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,
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
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
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.
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.
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]
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]
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]
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
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-
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
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
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-
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]