Legends and allusions of tour guides: a complex immigrant city-Shanghai

Shanghai is a city dominated by immigrants. There are not only immigrants from all over China, but also expatriates from various countries. As early as 1608, Italian missionary Lazzaro Cattaneo lived in Shanghai for two years, and his influence was limited to religion. After Shanghai was opened by the Opium War, a group of the earliest colonists invaded: soldiers, officials, businessmen and missionaries. Later, not only adventurers, smugglers, spies from India, Japan and Vietnam patrolled and served the great powers; Moreover, there are refugees displaced from the motherland and ordinary foreigners who come to Shanghai to make a living with their expertise; Patriots who yearn for national independence, international revolutionaries who help China's revolution, and people from all countries who support China's progressive cause. They formed the intricate Du He, an overseas Chinese in Shanghai.

As a colonist, Baffour, a British army staff officer, became the first British consul in Shanghai in 1843 after taking part in the Opium War that opened the door to China. He led 25 businessmen and missionaries to open up concessions and became the earliest alien group in Shanghai. A year later, 1 1 foreign companies appeared. Then the Americans and the French forced the American Concession and the French Concession. Then Germans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Dutch and others came one after another. By 1854, there were 120 foreign firms and more than 250 foreigners.

Before the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese came to Shanghai as a group of civilians. They broadened their horizons, studied art and did business, such as Laoshan Mountain in An Tian, studied Chinese painting, Tian Daiwu and managed pottery. A Japanese ship named "Chitose Maru" frequently travels between Shanghai and Nagasaki. After the Meiji Restoration, Japanese trade with China tended to expand, and the population of Shanghai increased to 600 to 700. Before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, there were nearly a thousand Japanese in Shanghai. After "treaty of shimonoseki", with the massive invasion of China by Japanese capital, there are more and more Japanese in Shanghai, and cotton mills and Japanese shops in Hongkou can be found everywhere. 1920, the number of Japanese in Shanghai exceeded 1 10,000, which was more than the largest number of British people in Shanghai. From bureaucrats, bosses and freelancers to spies, ronins, prostitutes and criminals, it constituted the most complicated group of expatriates in Shanghai. After the Anti-Japanese War, Japanese troops and expatriates were repatriated one after another.

As one of the big countries, Russia's sphere of influence is mainly in the northeast. After the October Revolution, Belarusians loyal to the Tsar still fled Vladivostok, and some of them lived in Shanghai. Every year, more than/kloc-0.000 people arrive in Shanghai, and in the early 1930s, there were more than 20,000 people, mainly living on joffre Avenue in the French Concession. A few of them run bakeries, Russian restaurants, fashion and beauty shops, and most of them make a living by selling newspapers, goods, elevators, cars and guards. British colonialists selected young and middle-aged people from international business groups to form Belarusian mercenaries, which enriched the patrol station in the public concession.

Since the mid-1920s, Shanghai has become an international city, accommodating more than 50,000 foreigners from more than 40 countries, with a maximum of150,000 (1942).