It is for this reason that Mike Featherstone reminds us that the city is not only an object of investigation but, because of its powerful hold on the imagination as the location of myriad contradictory experiences, it is also a metaphorical device with deep cultural power for the West (Featherstone 1998: 911). However, this power is not confined to western imaginaries of the city. Shanghai, for most of the last century, held a place in the imagination of both China and the West as a space of feminized, eroticized modernity. The English writer J.G. Ballard, in a juxtaposition of the sensual and the vulgar, described Shanghai before World War Two as this lurid and electric city more exciting than any other in the world’ (Ballard 1984: 23). Chinese writer Mao Tun, in his novel Midnight, describes Shanghai in the 1920s thus:
Whenever a tram passed over the bridge, the overhead cable suspended below the top of the steel frame threw off bright, greenish sparks. Looking east, one could see the warehouses of foreign firms on the waterfront of Pootung like huge monsters crouching in the gloom, their lights twinkling like countless tiny eyes. To the west, one saw with a shock of wonder on the roof of a building a gigantic neon sign in flaming red and phosphorescent green: LIGHT, HEAT, POWER!
Apothecary. One who prepares and sells drugs and various compounds Iraq Map for medicinal purposes. Apprentice. A trainee to a master craftsman in a given craft or trade Iraq Map in the guild system. See also Guild system. Apprenticeship.
