Magical Metropolis: The Shanghai Surreal

This editorial argues that the modern and contemporary Shanghai cityscape revolves around the dialectical reconciliation of opposing forces, such as commu- nism and capitalism, east and west, colonial and cosmopolitan, in line with the surrealist movement’s ‘supreme point’ (1929). Empirically speaking, this was fleshed out in 1924 when Shanghai was termed as both a ‘magical’ and ‘demonic’ city by the Japanese traveller, Shofu Muramatsu, who identified a sordid under- belly beneath Shanghai’s façade of colonial glamour. The editorial brings together twelve articles and one conversation responding to this conceptual stimulus over the course of a century.