Shanghai Bloodbaths Give Way to Expo Mob, Huge Hedgehog: Review

In a Shanghai park the other day, I chatted with a venerable Chinese gentleman about his hometown’s past and present. The city, we agreed, is China’s barometer, and the shifts in its fortunes have been legendary.

In the 1930s, he recalled, warlords used to hang the severed heads of communist strikers from lampposts -- three faces to a bamboo cage. Thirty years later, it was Chairman Mao Zedong doing the killing: During the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai served as headquarters for the murderous, ultra-revolutionary Gang of Four.