Scythe and the City: A Social History of Death in Shanghai
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Shanghai was a killer. Shanghai was deadly. The terms may sound brutal, but there is no way around the stark reality of a high urban mortality in the late imperial and Republican period. This was not about the city being a murderous place. Even in the worst of times, murders represented a very small percentage of all crimes committed in Shanghai. This was not because of civil or military violence, even if a great number of lives were sacrificed in the main episodes of war in the mid-nineteenth century and again in 1932 and 1937, then with the final coda of 1949. This was about everyday life and death. The city lived off the blood of the migrants who came wave after wave to seek a job, perhaps with a dream of making a fortune. Scythe cut short their lives and hopes.
The sustained high level of mortality reflected the poor conditions under which large segments of the population lived. Poverty meant shabby housing, poor hygiene, scarce food, deficient water supply, overcrowding, and very often inadequate or exhausting working conditions. Several infectious diseases, notably tuberculosis, ran rampant and eventually affected large circles of the population. Children paid the highest price, especially newborn and infants. They died in the thousands, even in the tens of thousands. Shanghai society was literally bleeding out massively from the loss of its children. Although the city harbored the best medical infrastructure in the country and afforded the well-off and emerging middle classes with suitable medical care, these services were beyond the means of the majority of the population. This was one of the most glaring paradoxes of Shanghai modernity. Below the veneer of splendor, way behind the neon lights, hordes of workers toiled and labored with little hope of surviving to old age. The city absorbed vast numbers of migrants who returned home in a coffin, when they could afford the expense or benefited from the support of their guild. The less privileged were buried in local charity or guild cemeteries.
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