Once Upon A Time Of Huntang-Public Baths And Social Life In Shanghai During The Republic Of China

The public baths industry in Chinese cities has a long history.It originated in the Northern Song Dynasty and reached its peak in the south river of the Ming and Qing dynasties.After Shanghai opened up its door for business and established foreign trade port,a high-grade public bath known as “Pen Tang” was revived in the Shanghai concession.Since the beginning of the Republic of China,with the increase of urban population and the rapid expansion of public baths industry in Shanghai,public baths has become more and more important.For practitioners,it is a commercial market that creates economic value;for bathers it is a health facility and a health care facility as well as a leisure and social center.However,in the mainstream public opinion,the public baths present a different scene: the introduction of a bacteriological idea has made it dangerous;leisure has also been placed on the opposite side of labor under the judgment of morality.The violence was reported occasionally makes it even more questionable in terms of social order.How to control and reform this space has always been a thorny problem for successive governments.Both the Chinese government and colonial authority want to transform it into a simple sanitation facility.The Kuomintang regime that took over Shanghai in 1945 was even more ambitious in promoting bathroom reform.However,its plan is to stigmatize and decriminalize the “local knowledge” in the bathroom life,which leads to the unmet daily needs of all kinds of groups in the bathhouses and the failure of the final reform.