Useful Phrases in the Shanghai Dialect

In the bustling treaty port of early 20th-century Shanghai, where merchants, diplomats, and travelers from across the globe converged, language was the key to survival. This compact volume, compiled with careful attention to the rhythms of everyday speech, captures a vanished moment in the city's linguistic life. McIntosh offers practical phrases for greetings, haggling in the marketplace, navigating rickshaws and steamboats, and handling the thousand small transactions that made up daily existence in one of Asia's most cosmopolitan cities. The Shanghainese dialect, with its soft vowels and rapid cadence, comes alive through these carefully transcribed expressions, each one a window onto a world where East and West collided and complicated each other. For historians of language, this book is a small treasure: a snapshot of spoken Chinese before revolution, modernization, and mass migration reshaped the city beyond recognition. For anyone curious about how foreigners actually lived and spoke in the Shanghai of a hundred years ago, it remains an indispensable companion.