從1870年代上海的文化語境看來：不管是報章雜誌上刊登的詩詞吟詠，1884年以降滬地出版業相當興盛的城市旅遊手冊與圖文書，皆勾勒出滬城的文化變貌，展現了1850-1890年代的上海文藝圈已然形構出內涵豐富與充滿歧義的「城市想像」。其中最引人注意的是，「電燈」、「玻璃」等形構現代城市形象視覺革新的「文明物件」，皆在1890年代以《海上花列傳》為首的晚清上海小說中，屢屢成為晚清上海城市現代性的隱喻與?事特徵，為城市?事學的成熟與轉型留下見證。尤其，當我們從東西文化比較視野來參照晚清上海的文化語境，更會發現彼時社會文化場域中城市想像或市民意識的形構，乃根植於它們與異域／他方文化相互界定的基礎上，藉此可擴及探討十九世紀上海在地文化與全球視野相互對話的過程，及其間充滿矛盾扞格的文化創新。

Shanghai’s changing faces and transforming cultures have been delineated within the cultural-linguistic context of the city since 1870s, be they verses on newspapers and magazines, or city travel guides and pictorials, which were Shanghai publishers’ best-sellers after 1884. Meanwhile, “Urban imaginations” bearing rich meanings and also ambivalence, had been constructed in Shanghai’s literary and artistic coterie between 1850s and 1890s. It is noteworthy that lamps and glass, the “civilized elements” making visual revolutions in modern cities, had recurrently become metaphors of urban “modernity” and attributes to erotic narratives in late-Qing Shanghai, as evidenced by a series of fictions in 1890s, heralded by Sing Song Girls of Shanghai, thus proving Shanghai’s maturity and transformation in urban narratives. Further, looking into the cultural-linguistic context in late-Qing Shanghai from an Oriental-Occidental comparative view, we shall discover that, the formation of urban imaginations and civil consciousness in the socio-cultural matrix then was based on how the self and the extraterritorial/other cultures were mutually defined. Therefore, we can explore into dialogues,acceptations and declinations in the binary of globalization and localization, those complex issues in the 19th-century Shanghai Studies, as well as Shanghai’s paradoxical process of cultural innovations.