Shanghai began life as a fishing village; and later as a port receiving goods carried down the Yangzi River. From 1842 onwards; in the aftermath of the first Opium War; the British opened a 鈥榗oncession' in Shanghai where drug dealers and other traders could operate undisturbed. French; Italians; Germans; Americans and Japanese all followed. By the 1920s and 1930s; Shanghai was a boom town and an international byword for dissipation. When the Communists won power in 1949; they transformed Shanghai into a model of the Revolution.