Previous studies of Shanghai's sanitation and urban history have focused on institutions, city government, or public facilities and organizations, and have limited insight into how public sanitation entered the private sphere. The establishment of a public health system is an important element of modernity, which generally involves a process from institutionalization to social acceptance, and the establishment of a system does not mean that public health concepts and knowledge are universally accepted by the populace. In particularly, "hygiene" is an ambiguous term in traditional China, and there is a major contradiction between modern medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, the process of treatment takes place in a private space and has little or nothing to do with the public. Since the establishment of the Shanghai international settlement, the city administration was taken over by western administrators. But the situation of the population composition had shifted from a Western-Chinese mixed population to a mainly Chinese population, and the development and acceptance of Shanghai public health continued to progress amidst multiple contradictions and conflicts. This study focuses on the private space of Shanghai from the opening of the Port of Shanghai to 1912, and examines how the modern concept of hygiene infiltrated the people's daily lives from the perspective of municipal administration and social stratification.
Keywords:public sanitation,private sphere,hygiene,pestis
