Cities have played a crucial role throughout the course of modern Chinese history. Numerous aspects of Chinese modernity manifested themselves most clearly in urban settings, with urbanization constituting an essential component of modernity. This book explores the relationship between Chinese cities and modernity, its main goals being to challenge Western models of modernization, broaden scholarly perspectives on these issues by considering a wide range of phenomena, and extend the temporal scope of research on Chinese modernity to the Ming-Qing era. The 14 articles presented in this book can be divided into two types: the first treats facets of urban culture and daily life, while the second examines new forms of interaction between individuals and communities in urban settings.