Alright, I know many people hate Wikipedia for giving lots of wrong information, but it’s the best I got and I think can be trusted, so spare me… just to note, [these are my notes on the information].

The name “Shanghai”, 上海literally meant ‘above the sea’[ah, hehe]. The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the Song Dynasty (11th century), at which time there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area. It is was also known to people in other names like, “Songhu” or “Hua Ting” or “Shen” or “Shencheng”, even the English nickname of “Paris of the East”, “New York of the West” [they actually thought of Shanghai as a romantic city?? new york is cool ^.^].

Shanghai was founded somewhere in the 10th century in the wet and muddy swamps east of Suzhou [i thought that they would've been smart enough not to built it in a very disgusting place and monkeys don't like water, right? but, oh well, the land could've been the most fertile you can ever find...]. Till 1127, it was a small market town with 12,000 households. At this period of time, the city of Kaifeng was conquered by the Jurchen, which later became the Jin dynasty. Many refugees came to Shanghai, the population rose to a startling 250,000 inhabitants. It became China’s most prosperous city by the importance of its geographic location for trade. Cotton production is the ‘backbone’ of this economy until the recent 1900s.


Long story short, in the Ming dynasty, restrictions to protect the Merchants from the Japanese pirates led to all foreign trade to end. In 1554, a wall was built to protect the city from the pirates. [possible build-up of hatred for the Japanese]

Qing dynasty had little governing control, and the Western powers took advantage and used its provincial networks to control the city. Tong Reng Tan succeeded in establishing a measure of control over the city, but was replaced by the municipal government in 1905. The Self-Strengthening Movement was used to improve economic conditions by adapting Western practices, but corruption, incompetence and inefficiency caused the efforts to fail [good grief].

Later, they even had a war over the imports of opium called the “First Opium War” [you mean there are more?!] in the early 1800s which ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing (opening treaty ports), the 1843 Treaty of the Bogue and the 1844 Sino-America Treaty of Wanghia. These treaties led to the influence of Western cultures in Shanghai.

Erm…wait, I haven’t digest that much yet[there is more wars coming], how ‘bout checking-in the next few days for an update, ciao~
Peiling AKA Remenyke

Sometimes you don't see the stars because the sky is cloudy, sometimes its too bright down below...
~you may not see us, but we are out there, somewhere~