When the Communist Party took control of Shanghai in 1949, the city was one of the world's most cosmopolitan, modern cities. In the ensuing decades, Shanghai's economy, infrastructure and links with the world all atrophied. Lack of change in the city's physical structure was paralleled by a similar fixity and immutability in people's everday lives, careers and expectations. However, since the 1990s, far-reaching economic reforms have been implemented which are designed to recreate Shanghai as a cosmopolitan, world financial and trade centre. An influx of domestic and foreign capital is transforming the city's physical structure at a frantic pace. This book focuses on the lives of local residents and their perceptions of their changing city, and presents an evocative series of ethnographic perspectives of the city's shifting sociological landscape in this period of transition. Jos Gamble examines the flow of domestic and international people, capital and mass media across Shanghai's boundaries and the consequences of these on a transitional economy. The book introduces the changing senses of what it means to be Shanghainese, and the ways in which consumption is producing facilitating and marking out new divisions within society.