Based on the short-lived “deaf” magazines Yin Duo (1938-1940) in Shanghai during the War of Resistance (1937-1945), this paper explores how interactions between regional modernity in Shanghai and political dynamics in Chinese society shaped the deaf culture in the 1930s This paper begins with outline the centrality of Shanghai for deaf people the. In the three decades of the 20th century, Shanghai and the surrounding area were the locale for most deaf schools in China. Their graduates contribute to the proliferation and organization of deaf intellectuals in Shanghai. In 1938, they inaugurated the national deaf organization and published their magazine Yin Duo, which was mainly contributed by deaf writers and circulated among deaf readers. This paper’s second part shifts to the literary representation of modernity and urban life in Yin Duo. No exception to their contemporary hearing counterparts, deaf intellectuals also encounter the ego crisis before confrontations between Chinese culture and Western modernity. Another central trope underlying these literary works regards nationalism and deaf writers’ concerns about the national crisis in wartime China. The last part examines the real-world origin of the rising nationalist among deaf writers who stayed or sought refuge in Shanghai. Their observations and personal experiences with the national pain fostered their efforts in raising money and serving on the front, which are all recorded in Yin Duo. At the end, this paper contends, other than the shared use of sign language in other deaf communities in the West, the everyday experience of being a deaf refugee in Shanghai endow the deaf identity with “placeness”.