The Japanese had invaded the Chinese portions of Shanghai (Baoshan, Zhabei) and the Western Roads – including the Ballard family home on Amherst Avenue (Xinhua Lu) – became a lawless no-man’s land. But by the late 30s all that had changed. The Western Roads initially had been where the wealthy lived, just beyond the borders of the Settlements but with all the amenities and a decent level of security.
He didn’t actually grow up in either the International Settlement or the French Concession, but rather in the semi-legitimate and liminal Western External Roads – the area the Chinese called huxi, that became the “Badlands” of Shanghai in tabloid headlines. Shanghai’s lesser known histories reveal his childhood to be even more Ballardian than we might think. Yet being born in Shanghai only partially explains Ballard’s curious upbringing. Though privileged and protected, according to Ballard’s own autobiography ( Miracles of Life) and his hyper-realized memoir ( Empire of the Sun, which repeatedly switches from memoir to fiction) he was left largely to his own devices to explore the city. He was a child of ex-patriate English parents, living a lifestyle Ballard described as “American” in a mock-Tudor house, and attended the ultra-British Cathedral School on Kiukiang Road (Jiujiang Lu).
Ballard nailed it all in multiple science fiction novels, such as The Drowned World (1962) and Atrocity Exhibition (1970).īallard was born a Shanghailander in 1930, in the now bulldozed Shanghai General Hospital, on the banks of Suzhou Creek. The urban high-rise nightmare the encroachment of AI on middle class job security the growth of McMansions and gated communities floodplains destroying villages raging conflagrations devastating California and Australia vaccines that might save you but screw up your DNA (or so some say).
JG (James Graham) Ballard died in 2009, but has never ceased being relevant.
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