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Ordering the city: revolution, modernity and road renaming in Shanghai, 1949–1966

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Between 1949 and 1966, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led municipal government of Shanghai renamed more than one in seven of the city’s roads. Renaming was an important marker of revolutionary change in China’s largest and most foreign-influenced city. Jon Howlett argues, however, that the nature and extent of renaming in socialist Shanghai was less dramatic than has been assumed.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 6, 2024

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This video is a transcript of a conversation focused on the historical analysis of urban management and renaming of streets in Shanghai post-1949, particularly under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime. The speaker, a historian specializing in communist China, discusses their research motivations, which revolve around the social and cultural impacts of the 1949 revolution and the transformation of Shanghai.

The speaker explains that much of the historical scholarship has focused on political events and harsh realities, such as mass campaigns and consolidating power. However, their work aims to uncover a new perspective that looks at people's lived experiences during these transformative times, particularly regarding urban management, and the significance of road naming as a representation of societal power dynamics.

The discussion reveals that after the revolution, there was a complex interplay between the desire for radical change (a cultural revolution) and the need for stability and modernization. The speaker mentions efforts to rename streets as part of broader modernization and production priorities rather than purely ideological motives.

Key historical moments discussed include:
- The initial gradualism in policies post-revolution.
- The dramatic shift towards radical policies during the Great Leap Forward.
- The chaotic street renaming campaigns led by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

The speaker concludes by emphasizing the need for future research on how urban naming affects people's experiences in cities and how the management of city names reflects broader governance issues in contemporary China, which houses a vast and populous urban landscape.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video:

1. **On Historical Focus**:
- "I am particularly interested in the revolution of 1949 and the social and cultural consequences of that revolution, ordinary people."

2. **Importance of Shanghai**:
- "I say it's arguably the most important city in China... how that city was kind of taken over and managed by the Chinese Communist Party."

3. **Shift in Historical Scholarship**:
- "Most of the scholarship now on the early years of the People's Republic of China used to be dominated by political historians... focused on... the really terrible things that happened during that time."

4. **Urban Management as a Lens**:
- "That's why I'm thinking about urban management as a kind of a way of thinking about how people experience the world around them."

5. **Cultural Revolution and Reaction**:
- "In the early sixties, again moved towards kind of removing the old cultural hierarchy... we get the launch of the cultural revolution, which is a big chaotic attempt to put power in the hands of the masses."

6. **Tension in Revolutionary Thought**:
- "It captures that tension between revolutionary radicalism and this impulse to change everything and bring the future into the present now, versus the idea that you have to keep things stable."

7. **Spatial Inscription**:
- "Spatial inscription is the idea that somebody names that place and that in that act of naming, they’re also defining that place."

8. **Renaming as a Revolutionary Act**:
- "Revolutionary governments use spatial inscription as a way of making a temporal break between the past and the present."

9. **People's Reaction to Streets' Names**:
- "If you are a good revolutionary... and you live on a street with a reactionary name, you are gonna want that change."

10. **Modernization vs. Radicalism**:
- "This is a revolutionary project... but there's also an... aspect of this that goes unnoticed... this broader push to order society and increase production."

11. **Chaos of Renaming during Cultural Revolution**:
- "You see a mass renaming of streets just purely by red guard groups at street level... knocking down old place names."

12. **Implications for Modern China**:
- "Thinking about the scale of governance... ensures that... there are 17 mega cities that have over 10 million people."

These quotes encapsulate the main themes and findings of the speaker's research on the social and cultural changes in post-revolutionary China, particularly through the lens of urban management and street naming practices.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I'm a historian of, communist China.

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So I am particularly interested in the revolution of 1949

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and the social and cultural consequences of

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that revolution, ordinary people.

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So I write about how it impacts on,

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Chinese people on foreigners who are living in China.

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Um, and this particular study came from a, a period

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of research, into kind how Shanghai, which at

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that time was the, the largest city in China, is also kind

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of a economic and cultural hub.

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I say it's arguably the most important city in China,

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that it wasn't the capital, how

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that city was kind of taken over

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and managed by the Chinese Communist Party.

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And so, in the archives

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of the Shanghai Municipal Government

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and the, I was able to find a large number

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of documents relating to urban management, basically,

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and thinking in about road names.

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So most of the scholarship now on the people

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as Republic of China in its early years, it used

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to be dominated by political historians

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and also kind of really focused on, on many

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of the really bad, really terrible things that happened

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during that time, you know, mass campaigns

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and how the, the Chinese Communist Party consolidated its

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control imposed order over time.

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That's kind of the, the background for what historians tend

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to be interested in now.

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Um, well, and have a new wave of scholarship, if you like,

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about thinking about how people actually live

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through it at the grassroots in society.

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So that's why I'm thinking about urban management as a kind

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of a way of thinking about how people experience the world

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around them, what it meant to kind of walk the streets

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of Shanghai in, in that period of time.

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Um, so to give a a little bit of context for this, for

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what happened in China at that time, the,

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the revolution happens in 1949, after,

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after several decades of revolutionary struggle,

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the new government inherits a, a country

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that's been plunged into decades of war,

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hyperinflation chaos.

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So the priority then is to seize power and maintain power.

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Um, maah at that time refers to a,

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an emperor from Chinese history who was a peasant who kind

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of packed the main capital city, made himself emperor,

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and then was quickly deposed

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because he made himself so unpopular by, by all the looting.

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And Ian, he says, we can't become likely to the top this,

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this, famous emperor.

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So the idea is gradualism stability, restoring production,

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and that lasts for around four years

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until control was being secured over China.

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And then the Chinese Communist Party begin a,

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a process called the transformation to socialism.

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So reordering the economic basis of society to kind

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of make it in a fit, a Marxist model,

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and developing, industrializing economy.

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At the same time as imposing strict

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of, of the initial policy of gradualism in 1953.

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They then follows the first five year plan.

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And this is seen as such a successful, policy

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by the Chinese communists that they follow up

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with something called the great leap forward, which is,

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in from 1958, a very radical transformation of,

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of the country's economy, with the idea

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that you could catch up industrialized economies like

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Britain and America in a really short space of time.

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Um, they're, they're Marxists.

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So they see that relationship of how you change your society

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as being grounded in economics.

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Economics determines your position within society, whether

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or not you're a kind of a catalyst who owns a factory

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or the worker who works in that factory, that shapes

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how much power you have in society.

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So the idea is that if you can change those economic

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relationships between people, you can transform all

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of society in that way because you are, you're, you are re

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reimagining if you like, the power relations

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between each individual within your country.

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So that's the aim of economic transformation.

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The great leap forward, is wild campaign to kind

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of catch up with, with, Western countries and,

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and output of coal and steel and so on.

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Um, leads to one of the greatest disasters in human history

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and estimates from the number

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of excess modalities from the famine that follow

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that great leap forward range between 10 and 40 million.

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So scholars are divided on the exact count,

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but it's, it's a huge catastrophe, obviously.

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Um, the people within the,

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that movement are not perhaps the most self-reflective

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movement or the way that they understood

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what had happened was very different from perhaps the way

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the 21st century people,

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in western liberal democracies would understand it.

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And they were looking around for who to blame.

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So the idea was that, we tried to transform things to do

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with the economy, first to kind of economic base of society,

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but then obviously that failed

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because of impediments elsewhere in society.

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So then they started thinking about the cultural

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superstructure of society, so who holds power, kind

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of elites, politicians, the, the bourgeoisie.

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And in the early sixties, again moved towards kind

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of removing the old cultural hierarchy.

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And in 19 60, 66, we get the launch

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of the cultural revolution, which is a big chaotic,

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attempt to put power in the hands of the masses

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and to smash the old elites so

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that society can be properly transformed.

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I think that one reason road renaming to come, come back

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to the, the article there is so important is

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that it captures that tension between

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revolutionary radicalism

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and, this impulse to change everything

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and, and bring the future into the present now, versus

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beside the idea that you have to keep things stable,

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you have to modernize, you have to increase production,

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and you can't do that if you've got chaos.

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Spatial inscription is the idea that

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somebody names that place

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And that in that act of naming,

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they're also defining that place.

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So, space transcription is a way then that,

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governments in this case can kind of exercise power

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and control by defining the spaces in which people live.

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This is really important in a, a revolutionary context,

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and something we can see happens often after revolutions.

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Um, in 1789 with the French Revolution, there's a mass wave

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of rot renaming the same in Russia

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after the revolution in 1917.

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Revolutionary governments use spatial inscription as a way

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of making a temporal break between the past and the present

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and, and the future as a way of kind of purging cities

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and spaces of these kind of names linked to the old regime,

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and as a, as a way of kind of moving society onwards,

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moving citizens onwards.

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So that's kind of the, the theoretical,

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side of, of, of,

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of this project really is thinking about when a place name

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changes, what does

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that actually mean for the people involved.

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Um, the, just

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to give one very quick example, I start off this paper

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by talking about the streets, in Boong district,

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which is now kind of where the skyscrapers are in Shanghai.

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It's amazing skyline, kind, a symbol of modernity for China.

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But at that time it was a slung.

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Um, and in the 1960s, you, we have letter writers

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who live on rubbish Paul Street saying, in pong saying,

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why is our street still got this name rubbish Paul

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Street, where we are now, you know, the,

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the people are in charge of the nation.

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We got rid of the reactionaries, the feudalist capitalists,

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but we still have this awful place name.

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So then there's a debate then about whether

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or not we should just go around changing

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names 'cause we don't like them.

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Is it, is it revolutionary anti-revolutionary to, to have

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to live on rubbish pool street

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and what other states' priorities when it actually comes to

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inscribing a name on a place that already exists?

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The initial policy when the,

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the commun came in was about gradualism.

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So there's actually an order goes out to the, the armies

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and the military authorities when they're taking over

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Chinese cities saying, don't go around renaming things.

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And especially don't go around renaming things

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after people within our movement.

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Like ma don, this is consolidated in 1951 with a,

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an order from the state council that says, do not go

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around renaming things unless they're named

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after, for example, Chang Kai-shek, who is the leader

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of the regime before the, the communist regime.

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Very obviously kind of who they would define

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as reactionary individuals, in place names

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that have a discriminatory meaning,

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and in particular towards ethnic minorities within China.

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Um, and also place names that are just confusing.

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So then we have a, a space there, which suggests

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that actually if a place name is confusing you,

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it is okay to change it.

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Um, going into, the modernization projects.

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So, the, the two big waves of renaming, if you like, in,

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in the 1950s on 1954, following the announcement

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of the first five-year plan, which is the biggest single,

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renaming exercise in, in the history of,

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Shanghai at this time.

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And the, the purpose of that renaming having looked at the,

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which roads were renamed

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and why was actually to do

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with production modernization than it more than it was

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getting rid of these old reactionary names.

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So there were a couple of kind of reactionary names

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that were changed, but mostly it was to do

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with two roads having the same name

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or, a road kind of connecting to another road.

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And then both having different names

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and that being confusing

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because they look like they're the same

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road, that kind of thing.

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Also place names that are just excessively long.

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So we can see then that this modernization,

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production is the impulse in 1958.

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There's another with the Great Leap forward,

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there's this idea that you should change everything in

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society and build towards production.

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So the Municipal Construction Bureau drafts a a long list

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of names that should be changed in the

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city 'cause they're reactionary.

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But again, we see that actually of the road names

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that are are listed, we, we see that only,

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a small number actually changed in the end.

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And most of those, again, 'cause they're confusing.

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So this is urban management rather than

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making radical revolution.

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I mentioned before that, things get, ideologically,

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more radical in the 1960s with this idea

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that why have we failed in the fifties?

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Why isn't, why isn't kind of the future here already?

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So in 1964, there's a socialist education movement,

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which is the precursor of the cultural revolution,

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and it's targeting old culture in old society.

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And in this movement

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around 250 place names in Shanghai get identified as being

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sort of reactionary, having a religious or catalyst

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or, imperialist connotation.

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Um, even during, during this moment of radicalism

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where the kind of the official sanction was there to go

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and make these changes, only around 64 of these

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of these road names are actually changed.

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And again, a large number of them are all kind

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of modernization reasons.

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During the P revolution, red guards kind

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of take this into, into their own hands.

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They're, they're told by Ma Dong

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and other figures in the Chinese Communist Party to rebel.

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They're told to bombard the headquarters

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to question the local authorities question,

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in the example road renaming the Shanghai Construction

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Bureau, like why are the, the why are the kind

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of revisionists within that, organization

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not changing things as fast as they could be?

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So, they take, they take matters into their own hands.

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And you see a mass renaming of streets just purely

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by red guard groups at street level going

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and knocking down old place, place names, place signs,

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and putting their own up.

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And this is done really unsystematically.

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What they do is they kind of write the revolutionary slogans

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that come to them from the radical wing

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of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao onto the city map.

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But there's only so many slogans,

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that are kind of officially approved.

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And so you end up with lots and lots of duplicates.

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Um, so there's lots of anti imperialism streets in Shanghai

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with its long history of connectedness.

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The foreign, there's also lots

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of Easter is Red Streets in Beijing at one point.

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Um, there's actually 27 streets that are counted

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that have the name Red Sun Road referring to Majong

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as the reddest of the Red Suns.

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So this is chaos. And

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after a few years, this is

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kind of brought back in, in order.

12:27.655 --> 12:32.435
Um, the reason why I think road renaming

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and it's particularly interesting in this context is

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that radicalism, that kind of cultural evolution,

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chaos when it comes to renaming does two things.

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I think one is it's a warning for China

12:45.105 --> 12:46.495
after that in the reform era,

12:46.915 --> 12:49.015
but two, it also casts a long shadow in the way

12:49.175 --> 12:51.895
that we think about how revolutionary

12:51.895 --> 12:53.095
change happened in China.

12:53.875 --> 12:55.455
And it looks as though it was that kind

12:55.455 --> 12:57.135
of radical impulse to change everything.

12:57.355 --> 12:59.415
But if we look back at the archives that I found

12:59.415 --> 13:01.495
and that I've, I've talked through actually

13:01.495 --> 13:03.615
what we can see is kind of a gradual process

13:03.675 --> 13:06.615
that's really more focused on production than it is on

13:06.645 --> 13:10.785
getting rid of everything that was disliked about sort

13:10.785 --> 13:13.345
of old re pre-revolutionary China.

13:13.485 --> 13:16.065
So when we think about revolutionary change, one

13:16.065 --> 13:18.425
of the big sort of findings in this research is

13:18.425 --> 13:20.585
to think about what the communist project actually was,

13:21.155 --> 13:22.945
which was about bringing prosperity.

13:22.945 --> 13:27.185
It was about transforming society that had,

13:27.545 --> 13:29.865
terrible human consequences in the, in the Chinese example,

13:30.085 --> 13:31.305
due to the mass campaigns

13:31.525 --> 13:32.905
and due to things like the greater

13:32.915 --> 13:34.105
board, the cultural revolution.

13:34.805 --> 13:39.205
But there's also an, sort of a, a facet of this

13:39.205 --> 13:41.445
that goes unnoticed, which I've tried to identify

13:41.445 --> 13:44.005
and bring out in the work, which is this broader push

13:44.585 --> 13:47.205
to order society and increase production.

13:47.305 --> 13:49.485
So this is a, as well as being a revolutionary project,

13:49.485 --> 13:50.805
this is a modernization project.

13:51.785 --> 13:52.965
So that's really what kind of

13:52.995 --> 13:54.445
what I'm trying to say with my research.

13:55.685 --> 13:58.505
Um, we can see, another interesting thing here is

13:58.505 --> 14:00.825
that we can see an ideological push

14:01.365 --> 14:04.225
on policymakers in China in the 1950s

14:04.445 --> 14:07.745
and sixties, both kind of with a, a desire to comply

14:07.745 --> 14:10.105
with radical trends coming from the top,

14:10.645 --> 14:12.105
but also from letter writers,

14:12.495 --> 14:14.145
from people within the construction bureau.

14:14.205 --> 14:16.745
People at kind of street level who want their names,

14:17.125 --> 14:18.425
the names of their roads changed.

14:18.805 --> 14:21.785
If you are a good revolutionary, citizen in the fifties

14:21.885 --> 14:24.585
or sixties and you live on a street with a reactionary name,

14:25.205 --> 14:26.345
you are gonna want that change

14:26.345 --> 14:27.665
because, you know, that's,

14:27.665 --> 14:29.265
something you have to walk past every day.

14:30.095 --> 14:33.675
So we have this idea of CP rule being in sort

14:33.675 --> 14:36.835
of popped down, and a lot of it was, it'd be, it'd be wrong

14:36.835 --> 14:39.475
to say that it wasn't, but we can also see society here

14:39.935 --> 14:41.995
and people wanting to be good revolutionaries

14:41.995 --> 14:43.795
and wanting to have change in their lives

14:44.295 --> 14:45.675
and wanting to get rid of these old

14:45.675 --> 14:46.875
legacies of the old order.

14:47.295 --> 14:49.675
But actually that process going a lot slower

14:49.675 --> 14:52.805
because the city government's main concern is about

14:52.805 --> 14:56.205
production modernization,

14:57.945 --> 14:59.215
areas for future research.

14:59.215 --> 15:00.335
So obviously my research is,

15:00.355 --> 15:02.255
is focused primarily on Shanghai.

15:02.795 --> 15:04.375
And I think it'd be really interesting to look at

15:04.375 --> 15:05.695
how this happens in, in other cities.

15:05.695 --> 15:07.695
There's a certain amount of national policy here.

15:07.805 --> 15:11.485
There's also a lot of local interpretation,

15:12.505 --> 15:15.165
and especially what happened during the cultural revolution.

15:15.205 --> 15:17.485
I have to confess that when I was researching this article,

15:17.995 --> 15:19.645
very hard to find out about this

15:19.645 --> 15:22.125
because local governments were not functioning

15:22.585 --> 15:24.285
and, red guard groups were taking matters,

15:24.285 --> 15:25.765
their own matters in their own hands.

15:25.785 --> 15:28.525
So I think there's scope to think about this, this process

15:28.585 --> 15:30.485
of renaming during the cultural revolution,

15:31.635 --> 15:33.975
but also how people experience this.

15:34.115 --> 15:36.815
So, perhaps thinking about oral history as well

15:36.815 --> 15:39.015
and thinking about how people actually moved

15:39.015 --> 15:41.255
through the city when the maps were changing and,

15:41.255 --> 15:43.375
and when you were suddenly going to,

15:43.405 --> 15:45.695
anti imperialism street as opposed to,

15:45.715 --> 15:47.935
the big landing road shopping street.

15:48.115 --> 15:50.095
So how, how this is actually experienced by people.

15:50.155 --> 15:52.455
Did they use the names? Did, did they embrace the names

15:52.455 --> 15:53.695
or did they je reject them?

15:54.965 --> 15:57.305
Um, and I think finally, in terms of implications,

15:57.305 --> 16:00.405
just thinking about the scale of China today.

16:00.505 --> 16:04.645
So one thing that happens after this, process is

16:04.645 --> 16:07.685
that the, during the reform era reform

16:07.685 --> 16:11.325
where Chinese urbanization really explodes across the whole

16:11.325 --> 16:13.045
country place,

16:13.045 --> 16:16.325
name management offices are set up in all major cities.

16:16.425 --> 16:19.845
So Shanghai gets its first one in 19, 1979

16:19.945 --> 16:21.805
and a few years later it has one in every district.

16:22.265 --> 16:25.085
And those organizations are there to make sure

16:25.085 --> 16:28.525
that we don't get duplicate names, inappropriate names,

16:28.705 --> 16:32.125
and those kind of things which might seem in itself,

16:32.195 --> 16:33.525
perhaps slightly tedious work.

16:33.525 --> 16:35.685
And I'm sure working in a place names office isn't the most

16:35.965 --> 16:38.045
exciting work, but when you think about the scale

16:38.185 --> 16:40.965
of Chinese urbanism, I think it's quite incredible.

16:41.505 --> 16:46.265
Uh, so China, Shanghai has a population

16:46.265 --> 16:47.305
of 25 million.

16:47.645 --> 16:49.265
So thinking about the scale of governance

16:49.265 --> 16:51.545
that goes into ensuring that,

16:51.545 --> 16:53.825
nationally there are 17 mega cities

16:53.825 --> 16:55.425
that have over 10 million people

16:55.565 --> 16:59.675
and China has over, a hundred cities

16:59.705 --> 17:01.035
with more than 1 million people.

17:01.375 --> 17:04.315
So if you can think about just getting addresses right in a

17:04.475 --> 17:05.555
country, the size of China

17:05.575 --> 17:08.515
and the administrative work that takes, again,

17:08.515 --> 17:11.115
I think it gives us some, some idea of the scale of kind

17:11.115 --> 17:12.115
of urban China today.

"Urban Management and the Cultural Impacts of the 1949 Revolution in Shanghai: A Historical Perspective"

00:00:00 - I'm a historian of, communist China. So I am particularly interested in the revolution of 1949 and the social and cultural consequences of that revolution, ordinary people. So I write about how it impacts on, Chinese people on foreigners who are living in China. and this particular study came from a, a period of research, into kind how Shanghai, which at that time was the, the largest city in China, is also kind of a economic and cultural hub. I say it's arguably the most important city in China, that it wasn't the capital, how that city was kind of taken over and managed by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:00:44 - of the Shanghai Municipal Government and the, I was able to find a large number of documents relating to urban management, basically, and thinking in about road names. So most of the scholarship now on the people as Republic of China in its early years, it used to be dominated by political historians and also kind of really focused on, on many of the really bad, really terrible things that happened during that time, you know, mass campaigns and how the, the Chinese Communist Party consolidated its control imposed order over time. That's kind of the, the background for what historians tend to be interested in now.
00:01:23 - about thinking about how people actually live through it at the grassroots in society. So that's why I'm thinking about urban management as a kind of a way of thinking about how people experience the world around them, what it meant to kind of walk the streets of Shanghai in, in that period of time. so to give a a little bit of context for this, for what happened in China at that time, the, the revolution happens in 1949, after, after several decades of revolutionary struggle, the new government inherits a, a country that's been plunged into decades of war, hyperinflation chaos.
00:02:05 - maah at that time refers to a, an emperor from Chinese history who was a peasant who kind of packed the main capital city, made himself emperor, and then was quickly deposed because he made himself so unpopular by, by all the looting. And Ian, he says, we can't become likely to the top this, this, famous emperor. So the idea is gradualism stability, restoring production, and that lasts for around four years until control was being secured over China. And then the Chinese Communist Party begin a, a process called the transformation to socialism. So reordering the economic basis of society to kind
00:02:46 - and developing, industrializing economy. At the same time as imposing strict of, of the initial policy of gradualism in 1953. They then follows the first five year plan. And this is seen as such a successful, policy by the Chinese communists that they follow up with something called the great leap forward, which is, in from 1958, a very radical transformation of, of the country's economy, with the idea that you could catch up industrialized economies like Britain and America in a really short space of time.
00:03:27 - So they see that relationship of how you change your society as being grounded in economics. Economics determines your position within society, whether or not you're a kind of a catalyst who owns a factory or the worker who works in that factory, that shapes how much power you have in society. So the idea is that if you can change those economic relationships between people, you can transform all of society in that way because you are, you're, you are re reimagining if you like, the power relations between each individual within your country. So that's the aim of economic transformation. The great leap forward, is wild campaign to kind

"The Tension of Transformation: Revolutionary Change and the Role of Spatial Inscription in Communist China"

00:04:09 - and output of coal and steel and so on. leads to one of the greatest disasters in human history and estimates from the number of excess modalities from the famine that follow that great leap forward range between 10 and 40 million. So scholars are divided on the exact count, but it's, it's a huge catastrophe, obviously. the people within the, that movement are not perhaps the most self-reflective movement or the way that they understood what had happened was very different from perhaps the way the 21st century people, in western liberal democracies would understand it. And they were looking around for who to blame. So the idea was that, we tried to transform things to do
00:04:52 - but then obviously that failed because of impediments elsewhere in society. So then they started thinking about the cultural superstructure of society, so who holds power, kind of elites, politicians, the, the bourgeoisie. And in the early sixties, again moved towards kind of removing the old cultural hierarchy. And in 19 60, 66, we get the launch of the cultural revolution, which is a big chaotic, attempt to put power in the hands of the masses and to smash the old elites so that society can be properly transformed. I think that one reason road renaming to come, come back
00:05:32 - that it captures that tension between revolutionary radicalism and, this impulse to change everything and, and bring the future into the present now, versus beside the idea that you have to keep things stable, you have to modernize, you have to increase production, and you can't do that if you've got chaos. Spatial inscription is the idea that somebody names that place And that in that act of naming, they're also defining that place. So, space transcription is a way then that, governments in this case can kind of exercise power and control by defining the spaces in which people live.
00:06:14 - and something we can see happens often after revolutions. in 1789 with the French Revolution, there's a mass wave of rot renaming the same in Russia after the revolution in 1917. Revolutionary governments use spatial inscription as a way of making a temporal break between the past and the present and, and the future as a way of kind of purging cities and spaces of these kind of names linked to the old regime, and as a, as a way of kind of moving society onwards, moving citizens onwards. So that's kind of the, the theoretical,
00:06:54 - of this project really is thinking about when a place name changes, what does that actually mean for the people involved. the, just to give one very quick example, I start off this paper by talking about the streets, in Boong district, which is now kind of where the skyscrapers are in Shanghai. It's amazing skyline, kind, a symbol of modernity for China. But at that time it was a slung. and in the 1960s, you, we have letter writers who live on rubbish Paul Street saying, in pong saying, why is our street still got this name rubbish Paul Street, where we are now, you know, the, the people are in charge of the nation. We got rid of the reactionaries, the feudalist capitalists,
00:07:37 - So then there's a debate then about whether or not we should just go around changing names 'cause we don't like them. Is it, is it revolutionary anti-revolutionary to, to have to live on rubbish pool street and what other states' priorities when it actually comes to inscribing a name on a place that already exists? The initial policy when the, the commun came in was about gradualism. So there's actually an order goes out to the, the armies and the military authorities when they're taking over Chinese cities saying, don't go around renaming things. And especially don't go around renaming things after people within our movement. Like ma don, this is consolidated in 1951 with a, an order from the state council that says, do not go

"The Dynamics of Place Naming: Urban Management and Revolutionary Change in Shanghai"

00:08:18 - after, for example, Chang Kai-shek, who is the leader of the regime before the, the communist regime. Very obviously kind of who they would define as reactionary individuals, in place names that have a discriminatory meaning, and in particular towards ethnic minorities within China. and also place names that are just confusing. So then we have a, a space there, which suggests that actually if a place name is confusing you, it is okay to change it. going into, the modernization projects. So, the, the two big waves of renaming, if you like, in, in the 1950s on 1954, following the announcement
00:09:02 - renaming exercise in, in the history of, Shanghai at this time. And the, the purpose of that renaming having looked at the, which roads were renamed and why was actually to do with production modernization than it more than it was getting rid of these old reactionary names. So there were a couple of kind of reactionary names that were changed, but mostly it was to do with two roads having the same name or, a road kind of connecting to another road. And then both having different names and that being confusing because they look like they're the same road, that kind of thing. Also place names that are just excessively long.
00:09:42 - production is the impulse in 1958. There's another with the Great Leap forward, there's this idea that you should change everything in society and build towards production. So the Municipal Construction Bureau drafts a a long list of names that should be changed in the city 'cause they're reactionary. But again, we see that actually of the road names that are are listed, we, we see that only, a small number actually changed in the end. And most of those, again, 'cause they're confusing. So this is urban management rather than making radical revolution. I mentioned before that, things get, ideologically, more radical in the 1960s with this idea
00:10:22 - Why isn't, why isn't kind of the future here already? So in 1964, there's a socialist education movement, which is the precursor of the cultural revolution, and it's targeting old culture in old society. And in this movement around 250 place names in Shanghai get identified as being sort of reactionary, having a religious or catalyst or, imperialist connotation. even during, during this moment of radicalism where the kind of the official sanction was there to go and make these changes, only around 64 of these of these road names are actually changed. And again, a large number of them are all kind of modernization reasons.
00:11:05 - of take this into, into their own hands. They're, they're told by Ma Dong and other figures in the Chinese Communist Party to rebel. They're told to bombard the headquarters to question the local authorities question, in the example road renaming the Shanghai Construction Bureau, like why are the, the why are the kind of revisionists within that, organization not changing things as fast as they could be? So, they take, they take matters into their own hands. And you see a mass renaming of streets just purely by red guard groups at street level going and knocking down old place, place names, place signs,
00:11:45 - And this is done really unsystematically. What they do is they kind of write the revolutionary slogans that come to them from the radical wing of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao onto the city map. But there's only so many slogans, that are kind of officially approved. And so you end up with lots and lots of duplicates. so there's lots of anti imperialism streets in Shanghai with its long history of connectedness. The foreign, there's also lots of Easter is Red Streets in Beijing at one point. there's actually 27 streets that are counted that have the name Red Sun Road referring to Majong as the reddest of the Red Suns. So this is chaos. And

"Urban Transformation and Revolutionary Change: The Impact of Road Renaming in Post-Revolutionary China"

00:12:25 - kind of brought back in, in order. the reason why I think road renaming and it's particularly interesting in this context is that radicalism, that kind of cultural evolution, chaos when it comes to renaming does two things. I think one is it's a warning for China after that in the reform era, but two, it also casts a long shadow in the way that we think about how revolutionary change happened in China. And it looks as though it was that kind of radical impulse to change everything. But if we look back at the archives that I found and that I've, I've talked through actually what we can see is kind of a gradual process that's really more focused on production than it is on
00:13:10 - of old re pre-revolutionary China. So when we think about revolutionary change, one of the big sort of findings in this research is to think about what the communist project actually was, which was about bringing prosperity. It was about transforming society that had, terrible human consequences in the, in the Chinese example, due to the mass campaigns and due to things like the greater board, the cultural revolution. But there's also an, sort of a, a facet of this that goes unnoticed, which I've tried to identify and bring out in the work, which is this broader push to order society and increase production.
00:13:49 - this is a modernization project. So that's really what kind of what I'm trying to say with my research. we can see, another interesting thing here is that we can see an ideological push on policymakers in China in the 1950s and sixties, both kind of with a, a desire to comply with radical trends coming from the top, but also from letter writers, from people within the construction bureau. People at kind of street level who want their names, the names of their roads changed. If you are a good revolutionary, citizen in the fifties or sixties and you live on a street with a reactionary name, you are gonna want that change because, you know, that's,
00:14:30 - So we have this idea of CP rule being in sort of popped down, and a lot of it was, it'd be, it'd be wrong to say that it wasn't, but we can also see society here and people wanting to be good revolutionaries and wanting to have change in their lives and wanting to get rid of these old legacies of the old order. But actually that process going a lot slower because the city government's main concern is about production modernization, areas for future research. So obviously my research is, is focused primarily on Shanghai. And I think it'd be really interesting to look at how this happens in, in other cities. There's a certain amount of national policy here.
00:15:12 - and especially what happened during the cultural revolution. I have to confess that when I was researching this article, very hard to find out about this because local governments were not functioning and, red guard groups were taking matters, their own matters in their own hands. So I think there's scope to think about this, this process of renaming during the cultural revolution, but also how people experience this. So, perhaps thinking about oral history as well and thinking about how people actually moved through the city when the maps were changing and, and when you were suddenly going to, anti imperialism street as opposed to, the big landing road shopping street.
00:15:50 - Did they use the names? Did, did they embrace the names or did they je reject them? and I think finally, in terms of implications, just thinking about the scale of China today. So one thing that happens after this, process is that the, during the reform era reform where Chinese urbanization really explodes across the whole country place, name management offices are set up in all major cities. So Shanghai gets its first one in 19, 1979 and a few years later it has one in every district. And those organizations are there to make sure that we don't get duplicate names, inappropriate names,

"Challenges of Urban Governance in China's Mega Cities"

00:16:32 - perhaps slightly tedious work. And I'm sure working in a place names office isn't the most exciting work, but when you think about the scale of Chinese urbanism, I think it's quite incredible. so China, Shanghai has a population of 25 million. So thinking about the scale of governance that goes into ensuring that, nationally there are 17 mega cities that have over 10 million people and China has over, a hundred cities with more than 1 million people. So if you can think about just getting addresses right in a country, the size of China and the administrative work that takes, again, I think it gives us some, some idea of the scale of kind
00:17:11 -

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