Ning Jennifer CHANG, Cultural Translation: Horse Racing, Greyhound Racing, and Jai Alai in Modern Shanghai, 486 pages, Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica.

The massive flow of Western thought, commodities and culture into China in the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries constitutes an essential element of Chinese modern history. Scholars often focus on how they were introduced and ignore possible deviation or displacement in the process. Even when some notice, they dismiss it as a simple phenomenon of localization without paying attention to the force and mechanism behind it. This book intends to fill the gap; it explores how culture was “translated” and the principle behind it. By concentrating on three imported Western sports/gambling in the colonial setting of Shanghai, it reveals at least three kinds of translation.
First, though being transplanted from Britain, horse racing in China’s treaty ports was not an exact copy of that in Britain. What happened in China and Britain was parallel development. The difference became so obvious in the betting method and the variety of horses/ponies each side chose that metropole and periphery of empire were never able to race together.
Second, as the racing club played a prominent role in the colonial world, not only the Chinese elite but leaders of the Green Gang saw it as a tool of social navigation. By establishing an international or Chinese racing club, they became proud club members. When joint meetings were held, British gentlemen had to rub shoulders with Chinese gangsters. The class identities of the British club were thus redefined to an unknown degree.
Third, when examining spectators’ behavior in these sports, it reveals a gradual progress of from watching to betting. At the time when jai alai was staged, spectators even found a way to Sinicize it. They managed to establish a forecast theory by borrowing from traditional Chinese betting knowledge, leaving Western theory of probability no room to act.
By demonstrating this deviation, displacement and re-interpretation, this book argues cultural translation was not a simple phenomenon of localization. Instead, it was a result of a complex seesaw battle between cultures. The direction and degree of its deviation depended on how powerful the cultures were. For example, China had a longer and stronger tradition in gambling so the spectators managed to re-interpret these sports in the Chinese way. On the other hand, the British empire no doubt played a more important role in the colonial setting in Shanghai. Quite a few of the Chinese elite and even gangsters embraced British racing culture. Not only did they follow British rules strictly, they registered their clubs at New Market in England to prove their authenticity (even it, ironically, did not exist).