The key is weisheng, or hygienic modernity. It is after the occupation of foreign powers in 1900 that the meaning of weisheng in China becomes synonymous with hygienic modernity which associates individual hygiene with the health of the population and the nation. And it is through how weisheng has been managed, appropriated, rejected, absorbed, or compromised that Tianjin's unruly semicolonialism has become hypercolonial, representing a “fragmented, shifting, and sometimes paradoxical experience” (192). Chinese elites suffered from anxiety about distinguishing themselves from bu(no) weisheng, the discourse they had internalized as a sign of China's deficiency vis-à-vis the West/Japan, like their lower-class counterparts who could not afford modern water . and sewerage system in the British settlement (204-5). In the face of the disruption of weisheng brought by the imperialists, the native Chinese way of managing public hygiene such as the Dark Drifters, on the other hand, symbolized the Chinese's constant refusal to be absorbed into the practice of hygienic modernity. Not even the imperial powers themselves constituted a unified group. Japan, as the mediator of modernity, the self-proclaimed leader in Asia in bringing other countries close to modernization, was itself on ambiguous ground compared to other Western powers. Japanese residents in Tianjin were exhorted to distinguish themselves from native Chinese through the discourse of hygienic modernity. This shows the “complex matrix of relationships between competing and cooperating colonizers” in the treaty port (183). Weisheng, or hygienic modernity, was created and brought to China by imperialism, “but then hindered the creation of a global public administration that could make a difference to the health of the city” due to the hypercolonialism of the treaty port (223 ). The complex