"Eighty Days Travel in Shanghai"
Core theme: During the changes in the late Qing Dynasty, the heirs of national capital who returned from abroad took global adventures as bets, fought against clan oppression and economic aggression by great powers, and used their wisdom and passion to prove that "the footprints of the Chinese people should be traveled all over the world, and they can also guard the homeland."
Background of the times
In 1895 (after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War), Shanghai served as a treaty port with many concessions (public concessions and French concessions) and a mixture of Chinese and foreign goods. The national capital born during the Westernization Movement struggled to survive under the squeeze of foreign powers. Traditional clan forces still controlled local resources, and old and new ideas collided fiercely. Shen Yanzhou, the only son of wealthy Chinese businessman Shen Wanshan, holds a double degree in mechanical engineering and geography from Cambridge University. He studied abroad for ten years and was criticized by his tribe for his open-minded thinking because of "Westernization". After his father died of illness, he returned home for funeral. He discovered that the inheritance had been planned by the clan leader Shen Zongdai (the patriarch) and the comprador Hawke (British) of HSBC Bank. They forced him to make a bet on the grounds that "the inheritance must be 'experienced by the world' before it can be inherited." Finally, he won the bet and inherited the property.
