AMONG old China hands, few more contentious issues exist than that of the “No Dogs or Chinese” sign said to have hung outside the Public Gardens atop the Bund of old Shanghai.
Never mind that the heirs of Chairman Mao run shops, restaurants, and hotels full of goodies reserved for foreigners and Party functionaries (membership has its privileges?). Never mind too that the sign never existed—not, at least, the way legend has it. Countless Chinese schoolboys still grow up with it drummed into their heads, and references continue to pop up in the press, Western as well as Eastern, inevitably to illustrate the wickedness of European colonialism. I have cited it to nice effect myself, once even after I was pretty sure it had never been there.
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