Although Shanghai has long been one of the greatest metropolises in the Far East, attracting foreign people with its prosperity and vitality, its poverty also drew their attention.

Some even wrote of their personal observations concerning Shanghai's slums.

Felix Green visited Shanghai in 1960. At that time, he was a reporter for the BBC. While in Shanghai, Green visited a slum, which he believed was very similar to slums in Marseilles or Mexico City. However, the neatness of the Shanghai slum left a deep impression on Green. Despite the shabby rooms, dark corners and narrow lanes, there were no awful smells or discarded garbage.

It was a rainy day when Green visited the slum and a group of children followed him out of curiosity. Green found that they were all in good health. In fact, according to his careful observations, people living in the slum were neither poor nor unemployed. They dressed in a graceful way and had their own work. They were just waiting for an opportunity to move into new residential buildings. In Green's eyes, this was a completely "new" kind of slum, full of hope.

But what about slums before 1949? After the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45) broke out, Anna Wang, a German resident in Shanghai, witnessed the contrast between wealth and poverty in the foreign concessions, where noisy bars and night clubs could be found everywhere. Scattered among the tall apartment buildings and luxurious shopping places, many slums with their cramped dwellings and small stores could be found.

An old cadre living in a residential community told Green that in the last years under the domination of the Kuomintang regime, people suffered from unemployment and inflation. Therefore, people who lived in slums were mostly rickshaw pullers or small peddlers scrambling to survive in the world.

Apart from starvation, rain, fire and wind also threatened people living in the slums. Because there was no drainage system, after heavily rains it might take several weeks for the muddy lanes to dry. Due to the general poverty, electricity was not affordable. People used kerosene for cooking and lighting, which was dangerous because of the thatched roofs. Furthermore, the wild gales in summer could sometimes easily blow down the flimsy sheds.

But at least people in the slums had their own homes. For those homeless and beggars in the streets, life was even more miserable. When people walked along Nanjing Lu in the 1930s, American reporter Ernest Hose recalled in his book "Shanghai: City For Sale", disabled beggars would ask them for money. Some women lamented tearfully while clutching thin and sickly babies.

Small wretched-looking beggars circled people in groups and old beggars refused to leave until they were finally thrown a few copper coins. Otherwise, they would find lice in their ragged clothing and throw them at people who didn't give them money.

"Perhaps you wouldn't have expected beggars in Shanghai to be organized and led by a 'Beggar Emperor'," Hose wrote. "Perhaps you would be surprised to know that beggar women would stick needles into the babies in their arms to gain the sympathy of passers-by."

(Shanghai Star    December 16, 2003)