This paper examines the complex trajectory of Argentine Tango through the analytical framework of cultural imperialism. Historically deconstructed and reformed through Franco-British Western power dynamics, tango underwent a cultural transformation----shedding its erstwhile “lower-class” character to assume a “high-class” status upon its entry into Shanghai’s French Concession following the Opium Wars. After a nearly fifty-year historical rupture in China, globalization has facilitated tango’s contemporary resurgence in Shanghai as an exotic social dance through typical “Global South” cultural pathways.

Driven by the persistent pursuit of tango’s “authenticity”, Shanghai practitioners increasingly undertake pilgrimages to Buenos Aires for immersive learning. Taking Shelley Hou from Shanghai MiTango Club as a case study, this paper analyzes how her diasporic educational experiences and subsequent transnational knowledge circulation contribute to the enrichment of Shanghai’s local multicultural artistic landscape. Through participant observation conducted at MiTango Club, the research employs Chinese bodily sensibilities and affective expression as analytical lenses to examine the exotic imagination surrounding tango in Shanghai. Drawing theoretical inspiration from gaze theory, the affective aesthetics of the body, and Japanese scholar Yuiko Asaba’s conceptual lens of “cosmopolitan otherness”, this research discusses several critical questions: Can the tango knowledge acquired through such individual diasporic learning truly lay claim to “authenticity”? What forms of exotic imagination dose this retransmitted tango provoke among Shanghai audiences? Furthermore, from a global music history perspective, can the tango currently popular in Shanghai effectively “bypass” the established Franco-British modernist routes to achieve direct resonance with its native Argentine counterpart?