Definition of "Shanghai"
Shanghai
proper noun
A major port city and direct-administered municipality of China, the largest urban area in China.
Quotations
But there has been another reason why Shanghai has prospered beyond all the other British ports of China. "All our ports except Shanghai are separated from the inland waters of China by a chain of mountains. Inside those mountains lies the vast bulk of the empire of China, outside lie our trading ports." Again, the Yang-tse-kiang, which flows out just at Shanghai, affords an easy route by which the goods consigned to that port may reach the interior of the country, and the system of innumerable canals which intersect it.
1858, “Development of Trade with China”, in Littell's Living Age, volume 58, Boston: Littell, Son and Company, page 221
At Amoy, the boats are peculiarly ugly, but have extraordinary sailing powers. They are shaped just like a spoon. Ningpo boats were got up to Shanghai at one time by foreigners, as they appeared to be the fastest and most comfortable ; but it was found that Shanghai boats of equal size could outsail them there.
1860, Twelve Years in China: The People, the Rebels, and the Mandarins, Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., page 119
Then two incidents broke on a startled nation and sped the course of militant revolution. On May 30, 1925, came the first at Shanghai. A series of labor disputes, centering in Japanese-owned mills, had resulted in a wholesale lockout and the serious wounding of thirteen workers outside one of the factories.
1938, Robert Berkov, Strong Man of China: The Story of Chiang Kai-shek, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, page 47
Wang Huang-wen, now still in his 30s, undoubtedly is the one who has made the fastest rise—from just being a Shanghai textile mill worker a few years back to the position of presidium second vice-president, right below Chou En-lai, at the 10th congress and, a few days later at the plenum, to the status of party central vice chairman, also right after Chou.. .Wang is believed to have done quite a bit of secret police-type work in Shanghai.
1973 September 9, “Is Chou En-lai next target?”, in Free China Weekly, volume XIV, number 35, Taipei, page 2
The Chinese government started laying intercity high-speed track in 2005, and today, its network is the longest and most heavily relied upon of any nation’s. Six hours are enough to devour the over 900 miles from Shanghai to Xi’an, the landlocked capital of Shaanxi Province in China’s central northwest, standing on the bones of the imperial city of Chang’an. In the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., this was the center of not only China but the globe — the eastern origin of the trade routes we call the Silk Road and the nexus of a cross-cultural traffic in ideas, technology, art and food that altered the course of history as decisively as the Columbian Exchange eight centuries later. A million people lived within Chang’an’s pounded-earth walls, including travelers and traders from Central, Southeast, South and Northeast Asia and followers of Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism. All the while, Shanghai was a mere fishing village, the jittery megapolis of the future not yet a ripple on the face of time.
2020 May 11, Ligaya Mishan, “Eating in Xi’an, Where Wheat and Lamb Speak to China’s Varied Palette”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 May 2020