Garden of Grand Vision: Economic life in a flophouse complex Harbin, China 1940.

During the Second World War Harbin was a major city in the puppet-state of Manzhouguo, the industrial heart of the Japanese war effort in East Asia. The Garden of Grand Vision was a flophouse complex located in the Chinese slums of Harbin. The 2,000 drug addicts, gamblers and prostitutes who made the Garden their home were mostly migrants from North China who had fallen on hard times. In 1940 the Japanese police conducted a detailed survey of life in the Garden, portraying it as a swamp of disorder and immorality. In contrast, this paper describes the residents of the Garden as they valiantly participated in a vigorous underground economy and arranged their lives for survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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