Dreaming About People

People often wonder if the people encountered in dreams are actual, real people, or simply manifestations of their own personality and emotions. Most modern dream interpretation holds that the people in dreams are not actual people at all, but rather symbols for parts of your own personality.

Therefore, the bubbly, exuberant blonde in your dream may into be a real person at all, but rather a side of your personality that you have been afraid to express.

Likewise, negative people encountered in dreams are often manifestations of those parts of the personality that you are ashamed of or wish to repress. Therefore, dreaming of a person you do not like could mean that you need to alter your thinking and be more open minded and accepting of others.

When examining the people in your dreams, it is always a good idea to examine the personalities of these people and try to examine what they might be trying to tell you. Examining parts of your personality you do not like can be a positive result of dream interpretation.

When interpreting dreams about other people, it is important to remember that in the vast majority of cases dreams are about yourself, not about other people. Thus, the people you meet and interact with in your dreams are much more likely to be physical symbols of your own thoughts and desires as they are to be actual representations of actual people.

Therefore, interpreting dreams about other people can be a great way to work through personality and identity issues, and many psychologists and therapists use this approach to dream interpretation.

Of course there are instances in which the people you dream of really do represent actual people. Sometimes these people are relatives or friends who have passed on, while at other times they may be famous people or movie stars whom who have never met.

Dreams in which you meet movie stars or other famous people often represent a longing for something you want but cannot achieve. Sometimes the dream simply represents a conscious desire to meet the person in your dream, but most often the movie star represents something you have been striving for but failing to achieve. This kind of dream is often a way of urging you to try harder to reach your goals.

Many ancient cultures put great stock in dreams which featured departed relatives, and many of these cultures thought of the dream state as the time when the soul left the body to roam free in the spirit world. Even today, many people take dreams of departed relatives or friends very seriously, and they give these dreams many layers of meaning.

These types of spiritual dreams can indeed be very valuable to the dreamer, and a great source of comfort in a time of need. Whether they represent the convergence of souls on the other side, or just the unconscious desire to have the person back in their life, these dreams are some of the best and most fulfilling there are.

Shanghai City

The two Chinese characters in the name "Shanghai" literally mean "on"/"top" and "sea". The local Shanghainese pronunciation of Shanghai is while the Standard Mandarin pronunciation in Hanyu Pinyin is Shànghǎi. The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the Song Dynasty (11th century), at which time there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area. There are disputes as to how the name should be interpreted, but official local histories have consistently said that it means "the upper reaches of the sea" However, another reading, especially in Mandarin, also suggests the sense of "go onto the sea," which is consistent with the seaport status of the city. The more poetic name for Shanghai switches the order of the two characters, i.e., Haishang , and is often used for terms related to Shanghainese art and culture. In the West, Shanghai has also been spelled Schanghai (in German), Sjanghai (in Dutch), Xangai (in Portuguese) and Changhaï (in French), but since the 1990s the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of "Shanghai" has become universal in the West. In Japanese, Shanghai is written using the same two Chinese characters , and the Japanese pronunciation Shanhai is an approximation of the Mandarin pronunciation.
Shanghai's abbreviations in Chinese are Hù and Shēn . The former is derived from the ancient name Hu Du of the river now known as Suzhou Creek. The latter is derived from the name of Chunshen Jun , a nobleman of the Chu Kingdom in the 3rd century B.C. whose territory included the Shanghai area and has locally been revered as a hero. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use the character Shēn in their names. Shanghai is also commonly called Shēnchéng "City of Shēn").
The city has had various nicknames in English, including "Paris of the East", "Queen of the Orient", and even "The Whore of Asia", a reference to the widespread corruption, vice, drugs, and prostitution in the 1920s and 1930s. History
History of Shanghai
Pre-nineteenth century
Before the formation of Shanghai city, Shanghai was part of Songjiang county governed by Suzhou prefecture . From the time of the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279), Shanghai gradually became a busy seaport, outgrowing its original political jurisdictions. For instance, Songjiang today is one of 18 districts within Shanghai.


German map of Shanghai from 1888
A city wall was built in AD 1553, which is generally accepted as the start of the city of Shanghai. However, before the nineteenth century, Shanghai was not considered a major city of China. Therefore, compared to most other major Chinese cities today, there are few ancient Chinese landmarks to be found in the city. The few cultural landmarks to be found are very ancient and typically date to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. This is mostly due to the fact that present-day Shanghai is within the historic cultural center of the Wu Kingdom (AD 222-280).
During the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai became an important regional port for the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. It also became a major seaport for the nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, although overseas commerce was still forbidden at that time. A historically important area of this era is Wujiaochang (now in the Yangpu District), the foundation of the city center. Around the end of the Qianlong era, Shiliupu now in the Huangpu District) became the largest port in East Asia.
Nineteenth to early twentieth century
The importance of Shanghai grew radically in the nineteenth century, as the city's strategic position at the mouth of the Yangtze River made it an ideal location for trade with the West.
During the First Opium War in the early nineteenth century, British forces temporarily held Shanghai. The war ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which saw the treaty ports, Shanghai included, opened for international trade. The Treaty of the Bogue signed in 1843, and the Sino-American Treaty of Wangsia signed in 1844 together saw foreign nations achieve extraterritoriality on Chinese soil, which officially lasted until 1943 but was essentially defunct by the late 1930s. From the twenties to the late 30s Shanghai was a so-called 'sin city'. Gangsters wielded a great deal of power and ran casinos and brothels.
The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, and in 1853 Shanghai was occupied by a triad offshoot of the rebels, called the Small Swords Society. The fighting destroyed the countryside but left the foreigners' settlements untouched, and Chinese arrived seeking refuge. Although previously Chinese were forbidden to live in foreign settlements, 1854 saw new regulations drawn up making land available to Chinese. Land prices rose substantially.


Jiujiang Road, Shanghai, 1920s
1854 also saw the first annual meeting of the Shanghai Municipal Council, created in order to manage the foreign settlements. In 1863, the British settlement, located along the western bank of the Huangpu river to the south of Suzhou creek (Huangpu district), and American settlement, located on the western bank of the Huangpu river and to the north of Suzhou creek (Hankou district) joined in order to form the International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and instead maintained its own French Concession, located to the west of the International Settlement. This period saw a large influx of migrants from Europe and North America, who called themselves "Shanghighlanders".


Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser Izumo in Shanghai in 1937.
The Sino-Japanese War fought 1894-95 over control of Korea concluded with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which saw Japan emerge as an additional foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which were soon copied by other foreign powers to effect the emergence of Shanghai industry. Shanghai was then the biggest financial city in the Far East. Under the Republic of China, Shanghai was made a special city in 1927, and a municipality in May 1930. The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, nominally in an effort to crush down Chinese student protests of the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent Japanese occupation. The Chinese fought back in what was known as the January 28 Incident. The two sides fought to a standstill and a ceasefire was brokered in May. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city fell after the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, and was occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945. The International Settlement was occupied on 8 December 1941 with opposition from only the one remaining British gunboat stationed in the port and some Chinese irregulars.
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Shanghai has been a political hub of China for many years. Many of China's top government officials in Beijing are known to have risen in Shanghai in the 1980s on a platform that was critical of the extreme leftism of the Cultural Revolution, giving them the tag "Shanghai Clique" during the 1990s. Many observers of Chinese politics view the more right-leaning Shanghai Clique as an opposing and competing faction of the current Chinese administration under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Shanghai's top jobs, the Party Chief and the position of Mayor, have always been prominent on a national scale. Four Shanghai mayors eventually went on to take prominent Central Government positions, including former President Jiang Zemin and former Premier Zhu Rongji. The top administrative jobs are always appointed directly by the Central Government.
The current Shanghai government under Mayor Han Zheng has openly advocated transparency in the city's government. However, in previous years a complicated system of relationships between Shanghai's government, banks, and other civil institutions has been under scrutiny for corruption, motivated by faction politics in Beijing; these allegations from Beijing did not go anywhere until late 2006. Since Jiang's departure from office there has been a significant amount of clash between the local government in Shanghai and the Central People's Government, an evolving example of de facto Chinese federalism. The Shanghai government looks after almost all of the city's economic interests without interference from Beijing.
By 2006, Shanghai's actual level of autonomy has arguably surpassed that of any autonomous regions, raising alarm bells in Beijing. In September 2006, the Shanghai Communist Party Secretary Chen Liangyu, Shanghainese in origin and often clashing with central government officials, along with a number of his followers, were removed from their positions after a probe into the city's pension fund. Over a hundred investigators, sent by the Central Government, reportedly uncovered clues of money diversion from the city's pension fund to unapproved loans and investments. Chen's abrupt removal is viewed by many Chinese as a political manoeuvre by President Hu Jintao to further secure his power in the country, and retain administrative centralism. In March 2007 the central government appointed Xi Jinping, who is not a Shanghai native, to become the Party Secretary, the most powerful office in the city.