This book explores how culture was “translated” and its principle. Focusing on three imported Western sports/gambling in the colonial setting of Shanghai in the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, it reveals not only deviation and displacement but also re-interpretation in the process of translation.

Instead of being a simple phenomenon of localization, this book demonstrates they are results of a complex seesaw battle between two powerful cultures, namely the British Empire and Modern China.