, 233.

Quan Zhe (All-Zhejiang) Lü Hu Tongxianghui

Hubei Reconstruction Committee

Shaoxing International Improvement Society

On May 9 merchants began to boycott Japanese goods. Newspapers announced the closings of numerous schools and businesses, to observe the fourth anniversary of China's acquiescence to Japan's Twenty-One Demands. Prominent among the private schools which closed were those of Guangdong, Ningbo and Huzhou sojourners in Shanghai. All of this activity occurred prior to the formal establishment of the Shanghai Student Union on May 11.^[12]

In the next week, workers and artisans, organized by trade and native place, joined in the protest. One such group, the association of local Shanghai and sojourning Shaoxing construction workers (Hu-Shao shuimuye gongsuo ) printed several notices in the Shenbao . In language both traditionally deferential and also borrowing terms from a more modern political vocabulary, the workers expressed their concern, outrage and determination to act: "All those with blood and breath are profoundly affected. We who belong to worker circles [jie ] are also a sector of the citizenry. Witnessing the tragedies of national subjugation, past and present, is like being flayed. Accordingly, in conscience we advocate following the manner of the gentlemen of each jie who prepare meetings, and ourselves suggest a means of resistance. All of those in our trade belong to worker circles, but we should not, because of that, speak only of labor."^[13] The workers announced that they would no longer use Japanese wood, metal, glass and cement. Declaring that, "for the purpose of saving the nation from extinction," all of the workers must obey the boycott and "exhibit the determination of citizens," the workers also enjoined their foremen and the owners of the enterprises which employed them to obey. In a notice printed in the Shenbao on May 17, the workers addressed the directors of their trade as follows:

In the importing of Japanese goods you could say our trade is at the top of the list . . . all of our people are united . . . and from this day on will not use Japanese goods. If you meet with foreign-organized engineering projects which have already arranged the purchase of Japanese goods, you must find a way not to use them. . .. If it is a Chinese project which has arranged to use Japanese materials, the materials should be immediately replaced

[12] WYZS, 181-83, 186-88, 192, 195-96.

[13] WYZS, 212.

with Chinese materials . . . and the proprietor of the enterprise should compensate [the relevant parties]. If the proprietor does not consent, there is only one suitable approach—we will stop work. Although there are many fools and dimwits among our workers, our blood is warm and honest. We will do our utmost hoping to protect our nation's territory.^[14]

During these weeks of agitation, tongxianghui throughout the city called meetings to discuss the political situation and to send telegrams to the authorities in Beijing and in their native provinces. Networks of fellow-provincials served as conduits for the transmission of information. The telegrams of these groups to their fellow-provincials in Beijing and to the authorities of their native provinces fill the pages of the Shenbao , both as paid advertisements and as news items. Jiangsu fellow-provincials sojourning in other provinces similarly sent telegrams to the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce to exert pressure and exhort the Chamber to defend China's national sovereignty. Native-place associations repeatedly printed declarations of their unity and resolve to boycott Japanese goods, urging all Chinese (in their own respective groups) to do the same.^[15]

Shanghai students declared a strike on May 26 and began to encourage merchants and industrialists to maintain their boycott. When news arrived of the June 2 arrests of students in Beijing, the students began to exert pressure for a general strike. The strike was already under way when merchants announced their solidarity with the movement in a meeting on June 5 which included students, educational leaders, leaders of native-place and trade associations and journalists. In this meeting the merchant leaders of native-place associations spoke out in support of and to coordinate actions already taken by their constituencies. Among the impassioned speakers identified as belonging to "merchant circles" was Cao Muguan, school principal and also a delegate of the Shaoxing Tongxianghui. Cao announced that Shaoxing merchants had met and resolved to strike in unity, demanding the punishment of the traitorous officials, the recovery of citizens' rights, and the release of the students. Cao was followed by Guang-Zhao Gongsuo delegate Zhou Xisan, who expressed similar resolutions. These were echoed by the Jiangning Huiguan representative as well as by Chen Liangyu, who represented both the Ningbo Tongxianghui and the Tobacco and Wine

[14] WYZS, 226-27.

[15] SB, May 1919.

Federation.^[16] At a second meeting, of "student, commercial, industrial, and newspaper circles" held at the General Chamber on June 7, participants resolved to maintain the strike until the "national traitors" Cao Rulin, Lu Zongyu and Zhang Zongxiang had been punished and dismissed. Among the merchants, the three bang of Shandong, Ningbo and Guangdong were reportedly the most determined.^[17]

Native-place networks were vital links in the extraordinary merging of student, business and worker concerns and in the formation of the "united front" that characterized this period of the movement. In the organization of strike activity, native-place associations performed a number of critical tasks, disseminating information, organizing political activity and maintaining order. On the day of the strike announcement, the Ningbo Tongxianghui met and published a manifesto attesting to the fervent patriotism of Ningbo fellow-provincials and urging unified Ningbo action.^[18] The manifesto also stressed the need to maintain order, resolve disputes, and to refrain from incidents involving foreigners. The Siming Gongsuo sent the following telegram to the Beijing government, expressing concern for public order: "Shanghai's commercial, student and worker circles indignantly rise in fervor and strike. People's hearts beat wildly; danger extreme. If situation not immediately resolved, fear social structure will collapse. Humbly ask release students in prison. Dismiss three officials to ease people's indignation and stabilize situation. Presented on behalf of Shanghai Siming Gongsuo's full body of 400,000 people."^[19]

The huiguan also disseminated public notices calling for order in its sojourner community: "Urgent Announcement of the Shanghai Siming Gongsuo: Compatriots, you have patriotically stopped work. In your actions be civilized. Shanghai's population is great and order is critical. If we can be organized and unified we can show our spirit more strongly. On no account assemble in the streets. On no account take part in demonstrations. If you encounter foreigners be calm. Maintain mutual respect and they will respect us. We pray everyone will pay attention and be careful."^[20] The Guang-Zhao Gongsuo similarly sent telegrams to the Beijing government exhorting the officials to listen to public opinion. On June 7 the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo published an appeal

[16] WYZS, 300-5. Chen was also a director of the Siming Gongsuo.

[17] WYZS, 324-25.

[18] SB, June 6, 1919.

[19] SGY, June 1919.

[20] SGY, June 1919.

to fellow-provincials to maintain public order and avoid fights with foreigners.^[21]

As in the boycott of 1905, native-place organizations—more than the new Chambers of Commerce—spread the merchant strike to other areas and enforced the boycott in Shanghai. The Ningbo Chamber of Commerce joined the strike after it received a telegram from the Shanghai Ningbo Tongxianghui. Once the Ningbo strike went into effect, the Ningbo Chamber and the Ningbo labor union, in addition to a variety of other Ningbo associations, kept in close contact with the Shanghai Ningbo Tongxianghui, requesting news and direction. Huiguan and tongxianghui investigated individuals suspected of business with Japanese and held public meetings to proclaim individuals guilty of traitorous behavior and barred from the native-place community. One such offender, Lu Zongyu, was denounced by the Lü Hu Haichang (Haining) Gongsuo, which published announcements that Lu would no longer be recognized as a Haining tongxiang .^[22]

Communication between the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and Shanghai businesses went through the intermediary of native-place associations.^[23] Although the Chamber did appeal to these organizations, it was unable to exert its will upon them. When, after a secret meeting with the Chinese authorities, the Chamber urged tongxiangbui on June 10 to counsel their communities to stop the strike, it was rebuffed. Guangdong, Ningbo and Shandong shopkeepers met with their native-place groups and repudiated the Chambers action. Ningbo Tongxianghui directors printed a notice in the Shenbao stating that they had rejected the Chambers appeal, stressing that Ningbo merchants would not resume business. Shandong merchants published a similar notice.^[24]

When the Beijing government finally responded to the strike demands and dismissed the "national traitors," powerful native-place asso-

[21] SB, June 7, 1919.

[22] For example, see SB, June 9, 1919; SB, June 10, 1919; SB, June 12, 1919; SB, June 14, 1919; WYZS, 391.

[23] Many Chamber of Commerce leaders were also directors of their native-place associations. Yu Xiaqing at the time was a director of the Chamber, a Siming Gongsuo director, and a leader of the Shanghai Federation of Commercial Groups. When tension developed between the conservative Chamber and the radical Federation, Yu responded by ceremonially resigning from all three roles. He did not resign, however, as director of the Ningbo Tongxianghui. See SB, June 15, 1919.

[24] A heated meeting of the Commercial Federation was called in response to the action of the Chamber and held at the Shaoxing Tongxianghui. See WYZS, 389-91; SB, June 10, 1919; SB, June 11, 1919.

ciations announced the decision to end the strike. The Ningbo Tongxianghui exhorted Ningbo people to return to work but to use only Chinese products. It also sent a telegram to Ningbo residents in Hankou advising them to return to work, saying, "the Ningbo market in Shanghai has reopened" (Hu Yongshi kai ).^[25] These instances suggest that native-place bang , rather than the Chamber or the Commercial Federation or any other overarching organization were crucial in determining the opening and closing of businesses. This was particularly evident in cities in which the general strike was partial. In Hankou, for instance, the businesses of sojourning Guangdong and Ningbo merchants closed, initiating the strike, but many other shops remained open.^[26]

Native-place associations exerted themselves on behalf of arrested tongxiang . The Shanghai Sojourning Anhui Consultative Committee expressed concern over the arrest of Chen Duxiu and contacted the Beijing Anhui huiguan to help secure his release. The Shanghai Fujian Reconstruction Committee worked for the release of arrested Fujianese students.^[27]

In the activities of native-place associations in the May Fourth period, we see the articulation of "modern" values and practices that have been attributed, in their origins, to May Fourth student activism. These included the organization of workers for educational and patriotic purposes. For example, at the end of April or during the first days of May, the Jiangbei Sojourners' Preservation Society (Jiangbei lü Flu weichihui ) established a lecture hall in Zhabei, "to organize Jiangbei manual and commercial workers to attend educational classes in their leisure time." Lectures were designed to enlighten and improve the morality of the many "unlearned country bumpkins" in the Jiangbei (Subei) community, as well as to encourage patriotism, lawfulness and sanitation.^[28] If such activities expressed an old-fashioned paternalism, both the mechanism (organized classes for workers) and the content (patriotism and sanitation) were new.

It is also critical to note the strategic uses of traditional practices in the organization of modern political activity. Though less important in this period than in the late nineteenth century, huiguan still staged pop-

[25] The Chinese phrase is striking. The tongxianghui could have simply said that Shanghai business had resumed. Clearly, Ningbo people saw it as their market, simply located in Shanghai. See SB, June 13, 1919.

[26] SB, June 15, 1919.

[27] SB, June 16, 1919; SB, June 20, 1919; SB, June 21, 1919; SB, June 24, 1919.

[28] SB, May 5, 1919.

ular ritual events for the larger native-place community. Such events provided propaganda opportunities. Although most native-place associations held meetings to discuss the political situation and write telegrams, some, like the Jiangyin Huiguan, met political crises with religious ceremonies. Gathered together for a feast Jiangyin tongxiang prayed before the altar of Guandi to ask for his assistance and protection and for strength and unity to "wipe away China's shame" in a time of national danger. Other traditional practices could be put to similar uses. On the occasion of a yulanpen gathering in the summer of 1919 the Siming Gongsuo printed and distributed special notices urging the use of national products.^[29]

The events of 1919, which reveal not only the appearance of new groups but also their combination into larger federations, verify that—at least on a temporary basis—native-place associations could be integrated as constituent elements in overarching nationalist bodies. The rhetoric of native-place sentiment vigorously asserted the contribution of native-place associations to nationalism and bears examination.

The rhetoric of native-place associations throughout the Republican period spoke to the urgent need for existing social organizations (and native-place associations specifically) to form a foundation for nationalist mobilization. The Ningbo Tongxianghui (which organized lectures on the benefits of native-place organization and the promotion of national products) and other associations, like the Suzhou Tongxianghui, used slogans such as "In unity against the outside, love the native place, love the country" (yizhi duiwai aixiang aiguo ) and "Business and enterprises must unite in groups. The nation is but one big group [da tuanti ] encompassing and uniting many small groups [xiao tuanti ]. For the wealth and strength of the country, it is imperative to unite in groups."^[30]Tongxianghui throughout the Republican era presented themselves as instruments of nationalist mobilization:

There is not a day we do not suffer the incursions of economic imperialism. If we do not intensively organize and strengthen our spirit of unity, we will not avoid defeat and elimination. [We must] assemble many people with similar language and customs who can conform to and communicate with

[29] SB, June 11, 1919. This article, entitled, "Jiangyin Tongxiang Do Things in an Unusual Way," concludes with a combination of May Fourth secularism and pragmatism: "Although this type of activity borders on the superstitious, it may also be seen as a sincere expression of will." SGY, July 1919.

[30] SB, May 25, 1919; SB, May 26, 1919. The Suzhou Tongxianghui was formed in the midst of May Fourth agitation.

each other and together organize in a group to plan for public welfare. This provides a basis for struggles against the outside and also gives the struggle for internal reform something to rely on. It also helps to prevent oppression and insults. This is the essential idea behind tongxianghui .^[31]

and:

[In order to establish] nationalism it is necessary to have organizations. But seeking strong groups, we must first mutually and effectively unite. Our people's ability to organize is weak. But "love one's home, love one's native place" sentiment is very strong. For instance [this is expressed in] huiguan and tongxianghui . Using this as a base, it is possible for our people to go from the small to the great and from weakness to strength. Nationalism becomes gradually possible. Our Henan Tongxianghui serves people of all jie , represents a large population and moreover has a long history.^[32]

Such statements illuminate a paradox: universal identity (nationalism) depended on the further articulation of specific identity. Public spirit was to be developed by grouping people by native place, and the mobilization of the native-place group was to serve the nation. In this fashion native-place strength contributed to national strength.^[33] By means of synecdoche, in a fashion similar to that apparent in Jiangsu magazine much earlier, the native-place group stood for the national community. In the process, abstract ties were personalized and concretized through local relationships and community.

In any event, throughout the May Fourth period in Shanghai, division of the Shanghai populace into native-place groups proved no obstacle to jointly organized expressions of nationalism. Despite the increasing geographic subdivision of provincial native-place communities, different associations routinely combined and worked cooperatively. Many small groups (xiao tuanti ) were perceived as the organic constituents of the large group (da tuanti ), the nation.^[34] In the May Fourth

[31] Chaozhou lü Hu tongxianghui niankan (Annual of the Association of Chaozhou Sojourners in Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1934), Introduction.

[32] Henan lü Hu tongxianghui gongzuo baogao (Report on the work of the Association of Henan Sojourners in Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1936), 1-3.

[33] The practice of native-place organizations makes clear that native-place sentiment by itself was not sufficient for nationalism but that organization was critical, that people needed to be organized through membership in native place-associations which could mobilize and coordinate patriotic action.

[34] See SB, May 25, 1919; SB, May 26, 1919. Such slogans from the May Fourth period reechoed throughout the 1920s, 1930s and even into the 1940s. A special commemorative issue of a Jiangsu sojourners' publication explained tongxianghui as follows: "All these various bangpai divisions are organizational units for individuals, and each group forms a circle of life. The different circles knit together to form an extremely long interlocking mechanism" (Dongting dongshan lü Hu tongxianghui sanshizhou jinian tekan [Thirty-year commemorative issue of the Dongting Dongshan Tongxianghui] [Shanghai, 1944], Introduction).

Movement in Shanghai, native-place groups clearly acted as units for the organization, expression and dissemination of nationalist ideology. Without these groups, it is difficult to imagine how such effective social mobilization could have occurred.^[35]

At the same time, the social mobilization of the May Fourth movement reveals a changing institutional context. In regard to native-place associations, tongxianghui —constructed as "modern" Republican institutions—had emerged as important political actors, with agendas different from those of the older huiguan . The external institutional context was changing as well, in a manner which would affect the political role of these new native-place associations in Chinese society. Although in May 1919 native-place associations were vital political actors, their actions took place in the context of (and in interaction with) a plethora of new occupationally and functionally differentiated organizations—student, worker, commercial and political associations.

One such new organization was the Shanghai Federation of Street Unions (Shanghai ge malu shangjie lianhehui , or SFSU), formed in the immediate post-May Fourth period by a broader spectrum of shopkeepers and merchants than the elite Chamber of Commerce. The radical SFSU developed to protest an increased tax levy in the International Settlement. Using the slogan "no taxation without representation," activists used a tax strike to press (this time with ultimate success) for a Chinese Advisory Board to the Municipal Council. The formidable organizational apparatus of the Federation of Street Unions represented merchants from forty streets in the International Settlement (from as many as ten thousand shops), bringing together a newly politically mobilized middle bourgeoisie more forcefully and with better coordination

[35] In "The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa" (in The South and Sectional Conflict [Baton Rouge, 1968], 34-84), David Potter offers an important critique of the historiographical tendency to objectify nationalism as generically different from "traditional" forms of group loyalties. He argues, instead, that the emotional attachment or group loyalty of nationalism may be better understood as continuous with, strengthened by, even deriving from other loyalties (pp. 37-40, 55, 57). The history of native-place sentiment in Shanghai illustrates this, suggesting a continuum of concentric circles of native-place identities which permitted individuals to identify first with their counties, prefectures, provinces and so on, up to the unit of the nation. I am grateful to Lyman Van Slyke for calling my attention to Potter's work.

than was possible through either the more elite Chamber of Commerce or the disparate native-place associations.

One May Fourth activist who was involved in the tax strike and struggle for Chinese representation and who would become SFSU president in 1921 was an outspoken member of the sojourning Guangdong community. This was Tang Jiezhi, a U.S.-educated physician with interests in two Shanghai trading companies, who also edited the Shanghai Journal of Commerce (Shanghai shangbao ). In 1918, together with Wen Zongyao, Tang had engaged in a power struggle with more conservative elements of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo and had succeeded in reorienting the huiguan in a more politically radical direction. After this, Tang effectively combined use of his power base in the Guangdong community with his leadership of the SFSU in struggles with both the Municipal Council and the more politically conservative Chamber of Commerce. Tangs tactics suggest the continuing utility of native-place organization in this period, together with a characteristic tendency of activists to work through multiple organizational forms to achieve multiple points of leverage.^[36]

Nonetheless, in a very short period, the new associational forms—broadly based merchant associations like the Federation of Street Unions, labor organizations and political parties, would develop a dynamism and centrality in political life and social mobilization that would displace, though not eliminate, native-place associations. This had clearly begun by the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925. Although historical materials from the May Thirtieth Movement do feature huiguan and tongxianghui performing functions similar to those they performed in 1919, they appear less prominent and the traces of their activity are overshadowed by the activities of workers' unions and the Communist

[36] When the Municipal Council approved the Advisory Board, the SFSU was unable to promptly resolve the issue of how Chinese advisors would be selected. The Municipal Council turned to the Chamber of Commerce, which solicited major native-place and trade associations for nominees. When solicited, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo activists used the opportunity to rebuke Chamber involvement in the matter, arguing that the gongsuo represented only one sector of the urban population, whereas the Advisory Board should be selected by the full body of residents. (The Ningbo Tongxianghui responded in similar fashion.) Tang then used the gongsuo as a pressure group and, together with activists in the Ningbo Tongxianghui, pushed for the establishment of a Chinese Ratepayers' Association to counterbalance the power of the foreign Ratepayers' Association in the city. The new Chinese Ratepayers' Association then selected the Advisory Board, inaugurated in 1921. See GZGYB, June 6, 1920; GZGYB, September 19, 1920; PRO, FO 228.3291, 1921; Shanghai gonggong zujie shigao (Draft history of the International Settlement of Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1980), 539. See also Fewsmith, Party, State and Local Elites , 57-59.

party. The impression is that history has edged native-place associations at last onto the margins of the political stage.^[37]

This ultimately did not happen, at least not for long, because the conditions which fueled labor and party organization were cut short in 1927. Nonetheless, crucial in the nascent organizational trend toward occupationally and functionally differentiated civic associations—a trend which might have resulted in the fading of native-place associations if it had not been stunted by the formation of the Nanjing government in 1927—was the increasing political radicalization and mobilization of Shanghai workers. It is therefore important to conclude this discussion of May Fourth mobilization in Shanghai by considering class articulation within the native-place community.

Chapter 7 considered divisions within the native-place community according to jie , or circles of interest, occupation, age or class. The birth of tongxianghui , at least initially, involved the formation of new, more broadly based groups with more open structures of governance. Divisions by jie within the native-place community reflect a certain consciousness of the need to organize according to one's interests rather than to submit to being organized by native-place elites. It is therefore critical to consider the extent to which overarching native-place community existed in this period and whether class tensions precluded identity with and cooperation within the larger group.

It is possible to speak of the larger native-place community as an idea which could be evoked effectively for specific purposes throughout the early Republican period. Underlying this idea, as shown in Chapter 7, in their charitable and educational functions huiguan and tongxianghui

[37] The May 30 protests followed the shooting of the Chinese worker, Gu Zheng-hong, by Japanese foremen at one of the Naigai Wata Japanese factories on May 15. Richard Rigby (The May 30th Movement: Events and Themes [Canberra, 1980]) provides an excellent account. See also Nicholas Clifford, Shanghai, 1925: Urban Nationalism and the Defense of Foreign Privilege , Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no. 37 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1980); Ren Jianshu and Zhang Quan, Wusa yundong jianshi (Short history of the May Thirtieth Movement) (Shanghai, 1985); Li Jianmin, Wusa can'an hou de fanying yundong (The anti-British movement after the May Thirtieth tragedy) (Taipei, 1986). On the role of native-place associations in the May Thirtieth Movement, see Goodman, "The Native Place and the City," chap. 5. The distinguishing feature of the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, compared with the May Fourth Movement of 1919, was the appearance of a militant labor movement, organized through both the Guomindang and the Communist party. While party involvement did not preclude grass-roots organization of Shanghai workers, students and merchants through their native-place associations, native-place associations may no longer be described as occupying a portion of the center stage. The major document collection on the May Fourth movement is WYS.

served larger communities beyond their predominantly merchant memberships. Huiguan also continued ritually to serve a large religious community, though the numbers of sojourners now rendered the sorts of community gatherings that took place in the nineteenth century impossible. The presence of huiguan resources to some extent ensured that their tongxiang would have an interest in maintaining some degree of community and identity, in order to partake of huiguan services and support.

The egalitarian language of native-place sentiment, by which both wealthy and poor could share equally in the tongxiang bond as fellow-provincials, could be exploited by both high and low. When dissenting groups came to demand a piece of huiguan property, they could argue that it was, in effect, already their own, because it was tongxiang property. Huiguan leaders were then forced to maintain the rhetoric of brotherhood and community or breach it by pointing out—as did Chaozhou Huiguan directors in 1926 when confronted by demanding students—that it was in fact their property, not the property of the tongxiang .^[38] In general, huiguan leaders chose to preserve the rhetoric of community in order to gain the allegiance of the community. For this reason huiguan came to modify their practices as the new organizational form of the tongxianghui gained legitimacy. Huiguan , as well as tongxianghui , adopted public constitutions, formal voting procedures, more representative assembly, and at least the appearance of openness and more democratic rule.

Evidence that the larger community could in fact be mobilized by the old institutions may be found in huiguan ability to tap the larger community for funds. In the course of mortuary and hospital construction in 1918, for example, the Siming Gongsuo engraved the names of contributors on stone and wood (more durable carvings for more generous contributors). It counted 320 contributors of more than 50 yuan; 17,320 contributors of 1-50 yuan; and 2,770 contributors of "a few coins." A total of 20,470 people "fervently contributed out of love for their native place." Although far shy of the community of four hundred thousand claimed by the huiguan in the May Fourth agitation of the next year, it is nonetheless an impressive number.^[39]

[38] CHYB, 1926.

[39] SGY, 1918-19. This pool was increased in January 1919, when the huiguan brought together leaders of "each Ningbo trade and bang " (more than one hundred representatives in all) to the gongsuo to increase the effectiveness of money-raising efforts. In this meeting it was decided that all those "in commercial circles" would deduct pay from all of their tongxiang workers, five fen from each yuan of salary for one month.

At the end of May 1919, when the French Consul asked the huiguan to move a Ningbo children's burial ground, the huiguan called a public meeting and vowed to use the full strength of the Ningbo community to oppose the French. Through this manifestation of mass unity (or at least the persuasiveness of the threat), the Siming Gongsuo secured from the French a promise to preserve the integrity of their graveyard in perpetuity.^[40] Despite such demonstrations of the existence of effective community in certain contexts, it is evident that by the May Fourth period there was also considerable tension within native-place communities, particularly between workers and their tongxiang employers.^[41] Although native-place associations still occasionally resolved strikes and labor disputes, by this time this was more the exception than the rule. French authorities lamented in 1921 that whereas worker-employer negotiations through the intermediary of "guilds" had been possible in the past, those days had given way to a preference for intimidation and direct action.^[42]

One example of this new preference for intimidation and even violence may be found in the strike of Ningbo and Guangdong seamen and stokers which followed the May Fourth commercial strike announced on June 5, 1919. In a reminiscence of the strike, a worker who was the leader of the Association of Ningbo Seamen (Jun'an She) describes how workers heard the slogans of the May Fourth period and "could not stifle [their] patriotic sentiment." Feeling the seamen should support the movement, this man and other organizers propagandized their coworkers, with the result that more than five thousand workers struck and stopped seagoing traffic.^[43]

Concerned by the crippling economic effects of the work stoppage, Ningbo huiguan directors negotiated with the strikers. The striking Ningbo seamen, in a group of more than one thousand, agreed to meet at the Siming Gongsuo to discuss their actions. This much was possible. But when huiguan director Fang Jiaobo (also a leader of the Chamber of Commerce) began to lecture the seamen on their duty to return to work, his tongxiang refused to listen. A large worker jumped behind Fang, grabbed his collar from behind and ripped his shirt. The other

[40] SGY, 1919.

[41] This tension might be compared to that which developed earlier (in the nineteenth century) between rich and poor branches of south China lineages. See Frederic Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate (Berkeley, Calif., 1966), 112-15.

[42] AMRE, Série Asie, Chine 31, Shanghai, 1918-22, Report of June 13, 1921.

[43] WYZS, 343-44, 358.

seamen applauded (according to several accounts) and yelled, "Beat him, beat him." Fang fled and the workers declared a victory. Here we have an obvious case of the failure of greater tongxiang community and evidence of independent class organization and solidarity among the tongxiang worker jie .

Nationalism played an important role in the workers' radicalism in this instance. Armed with the righteousness of nationalism, workers felt justified in their rebellion against those at the pinnacle of the tongxiang occupational hierarchy. Nationalism also lubricated the coordination of the separate native-place organizations of Ningbo and Guangdong seamen.^[44] This incident parallels actions taken by the Shanghai and Shaoxing construction workers' association as they expressed their determination to enforce the anti-Japanese boycott. Worker subdivision into Shanghai and Shaoxing bang did not prevent joint organization. Like the Ningbo seamen, the construction workers were radicalized by their organized assertion of nationalism, threatening to strike if their foremen and the chiefs of the enterprises which employed them did not adhere to the boycott.

Other evidence suggests a weakening of the vertical native-place ties which might bind together a greater tongxiang community. In this period, for the first time, huiguan and tongxianghui contemplated and in some cases instituted badges of membership.^[45] This practice would have been unnecessary in the nineteenth century, when the relevant communities were not only smaller but also better ordered by structures of deference. At that earlier time, unlike the May Fourth period, artificial means were not necessary to decide which tongxiang could enter the building and which would do best to remain outside.

While suggesting these important tensions in the larger native-place community, research on native-place associations in the May Fourth period makes two points clear. We cannot understand social organization and social movements in the early Republican period without recognizing the crucial role of native-place associations, old and new. Nonetheless, we cannot understand native-place communities without recognizing the emergence of class ties and consciousness. Although native-place organizations persisted and indeed grew in numbers in this period, their "particularism" did not preclude integration into larger wholes. Just as native-place organization did not subvert nationalism, native-place ties

[44] WYZS, 358-61; SGY, June, 1919; SGY, July, 1919.

[45] SGY, April 1920.

complicated but did not preclude class consciousness. A study of the growth of native-place associations in the May Fourth period suggests the possible ironies of an unexpected fit: how apparent anachronisms—huiguan and tongxianghui —accommodated themselves to (and even promoted) the community-transcending imperatives of national mobilization and class formation.

Native-Place Associations in the Nanjing Decade

The contrast between the "associational bloom" of the May Fourth period and the constricted associational possibilities of the Nanjing decade (1927-1937) provides an opportunity to view native-place associations in a political context which differed radically from prior periods, periods in which native-place associations had championed the cause of the "nation" in the absence of a strong state. Chiang Kai-shek's 1927 purge, which crushed both the Shanghai labor movement and, for the moment, the Communist party, severely constrained the development of the mass-based political associations which had begun, by the time of the May Thirtieth movement, to displace native-place associations as information conduits and organizational networks for social mobilization. Other important public associations—like the Chamber of Commerce—would be quickly brought under the control of the new state.^[46]

In this altered context, which irrevocably transformed associational life, native-place associations experienced somewhat of a public reemergence. The "public reemergence" of native-place associations in the Nanjing decade was modest and limited by constraints imposed by the new state apparatus. Within these constraints, native-place associations emerged in the 1930s as popular public associations, important both for the expression of public opinion and for social mobilization. They also appeared as prominent actors in the narrowing zone of public criticism of a government viewed as failing in its duty to the people, preserving,

[46] See Kohama Masuko, "Nankin kokumin seifu ka ni okeru Shanhai burujoa dantai no saihen ni tsuite" (The reorganization of bourgeois groups in Shanghai under the Nanjing Nationalist government), Chikai ni arite 13 (May 1988):33-51.

in transformed fashion, their past role as institutions which mediated between state and society.

An additional critical development further transformed the nature of native-place associations in the Nanjing period. This was the rise of the Shanghai gangs. Whereas underground organizations were not unrelated to native-place associations in the past, they had not since the Small Sword Uprising been so important in Shanghai society, nor had they altered the basic power hierarchy within sojourner associations. The historical possibilities of the 1930s were, of course, very different from those of the mid-nineteenth century. Just as the tongxianghui of the 1930s were new and highly "modern" native-place associations, the secret societies with which they would interact had been transformed into highly "modern" gangs.^[47] A sense of the vastly altered context—prerequisite to an outline of the activities of native-place associations in the Nanjing decade and their relations to the new state—may be conveyed by a sketch of a new native-place association founded in the 1930s and characteristic of—indeed defining—the new era.

The Pudong Tongxianghui: Product of a New Era . On November 21, 1936, at 10:00 A.M., celebrants inaugurated the new building of the Shanghai Pudong Tongxianghui on Avenue Edward VII (now Yenan Road) in the International Settlement. It was a grand eight-story edifice, designed to overshadow all of the buildings in the neighborhood (see Figure 9). After the formal ceremony, during which the city notables Yu Xiaqing and Wang Xiaolai—neither of them from Pudong—gave speeches before an overflowing crowd, entertainment continued until 3:00 A.M. the next day. In all, more than twenty thousand guests paid their respects to the new building. The list of those who sent ceremonial calligraphic scrolls reads like a who's who of the political and economic elite—among them H. H. Kung, Zhang Qun, Zhang Jia'ao, Pan Gongzhan, Lin Sen and Sun Fo. Photographs of the event show visitors packed into the capacious auditorium, called the Du Hall

[47] The modernization of Shanghai gangs is a topic beyond the scope of this study. The political transformation of the Green Gang (Qing bang) is discussed in Brian Martin, "Warlords and Gangsters: The Opium Traffic in Shanghai and the Creation of the Three Prosperities Company to 1926," in The Nationalists and Chinese Society, I927-1937 , ed. John Fitzgerald (Melbourne, 1989), 44-71; Brian Martin, "The Green Gang and the Guomindang Government: The Role of Du Yuesheng in the Politics of Shanghai" (paper presented at the International Conference on Urban and Shanghai Studies, Shanghai, October 20-24, 1991); Brian Martin, "The Green Gang in Shanghai, 1920-1937: The Rise of Du Yuesheng" (Ph.D. diss., Australian National University, 1991).

Figure 9.
The Pudong Tongxianghui. Source: Pudong tongxianghui huisuo luo-
cheng jinian tekan (Special commemorative publication for the inauguration of
the Pudong Tongxianghui building) (Shanghai, 1937).

(named after Du Yuesheng). Above the rows of seats hung hundreds of commemorative scrolls. More guests lined the balcony. All eyes were on the stage, which framed the figures of the two leaders of Shanghai. The Mayor, Wu Tiecheng, stood on the right. By his side stood the man of many roles—Green Gang boss, entrepreneur, anti-Japanese patriot—Du Yuesheng, the founder of the Pudong Tongxianghui.^[48]

The scene captured in these photographs conveys characteristic features of politics and public associations in 1930s Shanghai. The grandeur of the Pudong Tongxianghui ceremony suggests a new kind of flourishing of tongxianghui . In the Nanjing decade, a period commonly described in terms of the themes of unprecedented state building, state penetration and the reorganization of society, native-place associations remained major formations in the mental and social landscape.^[49] They were important to Shanghai residents in this period because they performed critical quasi-governmental functions—as juridical, investigative and order-keeping institutions; as organs of social mobilization; and as organs of grievance, mediation and redress. In many cases they provided channels of access to limited government services. In these roles native-place associations continued economic and social services which they had performed in the past, functions in which they had not, ultimately, been displaced by more occupationally and functionally specialized economic and political associations. In addition, in the Nanjing decade, because the Guomindang suppressed any form of representative government and, especially after 1932, restricted the independence of the General Chamber of Commerce and other potentially oppositional urban institutions, native-place associations provided an important avenue for civic organization. To accomplish these things in this period, native-place associations needed both to respond to new social needs and to come to terms with new sources of power in the city.

The Pudong association was new among Shanghai tongxianghui , because the backwater suburb of Pudong had relatively little means and less "face" in Shanghai prior to the rise of Du Yuesheng. Du's prominence was critical to the establishment of a new association in 1932, long

[48] Pudong tongxianghui huisuo luocheng jinian tekan (Special commemorative publication for the inauguration of the Pudong Tongxianghui building) (Shanghai, 1936); Pudong tongxianghui nianbao (Yearly report of the Pudong Tongxianghui) (hereafter referred to as PTN) (Shanghai, 1936).

[49] Henriot, Shanghai 1927-1937 ; Parks Coble, The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927-1937 (Cambridge, Mass., 1980); Duara, Culture, Power and the State ; Fewsmith, Party, State and Local Elites .

after the fading of the earlier Pudong Tongren Hui. In certain respects, Du's existence re-created Pudong as a native place. In other words, Du's wealth and power provided impetus for the institutionalization and respectability of Pudong native-place sentiment. As one of Du's followers described it in his memoir-biography: "It was because a Du Yuesheng emerged from Pudong that for a long period the Pudong dialect became fashionable in Shanghai. At the very least, loafers and their friends could all say a few sentences of Pudong dialect in order to show off, implying that they had connections to Du's group and that they were not alone in the world."^[50]

This quote makes clear that native-place sentiment was not necessarily traditional or automatic. It could arise where there was little tradition, and it flourished especially where it was useful. It could also exist outside real connections to the supposed native place—in the case of the Pudong association, members did not necessarily have to be from Pudong. The Pudong Tongxianghui was a historical creation of 1930s Shanghai and marked the apogee of a new trend in native-place associations, associations which were very large and organized with powerful backers. As the stream of respectful visitors indicates, such native-place associations were taken very seriously. If the Pudong Tongxianghui was unique in its connections to Du Yuesheng, it was neither the largest nor necessarily the most powerful of the 1930s Shanghai native-place associations.

Characteristics of Tongxianghui in the 1930s . The nature and day-to-day business of native-place associations in the Nanjing decade reflect the possibilities of urban civic association and expression in this period. The first thing that is striking about these associations in the 1930s is their number and their size. As many as sixty solidly established native-place associations existed in Shanghai in this period, with offices, regular meeting places, and memberships sufficiently large to support the organization (minimally several hundred, often many thousand). The larger and more powerful organizations, like those of Ning-bo and Pudong, developed impressive memberships for voluntary associations in this period. More than twenty-two thousand Ningbo sojourners paid to belong to their tongxianghui ; for the Pudong Tongxianghui the figure was just under twenty thousand, a remarkable number for a brand-new organization. These membership figures were also considerably higher than those of the previous decade had been.

[50] Zhang Jungu, Du Yuesheng zhuan , vol. 2, 312.

As in the early Republican period, tongxianghui in the Nanjing decade were socially inclusive but hierarchical organizations. They had a graded hierarchy of membership types. Honorary or special members might contribute as much as several hundred or a thousand yuan in a year. Lower-ranking members joined for as little as one yuan—some-times just fifty cents. The most common occupation for members was merchant (shang )—usually more than 60 percent—followed by smaller percentages of office workers, government clerks, policemen and occasionally workers and students. (In the case of the Pudong association, nearly 20 percent of the membership was made up of workers.) Membership requirements for introductions from two current members, together with the mandatory annual fee, even if minimal, ensured that associations drew the large portion of their members from the upper, middle and lower-middle class and excluded the very poor. They were, nonetheless, organizations accessible to a large sector of the working public. Although the constitutions of most tongxianghui in this period now stipulated that men and women were equally free to become members, in practice women were only a minimal presence at meetings—generally they comprised no more than 2 percent of tongxianghui membership throughout the decade. However minimal, their presence was an innovation. Women appear in the ledgers of tongxianghui activity with surprising frequency, initiating correspondence and casework of the associations.^[51]

Although membership was accessible to many people, decision making within the organizations was concentrated within the ranks of a small but powerful minority. The most important decisions took place outside the largely ritualistic general meetings and were the exclusive domain of a handful of directors, usually a combination of the most influential businessmen, intellectuals, politicians and/or gang leaders within the community. These were the people on whom native-place associations depended for their finances and their influence. The relationship was mutually beneficial; native-place associations provided these individuals with considerable social followings and public "face," intangible but critical factors in the calculus of power in the Chinese city.

[51] PTN, 1935; Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dibajie zhengqiu jiniankan (Commemorative publication of the eighth membership drive of the Ningbo Tongxianghui) (Shanghai, 1933); Jiangning liuxian; Guangdong lü Hu tongxianghui disijie huiyuanlu (Fourth anniversary membership record of the Guangdong Tongxianghui) (Shanghai, 1939); Hu She dishisanjie; Henan lü Hu tongxianghui gongzuo baogao; Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dishiyijie zhengqiu huiyuan dahui jiniankan (Shanghai, 1939).

One might well ask, noting the growth and size of these associations in this period, what exactly they did and what prompted so many people to join. By this time the rituals of appearing "public" and "democratic" had caused the major tongxianghui to produce regular detailed yearly (sometimes monthly) reports through which many of their day to day public activities may be observed. It is not surprising to find that they performed many traditional functions—supporting schools and orphanages, providing disaster relief and sending the indigent back to their native place. But native-place associations were also deeply involved in functions one might have assumed were taken over and developed by either the bureaucracy of the newly established and much heralded Shanghai Municipal Government,^[52] by recently reorganized commercial and economic associations—the Chamber of Commerce and the tongye gonghui (trade associations mandated by the new government) or by new civic and political associations. The range of their activity may be indicated through a brief sketch.

The Range of Tongxianghui Functions . The order-keeping functions of tongxianghui are apparent from voluminous records of casework involving kidnappings, runaway women, beatings, thefts and fights. Tongxianghui ledgers for the 1930s abound in cases of kidnapping, a crime which flourished especially under the Nanjing regime. When their wives and children were kidnapped, family members did not routinely go to either the police or the Chinese Society for Assistance to Women and Children (Zhongguo furu jiuji zonghui , or CSAWC).^[53] The aggrieved appealed instead to their native-place associations. In such cases (and in cases of rights or thefts), as before, native-place associations investigated, mediated, or brought the case to the relevant authorities. Both civic organizations like the CSAWC and government offices (courts and public security bureaus) relied on tongxianghui for evidence and cooperation and turned lost or indigent individuals over to tongxianghui custody.^[54]

[52] See Henriot, Shanghai 1927-1937 .

[53] An impressionistic comparison of tongxianghui and Public Security Bureau kidnapping cases suggests a division of labor along gender lines. Tongxianghui cases involved women and children; police focused their efforts on the kidnappings of male residents. See Frederic Wakeman, "Social Control and Civic Culture in Republican Shanghai" (paper presented at the Shanghai Seminar, University of California, Berkeley, November 2, 1991).

[54] Hu She dishisanjie; Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dibajie ; CHYB, 1934; PTN, 1933-36; Jiangning liuxian . The procedures outlined in the reports of these associations are corroborated by CSAWC and Shaoxing Tongxianghui archives at the Shanghai Municipal Archives.

Throughout this period tongxianghui continued to investigate commercial disputes. By the mid-1930s many tongxianghui (even smaller associations like the Jiangning Tongxianghui) maintained teams of lawyers to deal with the many types of business they handled. For example, the Sojourning Indigo Dye Trade Association appealed to the Jiangning Tongxianghui for help in dealing with merchants who illegally misappropriated trade-association property. The tongxianghui investigated and presented the case in court.^[55] Shipwrecks frequently occasioned the intervention of native-place associations. When a foreign boat hit and sank a barge belonging to a Madame Shen, a Pudong native, she contacted her tongxianghui , which represented her in the negotiations. When a boat belonging to Huzhou sojourners capsized and fifty people drowned, the parties concerned notified the Huzhou association in Shanghai. The Hu She registered each family's losses, contacted the authorities of the counties bordering the river where the boat had sunk, and initiated an investigation. The Hu She reported its findings to the government authorities concerned and mediated a settlement with the boat company.^[56]

Workers' associations at times appealed to tongxianghui (if they had influential tongxianghui ) when their livelihood was threatened. In the case of a strike of electrical workers in the International Settlement in 1933, the Ningbo Tongxianghui organized a Federated Committee of Sojourning Tongxianghui to jointly lobby the Settlement Municipal Council on behalf of the workers. In the next year, a ferryworkers' union contacted the Pudong Tongxianghui complaining that the Shanghai city government had awarded the ferry business at their dock to an outside company, resulting in the loss of their livelihood. The Tongxianghui set up a special investigative committee and petitioned the Shanghai Municipal Government on the workers' behalf. The city authorities responded with alacrity, asking the tongxianghui to send negotiators to party headquarters to arrange the matter. No doubt the settlement of this case was facilitated by the fact that Du Yuesheng himself took up the matter with the Shanghai mayor, Wu Tiecheng.^[57]

[55] Jiangning liuxian , 17.

[56] Jiangning liuxian PTN, 1934, entry of January 19; Hu She dishisanjie , section 1, 72-74.

[57] Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dibajie , entries for October 1933, 7-8; PTN, 1933, 9; PTN, 1934, entries of March, April and June. The disposal of this case follows a typical pattern, in which difficult or important cases were referred to the most powerful member of the organization. In the case of the Ningbo Tongxianghui, difficult cases were referred to Yu Xiaqing; for the Chaozhou Tongxianghui, difficult cases were referred to Zheng Ziliang.

In this period native-place associations continued to defend Chinese interests against foreign trespasses. At times tongxianghui coordinated activities to create a united citywide front. When a Vietnamese policeman in the French Settlement shot and wounded several Chinese civilians, the Chaozhou Tongxianghui enlisted other associations in a collective effort to exact reparations and punish the transgressor. Within a day, the Ningbo and Chaozhou tongxianghui called a "City-Wide Meeting of Representatives of All Associations" (quanshi getuanti daibiao dahui ) to orchestrate a united response.^[58]

An incident involving the dumping of Japanese rice on the Chinese market reveals the persisting native-place organization of commerce in the 1930s. Both the Shanghai Sojourning Anhui Rice Merchants' Trade Association (Lü Hu Wanshang miye gonghui ) and the Shanghai Sojourning Guangdong Merchants' Miscellaneous Grain Association (Lü Hu Yueshang zaliang bang ) notified the Ningbo Tongxianghui of an attempt in 1933 to dump more than twenty-five thousand piculs of Japanese rice on the Shanghai market. The Guangdong association asked the Ningbo Tongxianghui to notify Ningbo rice merchants and warn them against purchasing Japanese rice. The Anhui association asked the Ningbo Tongxianghui to take up the matter with the city government in order to restrict the import of Japanese rice and to increase the taxation rate on imported Japanese rice. The Ningbo association printed notices in the newspapers and contacted both the city government and the Chamber of Commerce in order to safeguard the Shanghai market. What is striking here is not just that the Anhui and Guangdong trade groups initiated a concerted response to a threat to trade through native-place organizations but also that the Anhui association did not itself go directly to the relevant commercial and governmental authorities. Instead, it appealed to the more influential Ningbo Tongxianghui, asking this association to take up the matter up with the city government and the Chamber of Commerce. This path of action becomes explicable if the influence of Ningbo sojourners on both the city government and the Chamber of Commerce are taken into account.^[59]

[58] PTN, 1933, "Dashiji," 2, 6. The Pudong association joined these efforts. When it then discovered that a Pudong person had been wounded in the incident, it investigated separately and demanded (and received) additional compensation.

[59] Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dibajie , entries for October 1933. See also Marie-Claire Bergère et al., "Essai de prosopographie des élites Shanghaïennes a l'époque republicaine, 1911-1949," Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 4 (July-August 1985):901-30; Bergère, Golden Age ; Henriot, Shanghai 1927-1937 .

Another type of case prominent in tongxianghui ledgers and particular to the Nanjing decade suggests the way in which tongxianghui served as defensive mechanisms against an oppressive state. In the face of arrests or false accusations of merchants by local Guomindang headquarters or by Guomindang-supported anti-Japanese resistance associations, the relatives of abducted or arrested persons notified their tongxianghui , which then provided evidence that the individuals in question were legitimate merchants and not traitors, and negotiated, often successfully, for their release.^[60] In similar fashion, people in the native place complained to Shanghai tongxianghui to curb the excesses of local officials. In one case of this sort, thirty-seven shops in a Nanhui market town struck because the local tax-collection agent beat up a merchant. The Pudong Tongxianghui took the matter up with the local authorities.^[61]

Tongxianghui also served to moderate, if not entirely reduce, tax burdens imposed in their native place, in response to appeals from native-place trade associations. In one case of this type, the Silk and Tea Trade Association appealed to the Shanghai Hui-Ning Tongxianghui, asking for help in their struggle with the Anhui government. The provincial government overcharged the tea merchants in the course of collecting a tea tax. The Shanghai association pressured the provincial government, asking for the return of the merchants' money and publicizing the affair in the Shenbao . Success in such negotiations depended, naturally, on the strength of the single tongxianghui . The Pudong and Ningbo associations were often successful in such matters. Weaker tongxianghui attempted similar interventions, with mixed results.^[62]

In these instances, native-place associations used newspapers and the force of public opinion to shame and reform rapacious officials or agencies. For instance, in 1932 the Shanghai Anhui Tongxianghui became

[60] See for example, PTN, 1934, entries for February 23, 1934; Ningbo lü Hu tong xianghui dibajie , entries for October 16, 1933: Hu She dishisanjie; Chaozhou lü Hu tongxianghui niankan . It should not be imagined that all of the arrested or detained were innocent. One category of appeals to the Chaozhou Tongxianghui came from merchants whose goods or cash had been detained by the Shanghai customs. Given Chaozhou involvement in the smuggling of contraband, tongxianghui actions here appear to have protected illicit trade as handily as legitimate business. See Chaozhou lü Hu tongxianghui niankan .

[61] PTN, 1935.

[62] SB, August 27, 1932, p. 16. Some solutions were creative. When the Guangdong Merchants' Miscellaneous Grain and Oilcake Association complained of overtaxation, the Chaozhou Huiguan mobilized representatives of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and arranged a deal with Guomindang officials. In return for the rescinding of the tax, the native-place association would make a contribution to the Nanjing Zhongyang University. See CHYB, May 21, 1934.

concerned about official corruption and embezzlement in Anhui. In a joint effort with the Beijing Anhui Tongxianghui and local people in Anhui they secured proof of fraud and printed the details of the case in the Shenbao .^[63] In the process, tongxianghui acted as watchdogs on municipal and local officials and moderated tax burdens in their native place.

Tongxianghui also lobbied for their native place, procuring government assistance in local construction, transportation, policing and welfare projects. The Hu She, in collaboration with the Crepe Trade Association, lobbied for increased security on the waterways connecting Huzhou and Shanghai. The Pudong and Ningbo tongxianghui solicited and secured government assistance with public-works projects in home areas (docks, bridges, roads, telephone lines). While they lobbied for government funds, these associations continued to pour capital, time and labor back into their native places.

Managing Wartime Shanghai . In wartime Shanghai, native-place associations proved to be powerful and efficient organizations, able immediately to provide capital and personnel resource networks to deal with a crisis of great magnitude—the social consequences of war with Japan. In the face of the catastrophic bombing of the densely populated districts of Hongkou and Zhabei in August 1937, coordinating committees established by the Shanghai Municipal Government had neither the funds nor the human resources to do more than attempt to straddle a massive movement initiated from below the level of the government. Native-place organizations provided institutional networks critical to the popular mobilization which developed to meet the crisis.^[64]

The impact of the bombings on the Shanghai Guangdong community was especially great because many Guangdong people worked in the areas which were bombed. The Guangdong Tongxianghui, in coor-

[63] SB, August 16, 1932.

[64] The discussion below concerns the events of 1937. For evidence of immediate tongxianghui response to the January 1932 bombing, see Lian Kang, "Ji aiguo shiyejia Lan Meixian" (Remembrance of the patriotic entrepreneur Lan Meixian), in Kangri fengyun lu (Record of the War of Resistance Against Japan) (Shanghai, 1985), 309-12; Chaozhou lü Hu tongxianghui tekan, jiuguo hao (Special issue of the Association of Chaozhou Sojourners in Shanghai, National Salvation Edition) (1932); and notices of the Ningbo, Taizhou, Guangdong, Chaozhou, Suzhou, Huzhou, Henan, Sichuan, Jianghuai, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shaoxing, Wuxi, Pudong and Anhui associations printed in SB between January 28, 1932, and February 10, 1932.

dination with the older Guang-Zhao Gongsuo immediately established five refugee centers, borrowing for this purpose property of Guangdong merchants in Shanghai. Tongxianghui members managed the centers, enlisting refugees as additional in-camp personnel. In his memoir, a refugee-camp employee, a former office manager for the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company (CMSNC), reveals that his tongxiang employer at the CMSNC directed him and seven fellow office workers to shift jobs and work in the refugee center. Their new office was a floor of a Guangdong restaurant. Guangdong students volunteered to register, distribute food and otherwise care for the refugees. In this manner, the Guangdong community sheltered approximately fifty thousand people, all of them from Guangdong. They also arranged and subsidized transportation costs to send their fellow-provincials safely back to Guangalong.^[65] Those sheltered represented nearly half of the total Guangdong population in Shanghai at the time.

The records of the Ningbo Tongxianghui tell a similar story on an even greater scale. Immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Ningbo Tongxianghui organized a battalion of crisis committees, divided by functions—money raising, defense, supplies acquisition, records and documentation. On August 13, when Hongkou and Zhabei became war areas, refugees immediately poured into the Ningbo Tongxianghui building in the International Settlement, which became a temporary shelter. The tongxianghui arranged convoys to take them to other Ningbo shelters. Before long it maintained fourteen refugee centers housing nearly twenty-five thousand refugees. As the pressure of refugees in Shanghai increased, the tongxianghui arranged boats to provide passage to Ningbo. Between August 15 and September 17 they returned eighty thousand people. By the time the operation was finished they had returned two hundred thousand people, or one-third to two-fifths of the total Shanghai Ningbo population. Those without money for the trip were funded by the association (which provided money to more than eighty-two thousand such people). Ningbo refugees without homes to return to in Ningbo were nonetheless sent to a refugee center in Ningbo, also managed by the tongxianghui , which provided food and housing for these refugees until March 1938. In addition, it provided

[65] Fang Yinchao, "Guangdong lü Hu tongxianghui gongzuo zhuiji" (Remembrance of the work of the Association of Guangdong Sojourners in Shanghai), Dacheng 45 (August 1977):26-27; Guangdong lü Hu tongxianghui jiuji nanmin weiyuanhui baogaoshu (Report of the Refugee Relief Committee of the Guangdong Tongxianghui) (Shanghai, 1938).

medical care to twenty-five hundred fellow-provincials. The Siming Gongsuo provided coffins for those who died in the attacks.^[66]

Guangdong and Ningbo refugee relief efforts were notable for their scale but not unusual in terms of their design. Smaller associations, like the Quan-Zhang Huiguan and the Dongting Dongshan Tongxianghui, raised funds, organized relief committees, mobilized rescue militias, hired cars to enter occupied areas and transport the wounded to shelter, established refugee centers and shipped refugees to their native place.^[67]

In other ways as well, native-place associations protected their tongxiang from the disasters of wan The war disrupted the market and disastrously affected the livelihood of the cotton-growing people in Pudong. In response, the Pudong Tongxianghui established a Cotton Transportation and Sales Society in October 1937 which raised one million yuan to purchase Pudong cotton and transport it by convoy across the Huangpu River and through the French Concession to the Pudong Association, where it could be safely stored.^[68] The tongxianghui raised these funds in just a few weeks, while supporting twelve refugee centers for Pudong people.^[69]

These examples demonstrate commonly accepted lines of native-place identity, organization and mobilization in the city, on a large scale, and associations which could, when necessary, muster capital, property and personnel on short notice and function with remarkable efficiency. If both refugee relief work and the efforts of the Pudong Tongxianghui to maintain the livelihood of Pudong people were (despite their unprecedented scale) "traditional" types of activity for native-place associations, tongxianghui were also very active in the primary area of emerging popular dissent in the Nanjing decade, the voicing of anti-Japanese nationalism and criticism of Guomindang accommodation to Japanese occupation of

[66] Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui jiuji beinan tongxiang zhengxinlu (Record-book of assistance provided to fellow-provincial refugees by the Association of Ningbo Sojourners in Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1939), 1-36.

[67] See for example, Huang Zepan, "Shanghai Quan-Zhang huiguan yange ji kangzhan shiqi de huodong" (The evolution of the Shanghai Quan-Zhang Huiguan and its activities during the War of Resistance), Quanzhou wenshi ziliao (Quanzhou cultural and historical materials) 13 (19657):63-67; Dongting Dongshan , 86-87. Feng Yi, "Le problème des réfugiés à Shanghai, 1937-40" (Memoire de DEA, Université Lumiére-Lyon z, September 1993, 38), counts twenty-one native-place associations active in relief efforts.

[68] Shanghai Municipal Police Report, National Archives, Washington, D. C., D-8133, October 20, 1937.

[69] PTN, 1938.

Chinese territory. Responding to the explosive events in Manchuria and Shanghai in the fall and winter of 1931-32, Shanghai native-place associations published strident criticisms of Zhang Xueliang and rallied considerable financial support for Ma Zhanshan, one of the few Chinese military commanders to seriously engage Japanese forces.^[70]

Tongxiangbui also provided shelter and resources for anti-Japanese activists. Especially notable in this regard was the Pudong Tongxianghui, which in 1937 housed at least eight anti-Japanese associations, including the All-Shanghai Association for the Support of Armed Resistance, the Shanghai Citizens' Committee for Severance of Economic Relations with Japan, the Shanghai Wartime Literature and Art Society, and student and worker groups.^[71] Even smaller associations, like the Shangyu Tongxianghui, played an active role in organizing anti-Japanese activity.^[72]

The scope of tongxianghui activity at this point in time is striking. In 1937, a decade after the establishment of an activist government committed to the reorganization, modernization, taxation and control of Shanghai urban associations through the considerable bureaucratic machinery of the Shanghai Mumicipal Government,^[73] it is intriguing to find native-place ties and native-place associations so prominent in urban civic activity. Indeed, in a time of crisis, it appears that for a large number, probably the majority, of refugees, native-place identity remained their primary identity. Even those Ningbo people who no longer had homes or family in Ningbo to go back to appealed to the Ningbo Tongxianghui and were returned to Ningbo. Given the uncertainties of life under Japanese aggression, native-place identity developed a new utility. Even if the native place was entirely unfamiliar to Shanghai-born "sojourners," maintaining sojourner consciousness meant that they had another home if life in Shanghai proved to be untenable.

Shanghai businessmen commonly put their greatest efforts into helping their tongxiang first, contributing secondarily, if at all, to govern-

[70] See, especially, Chaozhou lü Hu tongxianghui tekan , 1932; Quan Zhe gonghui huiwu baogao (Report of the work of the All-Zhejiang Association) (Shanghai, 1931-32).

[71] The other anti-Japanese associations housed at the tongxianghui were the Shanghai Municipality Students' Wartime Service Group, the Shanghai Municipality Educationalists' Race Salvation Association, the Shanghai Young Writers' National Salvation Propaganda Group, the Shanghai Municipality Cooperative Social Circles National Salvation Association and the National Salvation Workers' Training Institute. See Shanghai Municipal Police Report, D-8141, November 15, 1937.

[72] Ibid., D-7758, April 12, 1937.

[73] See Henriot, Shanghai 1927-1937 .

ment-sponsored or international relief efforts.^[74] A good but not unusual example is Lan Meixian, a wealthy entrepreneur and major shareholder of the Shanghai Dalai Bank, the Jiaxing Minfeng Paper Factory, the Hangzhou Huafeng Paper Factory and the Ning-Shao Steamboat Company. After the bombings of August 13, 1937, Lan decided to help the Chinese forces by contributing the sum needed to purchase an airplane. He did this through the Ningbo Tongxianghui.^[75] Local-level governments outside Shanghai similarly made their famine-relief contributions to their native-place associations in Shanghai rather than to the Shanghai government-sponsored committee.^[76]

Public Maneuverings: Native-Place Associations between State and Society

Throughout the Nanjing decade native-place associations were understood as belonging to "society" as opposed to the "state." Tongxianghui represented themselves as people's organizations and pub-

[74] Before the war broke out, Wu Tiecheng, Shanghai mayor, established a disaster-relief committee. Six months after the war began, this committee published a report claiming to have played a commanding role in the relief efforts (Shanghai cishan tuanti lianhe jiuzai hui jiuji zhanqu nanmin weiyuanbui bannian gongzuo baogao [Report of the Disaster Relief and War Refugee Assistance Committee of Federated Shanghai Charitable Organizations] [Shanghai, 1938]). This "command center" image cannot be reconciled with accounts of the Guangdong community's relief efforts (which do not mention the semi-official disaster relief committee) or with the detailed account-book of the Ningbo Tongxianghui disaster-relief effort. (The committee is not mentioned in correspondence or among monetary donors, only at the bottom of a list of individuals and groups which provided goods like clothing and biscuits.) In six months the government-sponsored committee raised approximately one million yuan, the amount raised by the Pudong Tongxianghui for cotton transport alone. The memoir of a refugee-relief director who worked with the committee suggests that Guomindang officials formed the organization as a propaganda ploy: "When the war broke out, the leaders of society inevitably shouldered the task of helping wounded soldiers and aiding refugees, and in this manner the officials received credit for assuming (in name) positions of leadership" (Zhao Puchu, "Kangzhan chuqi Shanghai de nanmin gongzuo" [Shanghai refugee work during the early part of the War of Resistance], Wenshi ziliao xuanji [Shanghai] 4 [1980]:31-50). An international relief committee cared for 23,727 refugees in the first six months of war, a figure slightly lower than the 24,858 refugees cared for by the Ningbo Tongxianghui. See K. Y. Lee, Annual Report of the International Relief Committee (Shanghai, 1938). See also Feng, "Le problème des réfugiés."

[75] Lian Kang, "Ji aiguo shiyejia," 309-12. Later, when the refugee situation was critical, Lan delivered his household silver and his silver steamboat models (a considerable collection) to the Ningbo Tongxianghui to help Ningbo refugees.

[76] The Ningbo Tongxianghui, for example, received contributions from county and prefectural governments and from local benevolent associations. Such contributors are largely absent from the list of donors to the government-sponsored committee, which received contributions from provincial governments. It is striking that even some provincial governments sent their contributions through their tongxianghui (this was the case, for instance, with the Sichuan government). See Shanghai cishan tuanti lianhe; Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui jiuji beinan tongxiang .

lic organizations (minjian tuanti, minzhong tuanti, shehui gongtuan ). The government classed them similarly as in the realm of society, as social organizations, or as people's organizations (shehui tuanti, renmin tuanti ). Although such understandings were strategically useful (on both sides), they masked a complexly overlapping relationship with the state.

State Penetration . Like other social organizations in the Nanjing decade, tongxianghui registered with the government, filled out government surveys and received state instructions, particularly with regard to their ritual and educational activities and accepted "the leadership and guidance" of representatives of the Social Bureau and the Party Branch Office in Shanghai in their general meetings. Their published records suggest cooperation in all of these activities, even as they also organized at strategic local points in opposition to the state. It is important, therefore, to consider the extent to which they were "penetrated" by the state and to ask what strategies and features of their makeup enabled them to carry on the multitude of civic activities they engaged in which were not mandated by the state.

The extensive efforts of the Nanjing government to neutralize or control public associations and political activity have persuaded some historians that little civic activity was possible at this time outside the realm of the state. Records of native-place associations provide a useful index of state penetration of society. Because native-place associations performed a broad range of social services and because they were not explicitly political in this period, they were not a major target of control; nonetheless, beginning in 1928, they became increasingly subject to the regulations and interventions of the Social Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal Government and the Shanghai party branch office.

A survey of the publications and archives of native-place associations, as well as publications of the Shanghai city government and the Nanjing government, permits an impressionistic account of state attempts to identify, register, investigate and reform native-place associations, as well as of the ability of these associations to delay, resist, and deflect these state intrusions.

In 1928, shortly after the establishment of the Shanghai Municipal Government, native-place associations were notified that they had to register with the Social Bureau and with the Shanghai branch party headquarters. It was not until the spring of the next year that native-place associations began to take seriously the registration regulations. Nonetheless, finding these regulations "obstructive" and "troublesome," most associations developed delaying tactics. As late as 1931 the Chaozhou and Ningbo associations were still delaying. When the Chaozhou association finally did register, they did not list their property holdings, as noted in their meeting records, "to avoid conflict."^[77]

By 1932 the Social Bureau had made some headway. Shaoxing Tongxianghui archives record the process of state investigation of the association. After a period of delay, the Shaoxing Tongxianghui finally petitioned the Social Bureau to register in 1932. The license petition provided the bureau with a one-sentence statement of purpose ("We establish the Shaoxing Tongxianghui to promote the public good, provide charity, unite native-place sentiment and work for the benefit of our native place and our sojourning tongxiang "), a list of officers and employees, and a copy of the association constitution and rules. A survey of 1934 provided the Social Bureau with somewhat more information: the total number of members (not a name list), the names of the officers, a one-sentence description of internal organization, and a statement of sources of income (property rentals and membership fees), though the exact property holdings were not listed.

In a section devoted to "special types of associations" in a Report of the Conference on the Guomindang Central All-China Mass-Movement Leadership Committee (1934), party activists argued for the need to fundamentally reorganize native-place associations to make them more systematic and to facilitate party guidance and direction. Huiguan were to be turned over to tongxianghui management; county- and city-level tongxianghui were to be subordinated to provincial-level tongxianghui . Party investigators complained of the unsystematic names of native-place associations and stressed the need to clarify these names to facilitate precise classification. These suggestions reflect a bare state of acquaintance with the associations under consideration and ignorance of

[77] CHYB, May 1929; CHYB, February 1932; CHYB, March 4, 1932; SGY, April 1929; SGY, March 22, 1931.

the realities of native-place association. There is no evidence that these reforms were implemented.^[78]

One instance in which native-place associations did follow a government directive to "modernize" their practices reveals the tendency of these associations to make surface compromises with state regulations. In 1930 associations received notice that they were not to celebrate the Chinese New Year with their traditional practice of ritual tuanbai greetings. They were instructed to change to the Republican calendar and more modern modes of comportment. The Chaozhou native-place association responded by replacing the name tuanbai with the more modern-sounding kenqinhui , a term used to denote all sorts of purposeful modern gatherings. From 1930 on, the Chaozhou association set aside a Sunday in February to hold a kenqinhui , a time for greetings among all Guangdong sojourner groups.^[79]

Despite repeated efforts to register and restructure these associations, as late as 1936 the Shanghai Municipal Government could only claim that twenty-seven of the sixty-five tongxianghui of which it was aware were fully registered according to all of the procedures of the law.^[80] Although at times the power of the city government and public security forces was dearly more efficient, particularly in the area of extracting funds and even temporarily requisitioning buildings of native-place associations,^[81] there was nonetheless an evident gap between state aspira-

[78] Zhongguo guomindang quanguo minzhong yundong gongzuo taolunhui baogaoshu (Report of the Conference on the Guomindang Central All-China Mass-Movement Leadership Committee) (Nanjing, 1934). Guang-Zhao Gongsuo records note an earlier reorganization effort by the Shanghai Municipal Merchant Association Reorganization Committee (Shanghai tebieshi shangren tuanti zhengli weiyuanhui ) of the Social Bureau, which attempted to reform association election procedures through the creation of a Federation of Sojourning Huiguan and Gongsuo (Lü Hu huiguan gongsuo lianhehui ). The gongsuo rejected the election rules of the new federation and notified the Social Bureau that it would await the development and publication of more satisfactory guidelines before they would respond. See GZGYB, January 1930.

[79] CHYB, 1930. See also Hu She dishisanjie regarding yearly tuanbai .

[80] Shanghai shi nianjian weiyuanhui (Shanghai municipal yearbook committee), comps., Shanghai shi nianjian (Shanghai municipal yearbook) (Shanghai, 1936), E-13. The remaining tongxianghui , with one exception, are listed as being in the process of registration.

[81] In 1929 the Siming Gongsuo was notified that Shanghai branch party headquarters wanted to requisition huiguan buildings. The huiguan rebuffed this attempt, though records of the following year note a second request, this time from the public-security-bureau police. In 1930 the huiguan rented rooms for the police, subsidizing the rent until the police moved out in the fall of 1931 (SGY, November 13, 1930). Records of July 1932 note that one hundred police had quartered in a temple of a Siming Gongsuo coffin repository (SGY, July 1932).

tions for control and state limitations. In this gap, and in a relationship which encompassed mutual accommodation and at times strategic cooperation in a broad scope of activities, native-place associations provided spaces for certain degrees of political activism that would not be curtailed by the state.

The Interpenetration of State and Society . Although much is to be gained from a consideration of state penetration—namely, an index of state initiatives as well as a record of successes and limitations—this type of discussion obscures the considerable overlap of state and society characteristic in the makeup of these associations, historically and in this period. This overlap is evident in association personnel, proclaimed affiliation with state organs, performance of services to the state, and state recognition of native-place associations.

Membership lists and collection records point to striking areas of overlap between state and society. The 1936 membership list of the Henan Tongxianghui includes two Public Security Bureau branch chiefs, two police chiefs, and 97 police and Public Security Bureau employees among the members (in some cases as many as 30 police from one station, or something approximating the full-scale incorporation of work units into the tongxianghui ).^[82] Similarly, 179 Hu She members were employed in "party and government," and another 69 were employed in military, police or social-control institutions (totaling 248 of approximately 1,300 members).^[83]

Substantial government-employee membership is also revealed in a Shenbao report on the 1930 collection drive of the Pudong Tongxianghui, which established seventy-two collection teams among members in a campaign to fund the new building. Among these teams, organized according to residence locality and occupational group, one covered collections in the Shanghai party headquarters, one covered collections among the military, two focused on national-government employees and one focused on city-government employees.^[84] Obviously, these

[82] Henan lü Hu tongxianghui gongzuo baogao . Additionally, members included a number of police employed by the International Settlement and employees of the Social and Sanitation bureaus of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

[83] Hu She dishisanjie . Government employees are also prominent among the nearly eight thousand members of the Guangdong association (Guangdong lü Hu tongxianghui disijie huiyuanlu [Fourth anniversary membership record of the Guangdong Tongxianghui] [Shanghai, 1937]).

[84] SB, September 2, 1931. An article of October 10 cites the total collected as 53,445 yuan (SB, October 10, 1931).

kinds of membership links served the associations well in their day-to-day interactions with branches of the Public Security Bureau and bureaucrats of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

Published association records (as opposed to their unpublished archives) make a point of their affiliation with the Social Bureau and the party, their acceptance of party "guidance and supervision" and their enthusiasm in regard to government campaigns. Their published reports begin with photographs of their state licenses; their constitutions vow adherence to the Three People's Principles, the guidance of the Guomindang, and their determination to eliminate counterrevolutionaries. Their general meeting summaries highlight the presence at these meetings of government officials. These items all appear in their published meeting notes like protective badges.^[85]

State organs and state officials recognized native-place associations in a multitude of ways, licensing them, bestowing symbolic recognition, attending tongxianghui meetings, relying on tongxianghui as quasi-governmental organizations to carry out government programs. Government recognition was on display at the inaugural ceremony for the new Pudong Tongxianghui building described above, in which the calligraphy of government luminaries graced the walls of the auditorium, while the mayor shared the stage with the founder of the tongxianghui . Sun Fo did calligraphy for Chaozhou Tongxianghui publications; Wu Tiecheng provided his calligraphy for the Guangdong Tongxianghui.^[86]

Representatives from provincial governments, as well as from Shanghai party headquarters and the Social Bureau, attended the yearly general meetings of tongxianghui . Although they did this "to supervise and guide" the work of the associations, their presence also helped to legitimate the associations. A Guomindang party representative attending a Pudong Tongxianghui meeting praised the association and its contribution to the nation: "Shanghai is a model for China, and your association is a model for all tongxianghui nationally. You contribute to the well-being of the native place and contribute to the glory of the country."^[87]

[85] For example, see Henan lü Hu tongxianghui gongzuo baogao .

[86] Shanghai Guangdong zhongxue xinxiao luocheng jinian ce (Publication commemorating the completion of the new Guangdong Middle School) (Shanghai, 1935). For a discussion of the political uses of calligraphy, see Richard Kraus, Brushes with Power (Berkeley, Calif., 1992).

[87] SB, March 1, 1937. Although party and Social Bureau representatives did attend these general meetings, it is important to point out that general meetings were largely ceremonial occasions; they did not affect the real work of the tongxianghui .

Creating "Civic Ground. " Overlap with the state, state affiliation and state recognition all contributed to the legitimacy of native-place associations in this period. Nonetheless, tongxianghui were not entirely dependent on the state for their legitimacy. Association records and activities suggest a variety of other strategies which helped them to create a kind of "civic ground," an independent basis of legitimacy for their public activities. This involved the manipulation of "governmentality," of connections and of higher claims to nationalism.

Whereas in earlier periods native-place associations took on the trappings of republicanism to proclaim their modernity and dedication to the project of building a strong nation, during the Nanjing decade the "governmentality" of native-place associations helped them to create a civic space for their activities. As in the early Republican era, the 1930s associations incorporated into their modes of conduct influential and recognized ideals of governance (constitutions, elections, provisions for the welfare and governance of their member populations, the rhetoric of local self-government). They now also incorporated into their reports and procedures all of the trappings of modern social science, forming "statistics committees" and "social-survey committees" and prominently featuring pie charts and bar graphs with inventive graphic motifs (airplanes and steam engines, alongside Olympic-style torches) in their publications.^[88] Because these were ideals with broad public legitimacy, ideals to which the state was also subject, native-place associations could in a sense displace the state, or in any event compete with it for legitimacy by outshining it.^[89]

The tactic of governmentality is evident in the way native-place associations inserted the language of local self-government and the rhetoric of Sun Yat-sen into their constitutions and public statements, making it the foundation of their existence. By rhetorically marking themselves as Sun's descendants, tongxianghui were seen (and could act) not as merely self-serving "particularistic associations" but rather as constituent building blocks of a strengthened constitutional state. This is dear in a publi-

[88] On modernist discourse, see Duara, "Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China," JAS 50 (February 1991):67-83.

[89] Although the tactics of governmentality usually meant simulating ideal government rather than imitating the actual government, it involved degrees of imitation as well. At approximately the same time as Mayor Wu Tiecheng began to conduct group marriage ceremonies (jituan jiehun ) at the Shanghai Civic Center, tongxianghui also began to conduct group marriage ceremonies for fellow-provincial couples. See Hu She dishisanjie , section 1, pp. 66-67; SB, June 18, 1938; SB, June 30, 1938.

cation of the Ningbo Tongxianghui: "Fellow-provincials unite and form the Ningbo Tongxianghui. People from other places also unite and form other tongxianghui . Then each native-place group joins together and forms an extremely large national organization. In this manner, domestically, it will be possible to consolidate the strength of local self-government, and internationally, it will be possible to resist the insults of foreign powers."^[90] A second example is from a manifesto printed by the associations of Fujianese sojourners in Shanghai and Beijing: "The locality is the foundation of the state and self-government is the step-ping-stone for constitutional government. Thus those who wish to do good for their country must realize local self-government, causing the people to devote themselves to the public service of their locality in or-tier to develop their ability to deal with public affairs. After this they may participate in national affairs, supervise government and bring the nation to constitutional government, achieving the freedom of full citizens."^[91] Such statements both legitimated the public activities of tongxianghui and rebuked the government at higher levels for its lack of dedication to the long-sought-after goals of Republican government.

Another "tactic" which bolstered the social force of native-place associations in the Nanjing decade involved the use of powerful connections. In the 1930s native-place associations coalesced and grew around specific individuals with auras of power. In the case of the Ningbo Tongxianghui the figure was Yu Xiaqing. Wang Xiaolai and Shi Liangcai served the same function as leaders of the Shaoxing and Jiangning associations, respectively. The usefulness of tongxianghui and the rise of several new associations in this period were also linked to the ascendant power of Shanghai gangs. The prominence and efficacity of the Pudong Tongxianghui clearly reflected the power of the Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng. Other tongxianghui followed suit. The Subei gangster Gu Zhuxuan was the director of the Jianghuai Tongxianghui and the vice-chairman of the Subei Sojourners' Federation.^[92] The Red Gang leader Zheng Ziliang was prominent in the Chaozhou Tongxianghui. Given the limitations of government services and the realities of government taxation, corruption and inefficiency, compounded by protection rack-

[90] Ningbo lü Hu tongxianghui dibajie .

[91] SB, January 29, 1932, 12.

[92] See PTN; Gu Shuping, "Wo liyong Gu Zhuxuan de yanhu jinxing geming huodong (I used the cover of Gu Zhuxuan to carry out revolutionary activities), in Jiu Shanghai de banghui (The gangs of old Shanghai), ed. Zhu Xucfan (Shanghai, 1986), 360. Gu Zhuxuan was also vice-chairman of the Subei Refugee Assistance Committee.

ets and gang organization in the city, it is not surprising that Shanghai residents in this period reinvested their energies in native-place communities, particularly when affiliation provided linkages to icons of power and influence.

The need of public associations for powerful patrons meant that although membership was accessible to many people, despite their constitutions and democratic rhetoric, decision making on important issues was probably less democratic in this period than it had been in earlier periods. Although the gang "muscle" behind certain native-place associations is obvious, it would be mistaken to view native-place associations in the Nanjing decade as essentially gang-type organizations. Their archives offer voluminous evidence of substantial charitable, civic and nationalist commitments. These commitments were maintained at considerable cost, even danger, and they consumed the energies of individuals who may have needed the protection of people like Du Yuesheng but who were often themselves intellectuals, influential reformers, deeply committed nationalists and anti-Japanese activists.

A Higher Kind of Loyalty . The most potent tactic for creating civic "ground" on which to stand was through the articulation of a more steadfast nationalism than that upheld by the state. The process by which tongxianghui could become a location for urban reformist—and at times oppositional—sentiments in the 1930s may be illustrated through the career of the influential educational reformer Huang Yanpei. In the early Republican period, in accordance with his faith in rational education, Huang worked to reform Chinese society through two influential institutions, the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association and the Chinese Vocational Education Association. These efforts, begun in the early Republican period, represented a growing institutional collaboration between Shanghai capitalists and Jiangnan intellectuals who believed in the necessity of economic modernization and educational reform to strengthen the nation. Education, perhaps the only realm which might possibly have enjoyed the type of free and uncoerced public discussion which Habermas associates with a "public sphere," was an early victim of the Guomindang "partification" (danghua ) process. Both the Jiangsu Provincial Education and the Chinese Vocational Education Associations came under attack in 1927, and Huang temporarily fled to Dalian to escape assassination. Increasingly constricted in the political influence he could exercise on the basis of these organizations and persuaded that educational initiatives were bound to fail because they pro-

moted individualism and that individuals were doomed to inefficacy outside membership in large groups, Huang Yanpei rechanneled much of his patriotic and reformist energy into his leadership (together with Du Yuesheng) of the Pudong Tongxianghui.^[93]

In a manifesto written in 1933, Huang linked the existence of tongxianghui , along the model of the Ningbo Tongxianghui, to the imperative of anti-imperialist resistance:

Our Chinese population is over 470,000,000 and we are repeatedly affronted by Japan, which has a population of less than 70 million. Our land is occupied; our people have been butchered, and we are forced to accept foreign control ... while we are unable to help ourselves.... A critical reason is that we don't unite. How should we save China? Many people have ideas, all of which require one thing: People must abandon their selfish individualism and begin to form small groups. Then they should knit together small groups into large groups and unite the large groups into one great national group. When the entire country becomes one group, the mass foundation for the nation will be established, the nation will be strong and long-lived....

And what will be the starting point for the small groups? Human feelings really develop only when people leave their native place and manifest their sincere mutual love. For this reason, the uniting of locals is often not as powerful as the uniting of sojourner groups who are motivated by the common experience of sojourning in a foreign place. The connections which result from the sojourning condition create large and solid groups. In the entire [Shanghai] population ... what group manifests the greatest strength? It is a sojourner group. Those responding say in unison, Ningbo people! Ningbo people! ... And why is [the Ningbo people's] ability to unite especially strong and solid? ... At the beginning, when [Ningbo] people came to Shanghai [the Ningbo native-place association] arranged work for them, helped them through sickness.... Those seeking work could receive introductions.... [I]f they encountered hardship they could help each other and provide relief.... From the time Shanghai opened as a treaty port, Ningbo people have occupied the dominant position.... In 1874 and 1898 because of a threat [by the French] to their cemetery, they gathered a crowd to resist, and a long-weak country forced the westerners to submit.... Any group, if only they could have the strength to organize the masses by helping its members, may be similarly strong and great. [Without their tongxianghui ] I fear the Ningbo people's accomplishments would not be as great or their unity as solid.... Our Pudong fellow-

[93] My account of Huang's pre-1927 career relies on Ernst Schwintzer, "Education to Save the Nation: Huang Yanpei and the Educational Reform Movement in Early Twentieth Century China" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1992).

provincials deeply believe in this theory, and in the force of precedent. Therefore we gather together people from all circles to meet, intellectuals and laborers, and ... together build the awesome building of the future.... [W]ith the Pudong Tongxianghui the ... business of the Pudong people increases and their contribution to society and the country is daily greater. The mass foundation of the state is established, national power will be strengthened, the life of the nation will be long, and from this there will be no more national disasters.^[94]

By combining nationalist rhetoric and Confucian reasoning, the tongxianghui becomes the center for the ordering of the nation. This lessens the "particularism" of the native-place tie. Huang's manifesto also suggests a number of observations about civic activity and rhetorical rationales for civic activity in this period. First, Huang makes clear that civic activity is to be based not on individual autonomy or citizenship, but on tightly organized mutual-protection associations based on native place, not on urban residence. Second, public action, or action in the public realm, is grounded not in individual rights but in the imperative to save the nation. Third, the tie to the nation is the foremost factor in motivating and legitimating public activity. It is through their anti-Japanese activity that we may understand the basis for native-place associations' expressions of dissent. Dissent in itself was not valued. Public associations viewed themselves as being forced into the public realm when the government failed to serve the interests of the nation. Because the anti-Japanese movement was under attack by Chiang Kai-shek, particularly after the assassination of Shi Liangcai, under whose editorial supervision the Shenbao had become increasingly anti-Japanese, anti-Japanese activism and propagandists needed shelter. Shelter and institutional resources were available to individuals like Huang, and others, in the form of native-place organization.

Whereas in the period prior to 1925, it seems that native-place associations remained vital actors on the Shanghai scene because of a continuing absence of strong government and the limited development and impact of newer and more functionally differentiated social organizations, it would appear that in the Nanjing decade they reemerged in importance because of the imperfect, uneven and at times oppressive nature of the new state.

[94] Huang Yanpei, "Shanghai Pudong tongxianghui mujin goudi jianzhu xuanyan" (Manifesto for Shanghai Pudong Tongxianghui land purchase and building-construction fundraising) (pamphlet, Pudong Tongxianghui, Archives, Shanghai Archives).

Recent discussion of civic activity in the Republican era has been dominated by the concepts of "civil society" or a "public sphere," terms which, employed in a Chinese context, have aroused considerable debate.^[95] Civil society/public sphere discussions as they have been articulated in the China field have often focused on efforts to document practices of "urban citizenship" and the existence of social arenas which were entirely independent from the state. This emphasis on autonomy or its inverse, state control, has inhibited consideration of the modes of public maneuvering described above, which were neither fully autonomous nor state controlled. As the activities of native-place associations in the Nanjing decade reveal, a rich associational life coexisted with the ever-present (if often ineffectual) threat of state coercion. The history of these associations in the Nanjing decade raises questions about the extent to which city residents wished to develop a common urban identity or to operate on the basis of urban citizenship. It is not clear that such things were imaginable. Shanghai citizenship (whatever it could mean) was clearly less useful, in practice, than membership in a powerful native-place association. Even the most powerful businessmen (not to mention people like Du Yuesheng) found it desirable to establish, direct or at least contribute heavily to their native-place associations. Among the leaders of Shanghai native-place associations we find many of Shanghai's most prominent and outspoken capitalists, journalists and politicians, among them Liu Hongsheng, Wang Yiting, Wang Xiaolai, Shi Liangcai and Yu Xiaqing.^[96] Sponsoring native-place organizations not only gave them considerable "face" and large networks of followers but also permitted them to acquire the legitimacy of speaking as selected leaders of large "people's" associations.

It is important to note the civic activity of native-place associations

[95] David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley, Calif., 1989); David Strand, "An Early Republican Perspective on the Traditional Bases of Civil Society and the Public Sphere in China" (paper presented to the American-European Symposium on State vs. Society in East Asian Traditions, Paris, May 29-31, 1991); Frederic Wakeman, "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," MC 19 (April 1993):108-38; William Rowe, "The Problem of 'Civil Society' in Late Imperial China," MC 19 (April I993):139-57; Mary Backus Rankin, "Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere," MC 19 (April 1993):158-82; Judith Farquhar and James Hevia, "Culture and Postwar American Historiography of China," positions 1 (April 1993):486-525.

[96] Liu was a director of the Dinghai Tongxianghui; Wang Yiting was a Pudong Tongxianghui director; Wang Xiaolai was a Shaoxing Tongxianghui director; Shi Liangcai was Jiangning Tongxianghui director.

in the 1930s and their impressive ability to mobilize their resources for "public" or "civic" goals—their use of public meetings, newspaper advertisements and media events, and the frequency with which they united in citywide federations of associations for more effective economic or political action. At the same time, given the features of public opinion and the urban environment outlined above, it is equally important not to confuse such developments with a European model of a "public sphere" as described by Habermas. We should, instead, attempt to find a model more suited to the Chinese context. What the persistence of native-place organization and the scope of tongxianghui activity suggests is that even the notion of civic activity could only be sustained in the 1930s if Chinese city residents were organized in large and influential protective groups. As the activities of tongxianghui throughout the Republican era suggest, it was these groups, not individual citizens, which formed the constituent elements of the newer, more celebrated, more "rational" forms of political and commercial organization, including the Chamber of Commerce and trade and occupational associations. Because government services were minimal, it was necessary to contend for them through powerful groups. It was also necessary to create alternative subgovernments in the city which functioned to mediate disputes and dispense justice. The corruptions of government in this period also necessitated such groups as a means of recourse and protection.

Native-place associations did not provide the only access to this kind of broad public identity, of course, but because of their size, constituency, legitimacy and public acceptability they were extremely useful and popular. The large constituency of tongxianghui both provided considerable resources and gave legitimacy to the claim of being "people's" organizations (minzhong tuanti ). By embracing both native-place sentiment and modern civic and nationalist values, they eased the anomie of modern political and economic organization. They were, moreover, viewed as legitimate civic organizations and were not generally vulnerable to repression because they were not explicitly political.^[97]Tongxianghui could also continue to function because they were at times quite useful to the Guomindang government. They not only provided welfare

[97] It was for this reason that in 1940 underground Communist organizers followed a party directive for work in Guomindang-controlled areas which counseled working through tongxianghui , among other popular legal organizations. See Zhang Chengzong, "Kongzhan banian de Shanghai dixia douzheng" (Shanghai underground struggle in eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan), in Kangri fengyun lu (Record of the War of Resistance Against Japan), vol. 1, 16.

and social services beyond the capacity of the Shanghai Municipal Government but also, at times, actively promoted state programs, particularly as propaganda organs in the New Life Movement.^[98] Finally, as an organizational form tongxianghui could defend their presence in terms of the popular and well-accepted rhetoric of local self-government and preparation for national constitutional government, the eternally repeated goals of politics throughout the Republican period. The relationship between tongxianghui and the state is best understood as expressing not autonomy but shifting areas of partial autonomy, interpenetration and negotiation. This combination suggests a conception of power different from Habermas's "public sphere" idea. Such reconceptualization is crucial to understanding both the possibilities and the limitations of civic action in the Nanjing decade.

[98] Hu She dishisanjie .