McDaniel, Laura Andrews, “'Jumping the dragon gate': Social mobility among storytellers in Shanghai, 1849-1949” (1997)

Title : “'Jumping the dragon gate': Social mobility among storytellers in Shanghai, 1849-1949”

Author(s) : McDaniel, Laura Andrews

Year : 1997

Type : Dissertation

Subject : History

Keywords : social;culture

University : Yale University

Language:Name : English

Support : Print

Abstract : This dissertation explores changes in the social status of storytellers in the Shanghai region between 1849 and 1949, and identifies the factors that made this kind of social mobility possible. in the mid-nineteenth century, storytellers formed one of the lowest status-groups in Chinese society. They were poor, itinerant, uneducated, and had little access to traditional Chinese networks of support and control or to accepted avenues of social mobility (education, family influence, money, professional organizations, etc.). and yet by the 1930s and 1940s, some storytellers in the urban centers of Shanghai and Suzhou had attained stunning levels of wealth, fame, status and influence. I argue that this new class of high-status storytellers was largely a product of a new and changing urban environment in Shanghai: the emergence of new public arenas like storytelling houses, radio, and entertainment newspapers created unprecedented opportunities for social and monetary advancement. These new high-class storytellers were also the product of an environment they themselves created: their establishment of professional organizations, their cultivation of gang connections, and their manipulation of the cultural symbols of success all helped them to gain and maintain privileged access to the realm of elite status. Finally, these elite storytellers actually re-created the Shanghai urban environment; their actions and calculations resulted in the creation of a new hierarchy of urban space, in which sharper distinctions were drawn between city dwellers and country folk, between the urban center and its hinterland. By examining the ways in which one urban underclass maneuvered its way to the top in a rapidly changing urban environment, this dissertation contributes a new perspective to current debates about the nature of urban environments, the functions of the public sphere, theories of cultural construction, and the formation of ethnic and regional identities.