Chapter Five
Native-Place Associations, Foreign Authority and Early Popular Nationalism

Foreign authorities in Shanghai had to contend with native-place associations from the moment they established settlements in the city, after the formal opening of Shanghai to foreign trade in November 1843. Agreements concluded between Chinese authorities and the British and French in the 1840s regulated foreign use and purchase of land within designated areas (see Maps 4 and 5).^[1] In both the British Settlement and the French Concession, foreigners were enjoined by Chinese authorities to respect huiguan and gongsuo and to preserve the integrity of the coffin repositories and burial grounds maintained by these institutions.^[2] As foreign settlements grew, huiguan and gongsuo (which were among the largest Chinese corporate landholders in the city) presented obstacles to foreign colonialist expansion.

Struggle over huiguan land soon erupted into the first violent conflicts between Chinese and foreigners in post-Taiping Shanghai. Because

[1] The British settlement was formalized in 1845. The French Concession was established in 1849. These settlements were to have been reserved for foreigners (and Chinese in their employ) only, but that arrangement lasted only until Taiping forces swept through the Yangzi valley in 1860, bringing thousands of refugees from Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui cities and villages to the Shanghai foreign settlements. An area along the Huangpu River, north of the Suzhou Creek, which was occupied by Americans, merged with the British settlement in 1863, forming what would henceforth be recognized as the International Settlement. By the late nineteenth century there were approximately one-half million Chinese living within the boundaries of the International Settlement and the separate French Concession.

[2] AMRE, Chine, Correspondance Consulaire, 1847-51, document dated November 6, 1849.

Map 4.
Shanghai in 1880. Source: Section of map published by
Dianshi Studio, 1880. (Courtesy of Hamashita Takeshi).

Map 5.
The development of the French and International settlements. Source: Xu Gongsu
and Qiu Jinzhang, eds., Shanghai gong-gong zujie shigao (Shanghai, 1980).

of their religious and symbolic importance to a broad sojourning community, huiguan could easily mobilize important sectors of the Chinese community in defense of their interests. By the turn of the century, native-place associations involved in such conflicts acquired reputations as symbols of a popular nationalist struggle against brutal imperialism.

Despite the role of native-place organization in antiforeign incidents, relations between huiguan and foreign authorities were not normally governed by conflict. As in their dealings with Chinese authorities, huiguan regularly cooperated with the administrations of the growing foreign settlements, which in turn relied upon them. This was a natural outcome of the multiplicity of administrative jurisdictions and the dispersion of public power that characterized semicolonial Shanghai. Insofar as cooperation with foreign powers reinforced huiguan authority, huiguan kept order in the settlements. When foreigners encroached on huiguan interests, huiguan did not hesitate to disturb the peace.

Foreign Reliance on Huiguan in the Maintenance of Settlement Order

Once the settlement governments were firmly established they began to rely on native-place associations for resources and assistance in the government of the Chinese communities within their borders. In the process the foreign authorities circumvented Chinese officials and placed the leaders of native-place associations in the position of representing the Chinese community. In this respect, the foreign presence in the city forced a certain reconceptualization of the meaning of huiguan as urban institutions, bringing together disparate native-place institutions into collective committees. When such committees were counterposed to and coordinated with foreign municipal authorities, they represented not the native place but the composite urban Chinese community.

Public Funding, Population Management and Judicial Functions . Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, huiguan and gongsuo provided funding for the joint Fire Commission of the international settlements. The importance of their contributions is reflected in a listing of major contributors to the commission in the Shanghai Municipal Council Report for 1875:

Huiguan and gongsuo also helped fund the foreign police. Surviving account books of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo for 1873 and 1874 list two types of payment to the settlement police (in addition to the payment of regular taxes), amounting to more than 250 taels a year from this one huiguan .^[3]

Just as Chinese authorities relied on huiguan and gongsuo to resolve disputes within the Chinese population, foreign assessors in the Mixed Court routinely consulted with huiguan . As one assessor recalled:

The guilds [huiguan and gongsuo ] of China are not organized under charters from the [Chinese] Government, but the Government has always recognized their power and has usually been careful to avoid open conflict. Conflict, as we have seen, has usually resulted in defeat for the Government.

The guilds... have their own courts, and their members, as a rule, avoid the official courts. Sometimes, however, it is impossible to do this. Outside parties bring suits against guild members .... In the past, however, the Government courts have usually decided such cases in harmony with the regulations of the guild concerned.

While living in Shanghai it was my duty... to serve as American Assessor in the Mixed Court .... In the various civil suits that were brought before the court it was the rule to consult the regulations of the guild concerned.^[4]

Foreign authorities also enlisted huiguan help in maintaining order among Chinese residents of the settlements during times of social and political crisis. In contrast with the periods of the Taiping threat (1860-62) and the war with Japan (1894), when Chinese took refuge in the foreign settlements, the antiforeign violence of the Boxers in North China in 1900 led to an exodus of Chinese residents who feared staying within the International Settlement. The alarmed Municipal Council posted proclamations to calm the population. Unable to allay the fleeing residents' anxieties, the Council convened representatives of "all the leading provincial guilds" to enlist their help in dissuading would-be emigrés by reinforcing security. For those determined to leave, they issued bilingual passes to control the population flow: "The measures for

[3] Guang-Zhao gongsuo zhengxinlu , 1873, 1874.

[4] E. T. Williams, China, Yesterday and Today (New York, 1923), 203-4.

the defense of Shanghai Settlement, arranged by the Council and the headmen of local Guilds [ge huiguan dongshi ], have already been duly .communicated to the public by notice. The Committee of the ——— Guild, having now reported that Chinese resident ——— is anxious to change his residence..., this pass is hereby issued to state there is no objection to his removal. Police protection provided where necessary."^[5] Consultation and cooperation between major huiguan and the foreign authorities became general practice, as the Municipal Council recognized: "Whenever in the past any important questions have arisen affecting the Chinese community, it has been the custom for the Council to consult with the headman or committee of local guilds, so as to devise measures beneficial to those concerned. This was especially the case during the Boxer trouble of 1900, when the guilds, cooperating with the Council, did so much good in reassuring the general public."^[6]

Although huiguan cooperated with settlement authorities, they retained considerable autonomy and remained impenetrable to foreign efforts to understand and control them. The "guilds" almost entirely eluded the settlement police who attempted an investigation in 1904. Instructed to obtain a complete list of "all guilds and similar organizations within the Settlement," the police set out to discover the rudimentary characteristics of each association, including the purpose for which they were established, the number and composition of their membership, the leaders' names and the general regulations. They were disappointed. Contrary to expectations, "information was not immediately furnished [by the guilds] .... The majority, beyond [some] verbal answers ... failed to reply." The Council continued to hope that "the guilds will alter [their] policy of obstruction," but there was little it could do, and it never obtained a satisfactory accounting of these associations.^[7]

Huiguan as Representative Bodies . In the period prior to 1911, the western residents of the International Settlement resisted any form of Chinese representation in settlement government. When a "Chinese Consultative Committee" was proposed by leaders of three prominent huiguan in December 1905, the Ratepayer's Association rejected the measure on the grounds that the plan "foreshadowed undue

[5] MCR for 1900, 81-82.

[6] MCR for 1904, 25.

[7] Ibid., 26-28.

influence and intervention in the affairs of the Foreign Settlement," asserting moreover, that "advice regarding native interests is available without formal organization." Nonetheless, as the Ratepayers' statement testifies, an informal system of representation existed and functioned with a certain efficacy if without legal standing.^[8]

In 1910 the Municipal Council informally recognized a body of fourteen principal "guilds" in the foreign settlements:

Ningpo (Ningbo) Provincials' Guild

Cantonese (Guangdong) Provincials' Guild

Shantung (Shandong) Provincials' Guild

Nanking (Nanjing) Guild

Wusieh (Wuxi) Guild

Shanse (Shanxi) Bankers' Guild

Guild of the Chihli (Zhili) Provincials and Eight Banner Corps

Exchange Bankers' Guild

Gold Guild

Pawn Brokers' Guild

Silk Guild

(Huzhou) Silk Cocoon Merchants' Guild

Tea Traders' Guild

Foreign Piece Goods Dealers' Guild

When matters arose affecting the Chinese community, the Council addressed inquiries to some or all of these organizations to assess Chinese opinion.^[9]

Close cooperation between the Municipal Council and a similarly constituted informal committee of huiguan and gongsuo leaders helped ameliorate an explosive situation at the end of 1910, remembered as the

[8] MCR for 1906, 392-95. Such consultation was a key element in strike resolution, in which western authorities sought huiguan mediation. When, for example, Guangdong carpenters struck in the International Settlement in 1902, the Municipal Council negotiated with the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo (GZGYB, 1902).

[9] For instance, when a Chinese amusement center was proposed, the Council con-suited the following associations: the Guangdong, Wuxi, Shanxi, Ningbo, Zhili, and Huzhou silk huiguan , the foreign piece goods, exchange bankers and tea and gold gongsuo (MCK for 1910, 88, 272-73).

Plague Riots of November 11-18. As was frequently the case, tension developed between Chinese residents and foreign authorities over an issue of public health. The appearance of bubonic plague in Shanghai in the fall provided the Municipal Council of the International Settlement with a pretext for enacting special public-health bylaws which enlarged the scope of foreign authority over Chinese residents.^[10] Plague-infected rat corpses had appeared in the preceding year and—while counting the rat corpses brought in by Chinese laborers hired and given chopsticks for this task of collection— the Council readied itself for action. After a human plague death in the Settlement at the end of October, the Council enacted emergency plague-prevention measures. It established a plague station and surveillance system in the surrounding "plague area." Within this area (the Hongkou district), municipal health officers and sanitary investigators inspected all houses daily, forcibly removing residents suspected of harboring plague and placing those found ill and those in contact with them in an isolation hospital. Crews then evacuated the entire housing block around these designated points of disease, removed ceilings, foundations and other rat-friendly areas, surrounded the block with rat-proof barricades and fumigated with sulphur.

Not surprisingly, these measures (exacerbated by rumor and the absence of any program of public education) provoked severe unrest in the Chinese community. On November 12, 1910, hearing that the foreign authorities were seizing and killing women and children for esoteric purposes, bands of Chinese pelted foreigners with stones, beat sanitary inspectors with bamboo poles and smashed disinfecting vans and equipment. Hundreds of women and children fled the International Settlement for Chinese areas of Shanghai or the French Concession. The North China Herald called for "a representative committee of Chinese from the Guilds and prominent residents" to cooperate with the Municipal authorities and reach "the ignorant masses of the Chinese" in the

[10] The bylaws, first proposed in 1903, made Chinese liable for notifying authorities of suspected plague cases, subject to fines and hard labor for noncompliance; Chinese were forbidden to move or bury corpses without the Health Officer's consent; the Council was empowered to evict residents and demolish houses of plague victims; finally, overcrowding was made an offense subject to penalty. Any residence inhabited "in excess of a proportion of one person for every 40 square feet of floor space and 400 cubic feet of clear and unobstructed internal air space" was considered overcrowded (this last law, proposed by the Council, was not approved by the Consular Body). See MCR for 1910, 146-49. See also Richard Feetham, Report of the Hon. Richard Feetham to the Shanghai Municipal Council (Shanghai, 1931), vol. 1, 59. Regarding plague in China, see Carol Benedict, "Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth Century China," MC 14 (April 1988):107-55.

urgent matter of plague prevention, admitting the Council's mistake in abruptly enforcing insufficiently explained health measures. In the meantime, the Council gave notice that the new health bylaws would be put into force on November 14.^[11]

On November 13, together with the president and vice-president of the Chinese Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, prominent huiguan and gongsuo directors sent a letter to David Landale, Chairman of the Municipal Council, expressing their desire to help prevent plague but making the moderation of plague-prevention measures a precondition for their services.^[12] Before acceding to this pressure, the Council made an abortive attempt to reason with Chinese residents directly in a public meeting on November 16, hoping to persuade them of the necessity of the health procedures. Prior to the meeting the Council distributed educational posters and leaflets. As a precaution, only "well-dressed, respectable Chinese" were admitted. Leaders of Shanghai huiguan and gongsuo were given front scats and were asked to speak. Nonetheless, the meeting was a disaster. The only moment of audience enthusiasm occurred when Ningbo notable Shen Dunhe (Shen Zhongli) was cheered by his tongxiang for promising to arrange construction of a Chinese Isolation Hospital outside the Settlement. As soon as he referred to the plague-prevention measures, the meeting was broken up by violent protests.^[13]

On November 17 Council Chairman Landale notified Zhou Jinzhen (Zhou Jinbiao), Chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, as well as directors of major Shanghai huiguan and gongsuo , that the bylaws would refer to plague outbreaks only. He forwarded a revised code (amended according to their instructions) for their approval and expressed the Council's need for help: "The Council notes with greatest satisfaction that you are in sympathy with the... prevention of Plague,

[11] MCR for 1910, 91-97, 107, 150; PRO, FO 405.201, "China Annual Report, 1910," 36; NCH, November 11, 1910; NCH, November 18, 1910; Feetham, Report , 58.

[12] The first signatories to the letter after the officers of the Chamber were three Siming Gongsuo directors, seven individuals identified as the "Committee of the Canton Guild," five "Canton Guild" (possibly Chaozhou Huiguan) directors and six Native Bank Guild directors. The letter protested the use of the plague outbreak as a pretext for introducing general health bylaws. The Shanghai Daotai, Liu Yanyi, separately complained that the Council had provoked the Chinese population by failing to prepare the community for the health measures. He also objected to the empowerment of foreign authorities to pull down houses, arguing that this impinged on Chinese sovereignty. See MCR for 1910, 144-45.

[13] NCH, November 18, 1910; SB, November 15, 1910; SB, November 17, 1910; AMRE, Chine, Politique Étrangère, Concession Française de Changhai, vol. 277, 1911-12.

and gratefully accepts your offer of cooperation in the no less difficult task of explaining to those who are ignorant what is required and what has to be done"^[14]

The next day the Municipal Council met with representatives of the Chinese community to discuss the plague measures. In attendance were Chamber of Commerce Chairman Zhou Jinzhen (also Siming Gongsuo director), vice-president Shao Qintao (of Zhangzhou, Jiangsu), Wen Zongyao (Guang-Zhao Gongsuo director), Zhong Ziyuan (director of both Guang-Zhao Gongsuo and the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway), Tian Zhimin (of Shangyu, Zhejiang, and Cotton Yarn Guild director), Shen Dunhe (Siming Gongsuo director, also representing the Imperial Bank of China), Yu Xiaqing (Siming Gongsuo director and Netherlands Bank comprador), Zhu Baosan (both Siming Gongsuo and the Foreign Piece Goods Guild director), Wang Ruizhi (Shandong Guild director), Zhu Lanfang (director of both the Huaxing Flour Company and the Xijin [Wuxi] Huiguan), Xu Gongruo (Huzhou Silk Association director), Chen Yizhai (of Shangyu, Zhejiang; Native Bankers Association director), Yang Xinzhi (of Wucheng, Zhejiang; Cocoon and Silk Guild director).^[15]

The discussion lasted for six hours, during which time the Chinese representatives secured significant modifications in the proposed plague-prevention procedures.^[16] The Chinese press celebrated this resolution as something of a popular nationalist victory. Praising the Chinese negotiators, the Shenbao stressed that citizen action had protected Chinese interests: "Despite our timid and weak officials, the strength and sincerity of the people's spirit in our country is something to be proud of."^[17]

[14] MCR for 1910, 146.

[15] NCH mistakenly identifies Tian as a Guang-Zhao Gongsuo director (November 25, 1910). Given NCH inaccuracies, the above identifications of individuals and affiliations are based on Shanghai shangwu zonghui tongrenlu (Record of members of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce) (Shanghai, 1910); SGY, 1915; SBZX. Also in attendance was a certain "China Thompson" of the Foreign Merchandise Association.

[16] NCH, November 25, 1910; MCR for 1910, 91-97, 107, 150. In addition to restricting the bylaws to plague alone, it was agreed that the search for Chinese cases should be conducted by Chinese doctors from an independently instituted Chinese plague hospital, accompanied by a female western doctor. Searches were restricted to an area within the Hongkou district (the location of the plague death). Finally, if deaths were to ensue from infection, all matters of laying out and burial were to be arranged in accordance with Chinese customs.

[17] SB, November 19, 1910. The Chinese account lists the relevant actors in the negotiations as Zhou Jinzhen and Shao Qintao, the president and vice-president of the Shanghai Chamber; Ningbo bang directors Yu Xiaqing and Shen Zhongli; Guangdong bang directors Tang Luyuan and Zhong Ziyuan; and the director of the foreign-goods bang (yang-huobang ), Su Baosen (a Ningbo native).

These measures both resolved the difficulties and restricted the attempted extension of foreign municipal authority over Chinese residents. Although Chinese officials had at various points voiced protests in this matter, unofficial associations rather than the Chiese government mediated on behalf of the Chinese people in the resolution of the crisis.^[18] In the meantime, Ningbo and Guangdong association leaders cooperated in the implementation of the new plague-prevention plan. In the presence of the foreign community, the Ningbo leader Shen Dunhe applauded the efforts of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo in establishing a Chinese hospital: "I have the pleasure to inform you that through the assistance of Messrs. Lo King-sou and Chun Bing-him, members of the Committee of the Cantonese Guild, we have been able to secure a site ... for the Paotian Hospital. This property is known as 'Verdant Villa' and formed the summer residence of Cheong Chi-pio, the well-known Cantonese merchant who parted with it to the Chinese Plague Committee for a nominal sum—an act of charity and public spirit."^[19]

This case also makes clear that although the modern and inclusive-sounding Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce appeared as a new actor in the Shanghai political arena after 1902, it did not displace the older huiguan and gongsuo , particularly the more powerful ones like the Siming Gongsuo and the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo in their function of representing the Chinese community. Rather, in this period new institutional identifications were added to older ones. The interweaving of older and newer institutional forms is evident in the overlapping Chamber/huiguan/ trade affiliations of the Chinese negotiators. Although the Municipal Council often found it convenient to direct its letters to the "guilds" through the Chamber, this practice reveals that the "guilds" continued to be important actors. The Chamber was made up, in considerable part, of huiguan and gongsuo directors and was dominated throughout its early years by the Ningbo community.^[20] Although most of the individuals who met with the Municipal Council to negotiate the plague emergency were Chamber members, it is significant that

[18] MCR for 1910, 145-47; NCH, December 2, 1910.

[19] NCH, December 2, 1910. Cheong's biography appears in Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China (London, 1908), 532-34.

[20] See Joseph Fewsmith, Party, State and Local Elites in Republican China: Merchant Organizations and Politics in Shanghai, 1890-1930 (Honolulu, 1985), 34; Shanghai shangwu zonghui tongrenlu , 1906-15.

they were identified as leaders of their native-place bang in Chinese sources, this affiliation being often more significant at this time in the Chinese community. Although the Chamber provided an organizational form which appeared particularly legitimate to western authorities, it did not replace huiguan and gongsuo . What it did was redirect their focus by creating an institutional framework for the regular coordination of their activities in matters concerning Shanghai municipal affairs.^[21]

The plague-related incidents of 1910 demonstrate both the advisory role of prominent huiguan and citywide coordination among associations in the dual interests of keeping order and defending Chinese rights.^[22] This episode and, indeed, the eventual formalization of Chinese representation in Settlement government must be presented in the context of the politics of conflict— the other side of the politics of cooperation with foreign authorities. In Shanghai this history of mobilization for Chinese rights began in late-nineteenth-century huiguan-centered riots.

The Politics of Conflict: The Ningbo Cemetery Riots

Two of the first violent popular conflicts between Chinese and foreigners in post-Taiping Shanghai, the Siming Gongsuo Riots of 1874 and 1898, originated in struggles over huiguan burial land. The riots are lauded in Chinese historiography as the first buddings of popular Chinese nationalism; recent revisionist western historiography has questioned their link to modern nationalism and has, instead, portrayed the riots as reflections of the deep concern for funerary ritual in traditional Chinese culture.^[23]

For the purposes of this study, to the extent that they focus on

[21] Given the Chambers characteristics in the early period of its existence, it resembled the federations of merchant associations that appeared in various cities in the late Qing. These federations, such as the Chongqing Basheng Huiguan (which grouped together eight provincial associations), took on aspects of municipal government, formalizing previously informal meetings among huiguan leaders to resolve urban issues. See Skinner, The City in Late Imperial China , 549-51.

[22] This role would later be formalized in a Chinese Advisory Board, discussed in Chapter 6, below.

[23] Accounts of these riots exist in Susan Mann Jones, "Finance in Ningbo: The Ch'ien Chuang, 1750-1880," in Economic Organization in Chinese Society , ed. W. E. Willmott, 47-77 (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 86-88; Morse, Gilds , 48; Liu Huiwu, ed., Shanghai jindaishi (Modern Shanghai history), vol. 1 (Shanghai, 1985), 183-89, 277-81; Tang Zhengchang, ed., Shanghai shi (Shanghai history) (Shanghai, 1989). For a refutation of the riots' connection to Chinese nationalism, see Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 56-73. Perry (Shanghai on Strike ) and Hokari ("Kindai shanhai") also emphasize death ritual in assessing the significance of the riots.

whether the label of "modern nationalism" is appropriately attached to the riots, both interpretations miss some of the significance of the events. Insofar as the riots were quickly represented in the Chinese press as models of "the people's" resistance to foreign imperialism, they provide a window onto developing popular understandings of nationalism. Moreover, although concern for coffins was certainly crucial in the riots, concern for protecting the dead could not, in itself, produce a riot. The structure of a well-organized native-place community provided the basis for mobilizing popular antiforeign protest. The presence of a managerial circle of huiguan leaders additionally provided a mechanism for successful negotiations with foreign authorities in defense of specific Chinese interests in the city.

The importance of the institutional presence of the Siming Gongsuo in these events is heightened by contrast with the third major violent Chinese-foreign confrontation in this period, a riot of wheelbarrow pullers in April 1897. Wheelbarrow pullers from northern Jiangsu violently protested an increase in license taxes imposed by the Shanghai Municipal Council, but they did not succeed in preventing the increase. In this incident, native-place occupational fits sustained an initial disorganized riot, but the combined lack of prestige, resources and organization among Subei immigrants made more organized and prolonged agitation (coupled with skillful negotiation) difficult.^[24] What is striking in all three cases is the way in which native-place community provided a vehicle for social mobilization. Significant antiforeign protest did not take place in this period outside preexisting lines of native-place community. Sustained, focused and productive protest, however, depended on a highly organized native-place community.

The Riot of 1874 . Although other major huiguan cemeteries within Settlement boundaries had been destroyed during the Small Sword Uprising or during French and British military operations against the Taipings, the cemetery land of the Siming Gongsuo re-

[24] The wheelbarrow pullers achieved only a three-month delay in enforcement of the license fee (SB, April 5-8, 1897; NCH, April 9, 1897).

mained within the French Concession.^[25] The considerable (and tax-free) huiguan holdings, protected by the presence of burial land, were an increasing irritant to the French.^[26]

Unable to persuade the huiguan leaders to relinquish the land, the French Municipal Council resorted to the dubious tactic of using its municipal road-building authority to appropriate Siming Gongsuo holdings. At this time the area around the huiguan was open country. Nonetheless, toward the end of 1873 French authorities devised a plan to run two roads past the sides of the huiguan property, intersecting in one of the cemeteries. In January 1874 Siming Gongsuo directors protested the proposal because the roads would run through land densely packed With coffins:^[27] "To make the road and have a traffic in carriages·... over the remains of the dead is very abhorrent to our ideas, as we do not believe their spirits would rest in peace; and to disturb their remains by digging them up and carrying them away elsewhere is equally repulsive. The whole of our ground... is very closely filled with the graves of our people; on the east side ... as much as ... to the west."^[28]

In place of the objectionable French proposal, the huiguan directors suggested alternate routes for the roads, offering not only to arrange and pay for an alternate site but to reimburse the Council for any outlays

[25] In the early years of the Settlement, Fujianese clashed with the British over destruction of their graveyard (PRO, FO 228. 162, 1853; PRO, FO 228.903, 1853). British and French troops occupied several huiguan in 1854 and in 1861-62, while defending the city from the Taipings. The pressure of French occupying armies forced the Fujian and Guangdong communities (whose huiguan were located in the French Settlement), to move their cemeteries in 1861 (NCH, October 5, 1861; NCH, January 3, 1890). The French were delighted at their victory: "The expropriation of the Fujian and Cantonese cemeteries, which we have so many times requested and always been refused, is finally a fait accompli .... This den of pestilence, which was itself a frightening expression of the politics of exclusion, has given way today to new homes (Ch. B. Maybon and Jean Fredet, Histoire de la Concession Française de Changhai [Paris, 1929], 238).

[26] The Siming Gongsuo site, on land northwest and just outside the walled Chinese city, was incorporated into the expanding French Concession in 1849. The gongsuo was razed in the Small Sword Uprising but was rebuilt and expanded shortly after. In 1860 British troops razed cemetery markers and a surrounding wall; nonetheless, the gongsuo managed to retain title to its land and gained tax-free status in the French Concession as a charitable organization through the intervention of Daotai Ying Baoshi (a fellow-provincial) in 1868. See Leung, Shanghai Taotai , 151.

[27] Morse, Gilds , 46-47; NCH, May 9, 1874; Liu Huiwu, Shanghai jindaishi , vol. I, 184-86. Even NCH editorials questioned the need to build roads at this location at this time (NCH, May 16, 1874, and NCH, June 27, 1874, cited in Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 61).

[28] NCH, May 9, 1874.

already expended for the current plan. Reinforcing their generosity with a caution, the directors concluded, "The Ningbo people will not allow ... their ground to be built upon." When the French Municipal Council ignored the protest and asked the huiguan to clear the land, the directors refused, stating that the area was a pauper burial ground, densely packed with coffins too flimsy to move.^[29]

On April 26 the leaders of each sojourning Ningbo trade (three to four hundred individuals) met to discuss the road-building emergency. The Shenbao reported that, "because the people from Ningbo prefecture bear great attachment to their native place," emotions at the meeting were turbulent. Two days later more than one thousand Ningbo people (including workers and shopkeepers) met at the huiguan , but four hours of discussion brought little agreement. Having considered the probable length of the meeting, the dongshi had arranged to distribute five hundred mantou (steamed buns). Though this could hardly feed a group more than double that number, the Shenbao reported that the hungry crowds stayed on to pursue the matter, reportedly calling for a strike against the French and proposing to go en masse to petition the French Consul. Having convened the crowd (and having at least symbolically provided it with sustenance), the huiguan directors also restrained it, sending, instead, six of their own number to negotiate with the French Consul. They also persuaded Daotai Shen Bingcheng (a fallow-provincial) to intercede with the French on behalf of the Siming Gongsuo.

In response to warnings of unrest and prodded by Consul General Godeaux (who was sympathetic to the huiguan ), the French Council temporarily suspended roadwork and agreed to meet with the huiguan directors on May 4.^[30] While this meeting was pending, a chance event sparked a riot. On May 3 a crowd of several hundred Ningbo people, "packed together like fish roe," stood discussing the situation outside the closed huiguan . A woman identified by the Ningbo crowds as a Guangdong prostitute passed by in a cart. When Ningbo rowdies hara-

[29] PRO, FO 233.96, Chinese Secretary's Office, 1846-80, piece 328. The letter was signed by eleven Siming Gongsuo directors: Wang Zhenchang, Zhuang Jianren, Fang Yizhang, Zhou Dalin, Li Yuan, Hong Zhenlin, Ge Shengxiao, Zhang Sicang, Zhao Licheng, Liu Xianshen and Liu Linshu (NCH, May 9, 1874; SB, April 21, 1874).

[30] SB, April 21, 1874; SB, April 27, 1874; SB, April 29, 1874; SB, May 2, 1874, French Consul Godeaux appreciated the gravity of the situation and was receptive to the skillful negotiating tactics of the huiguan directors; the French Municipal Council was less tractable. See AMRE, Série Chine, Correspondance Politique, Shanghai, 1871-75, vol. 7, 257-59. See also Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 59-61.

ssed her for serving French clients, she cried out for help. The policeman who came to her aid soon found himself joined by forty other policemen, fighting a Ningbo crowd of several hundred.^[31]

Soon five to six hundred people had gathered at the Siming Gongsuo gate, and more filled the empty surrounding land. The French police returned in force, armed with guns, and climbed up on the huiguan buildings. The growing Ningbo crowd hurled stones at the police, who fired, killing one man and wounding another. The crowd, now numbering more than fifteen hundred, surged forward. Outraged by the spilling of blood, the crowd set fire to French houses, striking at French residents along the way (though apparently avoiding those who identified themselves as British). By 6:00 P.M. numerous buildings were on fire. According to the Shenbao , although the crowd destroyed the street-lights, the fires maintained the illumination of day. Forty foreign homes and three Chinese buildings were destroyed. Other targets were the French Municipal compound and the East Gate police station.

French troops and International Settlement volunteer forces fired into the crowd and charged with their bayonets drawn. Chinese author-ides assisted in the riot suppression, sending in one hundred fifty soldiers at the request of the Consul General. After midnight, when calm was restored, seven Chinese lay dead and twenty more were badly wounded.

The next day, while western militia forces marched around the Siming Gongsuo (and while as many as a thousand Ningbo sojourners fled to their native place), the foreign consuls met to condemn the rioters and demand indemnity for their losses. To their astonishment, Consul General Godeaux independently and publicly proclaimed that upon the request of the huiguan directors, seconded by petitions of the Daotai and the Shanghai Magistrate, he was instructing the French Municipal Council to change its plans and preserve Siming Gongsuo buildings and graves. To the great dismay of the French Council, the riot achieved the aim of defending sacred Ningbo land against French incursions.^[32]

[31] SB, May 4, 1874; NCH, May 9, 1874. Sources do not indicate the policeman's nationality (or native place).

[32] SB, May 4, 1874; SB, May 8, 1874; NCH, May 9, 1874. At its peak, the crowd was estimated at five thousand. The riot of 1874 was not definitively settled until 1878, when the Minister of France, the Viscount Bernier de Montrnorand, accepted thirty-seven thousand taels for damages to French property and delivered in return seven thousand taels to be divided among the seven families of the Chinese killed. Accompanying this transfer of payments, he declared that Siming Gongsuo holdings would be respected in perpetuity and that the huiguan would retain its tax-free status. See AMRE, Série Chine, Correspondance Politique, Shanghai, 1876-81, vol. 8, 34-9.

The Riot of 1898 . More than twenty years later the French authorities precipitated a second Ningbo cemctery riot. This time they focused on the opportune issue of hygiene, which provided an excuse marked with the persuasive power of scientific imperative for the elimination of the huiguan coffin repositories, which were identified as unsanitary. Thus, although in nineteenth-century Europe notions of cleanliness and disease differentiated social classes and provided legitimation for a certain restructuring of the urban social landscape, in the treaty-port environment of nineteenth-century Shanghai, public health provided an important avenue for the expansion of foreign municipal authority on Chinese soil.^[33]

As Shanghai population increased, so did the incidence of urban disease. Foreigners in Shanghai viewed Chinese culture in increasingly pathogenic terms, terms which justified the imposition of western institutions of cleanliness and order.^[34] Cholera, normally endemic in the summer months, approached epidemic proportions in the summer of 1890. Although mortality was highest among the Chinese, foreigners also fell victim. This increased foreign repugnance for Chinese "charnel houses" in the settlements and added urgency to calls for sanitary regulations. The rise in mortality also strained the capacity of coffin repositories:

During the months of July and August... the deaths among the Chinese inhabiting the English, American and French concessions amounted to about five thousand. Of these the greater number have been Ningpoese. At present the Ningpo Guild-house, outside the West Gate, is filled up with coffins piled on top of each other like so many bales of cotton in a go-down .... Now imagine two to three thousand of these ill-made, loose-jointed, and thin-boarded coffins, each containing a corpse filled with germs of disease and in a decomposing state, all crowded into one place as is the case with the Ningpo Guild-house. When one computes the enormous

[33] See, for example, Richard Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Tears, 1830-1910 (Oxford, 1987); Michel Foucault, "The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 , ed. and trans. Colin Gordon (New York, 1972), 166-82; Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant (Cambridge, Mass., 1986). See also Bryna Goodman, "The Politics of Public Health: Sanitation in Shanghai in the Late Nineteenth Century," Modern Asian Studies 23 (October 1989), 816-20.

[34] See Kerrie L. MacPherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai (Hong Kong, 1987), Preface, chaps. 1-2.

amount of poisonous gas that must escape from these three thousand coffins day and night, which gas is wafted all over the settlement... one is convinced that the present rate of mortality is very low indeed. That the Ningpo and other guild-houses arc storages for coffins the Municipal Council know only too wall.^[35]

By this point the area around the Ningbo cemetery (the site of coffin storage) was no longer empty land but, rather, densely populated city.

Seven years later, in 1897, after much remonstrance both the International Settlement and the French Concession forbade coffin storage within their boundaries.^[36] The major target of the French prohibition was the Siming Gongsuo. In January 1898 French General Consul Compte de Bezaure ordered the police to enforce the provision within six months. At this time both the French and the British were negotiating with the Chinese authorities for extension of their settlement boundaries. When the Daotai refused their request in the spring of 1898, the French responded by militantly asserting their power within settlement boundaries. At the end of May the Consul notified the Ningbo directors of French intent to expropriate Siming Gongsuo burial and coffin storage areas to build a Chinese hospital, school and slaughterhouse, as well as for roads which had been postponed in 1874. The huiguan , backed by the Chinese authorities, refused to recognize that the French had any right to dispossess them, although the directors did arrange for shipment to Ningbo of more than twenty-five hundred coffins. As the day of dispossession neared, the Daotai hinted to the settlement authorities that civil unrest was imminent.^[37]

[35] NCH, September 5, 1890. The "poisonous gas" idea of disease transmission, though erroneous (the cholera vibrio is transmitted through contaminated water and food), was consistent with nineteenth-century European epidemiological theories (and fears). Nonetheless, a French municipal doctor who inspected a coffin repository in 1890 confirmed that the coffins were well sealed and, owing to the practice of packing the interior with quick-lime, posed no public-health threat (Belsky, "Bones of Contention").

[36] Such regulations had to be made through the Chinese authorities under whose jurisdiction Chinese residents remained. In October 1897 the International Settlement Municipal Council asked the Chinese Mixed Court Magistrate for a proclamation forbidding the depositing of coffins in the Settlement. This document was issued November 13. See MCR for 1897, 66. Also in 1897, the French Municipal Council asked the French General Consul to insert into settlement regulations an article forbidding coffin repositories within Concession limits, following the International Settlement example. See AMRE, Chine, Politique Étrangère, Concession Française de Changhai, Compte-Rendu de la Gestion pour l'exercise, 1897, 109. Because the status of the Mixed Court Magistrate was relatively low, the effect and the legal status of these rules is unclear.

[37] The notification indicated that the French would compensate the owners for the assessed value of the properties (PRO, FO 228, 1898). At this time the prominent gongsuo directors were Fang Mingsban, Yan Xiaofang, Ye Chengzhong and Sheri Dunhe (Wei Bozhen, Yu Xiaqing xiansheng [Mr. Yu Xiaqing] [Shanghai, 1946], 11; Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 65).

On July 16, a day after the French served final notice, sailors landed from a French gunboat and supervised the destruction of three sections of cemetery wall by workmen (see Figure 6). Siming Gongsuo leaders responded by calling on Ningbo merchants to cease trade and meet the next morning.^[38]

In the meantime, events proceeded beyond the huiguan leaders' control. While the French tore down the wall, crowds surrounded and harassed the intruders, although daylight and the sight of French arms temporarily prevented open conflict. When night fell, crowds armed with bricks and spiked bamboo poles filled the streets, smashing lamps, uprooting lampposts and accosting foreigners. Rioting continued through the next morning and included a contingent of Cantonese, who attacked a French police station. French troops shot and killed between twenty and twenty-five people (all Chinese), seriously wounding another forty.^[39]

The next day, French and British authorities observed that the Ningbo community was on strike and that shops were closed in both settlements. Virtually all Ningbo people (who in the estimate of the British Consul comprised half of the French Concession residents) complied with the strike, which was enforced by crowds of young men. Foreign trade was seriously impaired because steamers were unable to load or discharge goods. Banks closed. Laundries closed as well, and cooks and servants left their foreign employers. Sectors of the Ningbo community also began to boycott French goods.

In the afternoon important Ningbo leaders emerged to negotiate an interim agreement with the French General Consul. Active hostilities ceased when the General Consul promised representatives of the Ningbo community a delay of three months, during which time the huiguan was to remove the offending graves.^[40]

In the midst of this ferment the Siming Gongsuo directors distributed the following circular, urging caution and order and asserting their authority over the community:

[38] This narrative is pieced together from accounts in Liu, Shanghai jindaishi , vol. I, 278-80; DR, 1892-91, 469-70; NCH, July and August 1898; Chen Laixin, Yu Xiaqing ni tsuite , 20-21; Negishi, Chugoku no girudo , 139-41; Negishi, Tadashi, Shanhai no girudo , 33-34-; PRO, FO 228.1293, 1898; MCR for 1898; Shenbao , July 16-18, 1898.

[39] PRO, FO 228.1293, "From Shanghai," 1898.

[40] The strike lasted four days (PRO, FO 228.1293, 1898; SBZX, 4-30).

With reference to the affair concerning our guild-house premises, the Shanghai Daotai and the French Consul General, in company with several Foreign merchants, are trying... to arrange a settlement. Now, it is necessary that all who belong to our community should act peaceably at present and quietly await the results of the above conference. By no means congregate in crowds and stir up trouble on the impulse of your united indignation, for you will only be making matters worse, and perhaps suffer injurics to no avail.^[41]

Despite this authoritative gesture, in the development and resolution of this incident the older directors—Yan Xiaofang, Ye Chengzhong and Shen Dunhe (who was assistant Daotai at the time of the strike)—were

[41] Circular dated Sunday, July 17, translated in DR, 1892-1901, 524.

Figure 6.
French destruction of the Siming Gongsuo wall, 1898. Chinese
caption reads: "The Siming Gongsuo, outside the west gate of
this city, was established in 1797. It has existed for one hundred
years. It contains the buried remains of more than ten thousand
people, the blood-pulse of the Ningbo Community, which were
handled with great care. In 1874… there was an incident. French
General Consul  Godeaux discussed this matter with the gongsuo
and gave his guarantee of protection and asked that a surrounding
wall be constructed to clarify the boundaries. This was signed by
the consuls of eleven countries, recognizing the right of the Ningbo
bang to permanently hold the property.... Unexpectedly the French
went back on their promise .... They ordered soldiers to destroy
three sides of the gongsuo wall, making three big holes, twenty feet
across. When the soldiers entered the gongsuo they found a sea of
people watching and talking. Hooligans formed a growing crowd.
They were without weapons and began throwing stones like rain on
the soldiers .... The French escaped injury only because of harsh
suppression [of the crowd] by civil and military authorities. One
can only say the French were very fortunate." Source: Dianshizhai
huabao (Dianshi Studio pictorial newpaper), 1983 Guangzhou
reprint of late-Qing edition (1884-1898).

forced to recognize an emergent element in the native-place community which challenged the older oligarchy. Although the dongshi did call · the meeting of Ningbo merchants on the morning of July 17, they did not control the strike or the negotiations which followed. Intervening between them and Ningbo workers and artisans was Shen Honglai, who had come to Shanghai as a laborer several decades earlier and had worked as a cook for foreigners. Shen had attained considerable influence in the Ningbo community through his leadership of the Ningbo Changsheng Hui, which had amassed sufficient property to provide for permanent yulanpen ceremonies for its members and had been incorporated into the Siming Gongsuo two years prior to the riot.^[42]

Shen played a major role in involving the broad community in the strike, organizing the members of his association (workers, petty artisans and people in foreign employ), along with an association of Ningbo grooms, to stop work. As Shen describes it, their decision to enter the strike took place in coordination with (but not subordination to) the dongshi decision to strike: "The directors Fang and Yan... were in charge [of the Siming Gongsuo] and wanted to strike. My bang , the Changsheng Hui, and the horse grooms gathered and met and we also wanted to strike." Together with the young Yu Xiaqing, who at barely thirty years of age had gone from being a "barefoot" immigrant to a respected comprador, Shen maintained effective organization among the strikers. When, four days later, Chinese and western authorities secured a resumption of trade, they achieved this through negotiation, not with the older huiguan leaders but with Shen.^[43]

Governor General Liu Kunyi, hearing of the trouble, appointed a committee of Chinese officials (including the Shanghai Daotai and the Provincial Treasurer) to investigate the affair and negotiate with the French Consul General. Six months of tense discussion of French and Chinese rights followed, the huiguan side apparently handled adroitly and aggressively by Yu, whose status as a businessman and comprador and association with Shen in the strike enabled him to bridge the gap between high and low in the Ningbo community. Yu reportedly boasted to Shen during the procecdings, "If both the worker and merchant cir-

[42] This practicc of "funerary patronage" clearly underlay Shen's influence during the 1898 strike (see Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 67-69).

[43] The quotation is from SBZX, 4-30. See also Chen Laixin, Yu Xiaqing ni tsuite , 20-21; PRO, FO 228.1293, 1898; Jones, "The Ningpo Pang, " 87-88; Negishi, Chugoku no girudo , 140.

cles back me up, no matter what atrocities the French resort to, how can they scare us?"^[44]

These negotiations were rendered moot by the rediscovery of a document of 1878 which recorded the (strangely forgotten) final settlement of the 1874 troubles by the French Minister at Beijing, which provided for permanent protection of the cemetery. The French abandoned their claims to Siming Gongsuo land, and the huiguan agreed to cease depositing new coffins within the Concession.

Early Nationalism and Developing Class Tensions

In the differences between the riots of 1874 and 1898 it is possible to view two important developments in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai which reshaped native-place communities and popular understandings of native-place identity. The first was the merchant politicization and rising popular nationalism that followed the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. The second was the gradual internal restructuring of power relations between elite and non-elite elements in the huiguan itself.

Both riots were essentially affairs of the Ningbo community, which mobilized to defend its sacred burial ground. As such it would be problematic to assert that for the actors involved the riots involved a sense of nationalism. Although a group of Cantonese rowdies took advantage of the second riot to attack a French police station, neither riot provides evidence of common or coordinated action among different native-place groups in defense of "Chinese" rights or sovereignty.

Nonetheless, although it is important to avoid a refashioning of earlier events in accord with later sentiments, if neither riot presents a case of "modern nationalism," it is important to note the ways in which neither may be described as purely "traditional." In the 1874 incident, tension between people of different native-place groups (the Ningbo crowd versus a Guangdong woman) produced the social friction which sparked the riot. In the context of French imperialism and popular anti-French sentiment this spark produced not a Ningbo-Guangdong street brawl (with members of the Guangdong community jumping in to re-

[44] Chen Laixin, Yu Xiaqing ni tsuite , 20.

store their native-place honor), but rather an anti-French riot. The idea that the purity or virtue of the Guangdong group was compromised by purported sexual relations between a Guangdong woman and French clients resonated with Ningbo sojourners' determination to preserve inviolate their sacred burial grounds against French incursions.

In the second incident we see a maturation of tactics, the development of a politically motivated strike and boycott, tactics which depended on the cooperation of the entire Ningbo community (across occupational and status lines) and proved most effective in impressing the foreign community. Boycotts were hardly new to huiguan and gongsuo , but they had been developed to discipline deviant members of the community or external economic competitors.^[45] The French target and the context of French jurisdiction on Chinese soil resulted in the adaptation of a traditional device of collective action to new and specifically political uses.

Moreover, the experience of antiforeign riots was transformative. Such confrontations (whatever the sentiments of the rioters) were important to the gradual working out of the opposing positions of "Chinese people" versus "foreigners" in the political imaginations of Shanghai residents. Although Chinese newspaper accounts of the 1874 incident were sympathetic to the aggrieved Ningbo community, they did not immediately view the events in terms of a Chinese-foreign polarity. In contrast, Shenbao editorials constructed a different meaning for the 1898 incident, reflecting developing public opinion. The 1898 events were presented in more universalistic terms, as a matter of asserting and protecting Chinese rights against foreigners:

If we do not resist, the will of the [Chinese] people will appear weak and Westerners will make unlimited demands. In the future, if the people's hearts from the one county of this little gongsuo are as steadfast as this, this will show that even though the country might be weak and the officials might be controlled, the people can't be bullied. Foreigners will know the firmness of the Chinese people's will and they will restrain themselves in order to not offend the people. Although this act of the French demands the land of the gongsuo , it may also be a test of the will of the Chinese people.^[46]

[45] C. F. Remer, A Study of Chinese Boycotts (Baltimore, Md., 1933).

[46] SB, July 19, 1898. See also SB, July 17, 1898; SB, July 18, 1898. As is evident here, the press played a crucial role in propagating popular nationalism. From the time of the Sino-French War (1883-1885) Sbenbao editorials criticized Qing weakness and appealed to the Chinese people to resist foreign incursions.

This editorial clearly constructs an understanding of the incident in which Ningbo people appear as exemplary Chinese in their steadfast determination to protect one small corner of Chinese territory from foreign imperialism. Here we see a positive linking of native-place solidarity to national identity and national interests. This connection is echoed in what we know of the motivations of Shen Honglai, who, according to Negishi Tadashi's account, visited Japan prior to his activism in the Changsheng Hui. During this stay Shen contemplated China's weakness and concluded that the key to China's problems could be found in the lack of cohesive social organizations which could unite to protect China's interests. Upon his return to Shanghai he threw himself into organizing the Ningbo Changsheng Hui.^[47]

Finally, the Shenbao editorial also expresses an appreciation of the force of popular nationalism as an antidote for China's weakness and a corresponding construction of officials as weak in contrast to the "people," presenting a critique of Qing officialdom at a time of government capitulation to foreign demands. These themes, stated cautiously here, would be voiced with considerably greater flamboyance in the early twentieth century.

It is clear that this developing articulation of popular nationalism in the press fastened on symbolic victories in the absence of substantive ability to deter the expansion of colonial control. The final settlement of the Siming Gongsuo affair was not achieved until early in the summer of 1899, when Beijing authorities finally granted the French the settlement extension they sought, in one sweep doubling the size of the French Concession. Although the Guangxu Emperor had steadfastly opposed such an extension (and had in fact proposed that the huiguan sacrifice its land to mollify the French), the court ultimately had no choice but to concede to French pressure.^[48]

[47] Negishi, Chugoku no girudo , 200; Negishi, Shanhai no girudo , 34; Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 67. The roughly educated commoner Shen's diagnosis that China's weakness resulted from a lack of cohesive social groups was very similar to the contemporary diagnosis of Liang Qichao, in his 1897 article "On grouping" (Shuo qun ), which deals with the problem of integrating Chinese people into a coherent and united political community through the formation of social groupings. See Hao Chang, Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 189o-1907 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 95-99.

[48] Dong Shu, "Shanghai fazujie de fazhan shiqi" (The period of development of the Shanghai French Concession), Shanghai tongzhiguan qikan (Journal of the Shanghai gazetteer office), 1 (1933):7o1-59; Tang Zhengchang, Shanghai shi , 350; Belsky, "Bones of Contention," 67. By the time of the concession expansion, Empress Dowager Cixi had placed herself on the throne in a coup following the Hundred Day Reforms. Nonetheless, as Belsky notes, there is no reason to imagine that Cixi's court was more receptive to French demands.

The contrast offered by the simultaneous preservation of huiguan property and expansion of Shanghai territory under French control highlights our perception of the weakncss of the Chinese central government and the local strength of Chinese associations. It also foreshadows the ways Chinese nationalism would (and would not) gain popular acceptance. Viewed from the perspective of this riot, national interests were not necessarily popular if they involved the sacrifice of local institutions (in this case the highly respected Siming Gongsuo). Although, in fact, more Chinese territory had been lost than gained by the time of the ultimate resolution of the riot, in local eyes the huiguan achieved a certain victory over the French, emerging ironically (if no less sincerely), as a champion of the nation.

The riot of 1898 provides another window on the process of internal restructuring that was taking place within the native-place community, visible also in the changing organizational arrangements for burial and yulanpen ceremonies. As noted in Chapter 3, the growing non-elite membership of the broad sojourner community provided a critical, though unstable, source of the elite huiguan leaders' power. As workers and artisans organized themselves and accumulated collective property, they were able to demand a somewhat greater voice in huiguan affairs. The hierarchy within sojourner communities would be increasingly challenged as the organizational clout of commoner sojourners grew and as popular organizations gained greater political legitimacy (as would happen in the course of popular nationalist movements).

In each Ningbo riot the huiguan elite attempted the delicate manipulation of the broad native-place community, the collective force of which was necessary to achieve victory in the struggle with the French. By calling a mass meeting in 1874 the dongshi mobilized and incited popular action. At the same time, they removed themselves from the scene of popular violence, dosing the Siming Gongsuo gates until calm was restored and they could emerge as influential and respectable mediators who could negotiate on behalf of the Ningbo community while sharing the foreign authorities' goal of maintaining order.

In the riot of 1898 the paternalism symbolized by the huiguan directors' gift of mantou two decades earlier appears to have broken down. Worker and artisan sojourner groups acted on their own initiative in the later strike, organized through articulate spokesmen who could claim Ningbo victories as their own.

The popular mobilization of 1898 hastened a process of limited democratization within the association. The evident power of worker organizations in the strike forced the huiguan elite to recognize and relinquish a certain amount of power to non-elite leaders who could effectively mobilize workers. Not only did the maverick Yu Xiaqing break into the circle of directors, but the worker-leader Shen Honglai rose to become business manager. Within three years, Shen (still bearing the prestige of organizing the 1898 strike) forced a reformation of the system of huiguan governance, forming a committee of rotating representatives of each trade which met regularly with the group of dongshi .^[49]

A stela document authored by Shen Honglai provides eloquent testimony of the rise of a man of the laboring classes into a position of power within the Siming Gongsuo.^[50] The author expresses himself stridently and inelegantly, his carved words evidently an extension of his lifetime battle for acceptance by the huiguan elite, who frequently excluded him from their company. At one point in the stone document Shen rages about an incident in which (after receiving Shen's help on various matters) the huiguan director Yan Xiaofang failed to answer his letter and then refused to receive him in his home, concluding resentfully, "From this you can see the behavior of the director: When there is a problem [and he needs you], he sees you as a person. When there is no problem, you are nobody to him." In his account Sheri takes evident pleasure in listing for posterity the considerable property and capital assets his Changsheng Hui brought to the Siming Gongsuo, all of the times huiguan leaders came to him for assistance, and all of his accomplishments as huiguan manager. According to his testimony, his help was sought as early as 1875 by huiguan director Zhou Xiaolu in regard to an attempt by an American to seize eight feet of a Siming Gongsuo road, a large portion of which had been paved by the Changsheng Hui. He details the role of his Changsheng Hui in the 1898 strike, as well as his pivotal role in a meeting with the U.S. Consul, who threatened him, saying, "If you want to strike, we twelve nations [the international community in Shanghai], together with the French, will tear down the huiguan. " While the U.S. Consul waited, Shen left the meeting and notified his bang to end the strike. According to his account, after he returned to the meeting and announced this decision the French troops retreated.

[49] See Chen Laixin, Yu Xiaqing ni tsuite , 21; SBZX, 4-29-31. In the same year as the riot Shen also reprimanded the dongshi for inattentiveness to the protection of Ningbo coffins, causing them to lose face in the community.

[50] SBZX, 4-29-31, document dated 1911.

As manager (while stressing his commitment to huiguan burial functions and providing charitable funds for impoverished members) Shen stopped wasteful practices, including the distribution of wood chips and planks from coffin construction to members as bonuses, by his estimate saving eventually forty thousand silver dollars from this alone. In addition to aggressive frugality, the talented Shen also raised funds to construct many income-producing properties (in one instance, residences with more than one hundred fifty units; in another, residences with more than three hundred units). Shen evidently gained considerable social prestige and attained a position of power by means of these accomplishments and by his consistent patronage of poorer Ningbo sojourners through provision of coffins and the construction of a clinic and hospital for the sick. Nonetheless, the stela stands as evidence of his recognition that his attainments were unusual (he repeats phrases like, "If you don't believe this, you can consult the deities" and "If this is not believed, there is a stela, you can come and see"). His account is defensive ("Ask the gentry merchants of the six counties [of Ningbo prefecture] to come and see the carelessness of the earlier managers of the gongsuo ") and self-aggrandizing ("After this, whenever the gongsuo had great or small matters to resolve, I, Honglai, acted on my own with power accorded to me alone") and expresses his fears that upon his death his gains and innovations would be lost to posterity.

The dual themes of the politicization of sojourner communities and the political emergence of subordinate groups within those communities dominate the history of native-place sentiment in the twentieth century and are a focus of subsequent chapters. In the popular expressions of antiforeign resistance and growing nationalism that characterized Shanghai in the first decade of the twentieth century, the precedent of the Ningbo Cemetery Riots would be invoked repeatedly as an episode of victorious heroism. In the riots, strikes and boycotts which followed, native-place organizations, prominent among them those of the already politicized and highly organized Ningbo community, proved to be crucial actors, mobilized to defend Chinese rights against injury and affront.

As was the case in the Ningbo Cemetery Riots, in the development of popular nationalism native-place organizations would appear consistently in the familiar role of dual-edged mediator, poised between the larger, non-elite tongxiang community and Chinese and foreign authorities. Because of the precedent of the cemetery riots, the unspoken threat

of popular violence underscored the urgency of huiguan demands at the negotiating table. Just as the strike success of 1898 forced the huiguan directors to recognize non-elite leaders who could mobilize workers, the increasingly popular nationalist politicization of the first years of the twentieth century would make links between high and low in the native-place community both imperative and tension filled. Huiguan leaders continued privately to encourage and publicly to restrain popular political activism in their native-place communities. Although they depended on the support of their tongxiang in their political battles, they also attempted to maintain order (not only to retain their respectability before Western and Chinese authorities but also in order to remain on top themselves).

Throughout this period the old elite generally did remain on top, but its control was often tenuous. Although workers frequently organized on their own, they still tried to assemble at the huiguan , which remained a symbolic center. Instead of abandoning the old nativc-place association, increasingly they would try to claim it as their own. Shen Honglai's rise and attempt to refashion the Siming Gongsuo foreshadows a broadening of association constituency which took place several years later in other native-place associations and produced an alternative, somewhat less oligarchic type of association. Although some of Shen's gains would indeed be lost after his death, his struggles and the early politicization of Ningbo sojourners during the 1898 riot were nonetheless responsible for hastening challenges to an old elite power structure which would not change without conflict.