Old Shanghai

"It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily."

Shanghai was a legend in the 1920's and 1930's. Through the early 1900's the city was known as the "Pearl of China". As a matter of fact Manila pre-war was also called the "Pearl of the Orient". Lots of "Pearls" until the Japanese destroyed it all. When a lot of the world was in a depressed state in the years leading up to the Second World War, Shanghai was a happening place and rolling in money. It had the highest skyscrapers outside of North America, a port with 50,000 junks at the wharves and a waterfront of impressive art deco buildings, mansions and hotels. It attracted thousands of developers and investors and well-heeled tourists made it a destination. It was the most modern city in China.



Shanghai was an open port, meaning anyone could go there with no restrictions, and became home to thousands of refugees from Europe. Over forty thousand White Russians escaped the revolution through Siberia and settled in the city, bringing with them new music, dance, theater and energy. Many formerly wealthy Russians arrived with next to nothing and were forced into work they would never have imagined in their former lives. In the thirties, boatloads of Jews escaping Nazi Germany, turned away by other countries, settled in Shanghai. It was a vibrant, cosmopolitan city, at least the parts of it that were run by foreigners were.

Sin City it was called, or, as some wag labeled it, "The Whore of the Orient", and, in addition to the righteous citizens, was populated by gangsters, warlords, spies, gamblers and tourists. Money was to be made and spent. Big money. Those with, or following the money spent it in the nightclubs, dance halls and at the races. There were hundreds of brothels and maybe 100,000 prostitutes.
I picked up a Shanghai tourist guide that was written in 1934. It describes the city nightlife like this:

What odds whether Shanghai is the Paris of the East or Paris the Shanghai of the Occident?

Shanghai has its own distinctive night life, and what a life!

Dog races and cabarets, hai-alai and cabarets, formal tea and dinner dances and cabarets, the sophisticated and cosmopolitan French Club and cabarets, the dignified and formal Country Club and cabarets, prize fights and cabarets, amateur dramatics and cabarets, theatres and cabarets, movies and cabarets, and cabarets – everywhere, in both extremities of Frenchtown (French Concession), uptown and downtown in the International Settlement, in Hongkew, and out of bounds in Chinese territory, are cabarets.

Hundreds of ‘em!

High hats and low necks; long tails and short knickers; inebriates and slumming puritans.

Wine, women and song.

Whoopee!

Let’s go places and do things!

Famous writers, actors, and socialites of the day came to visit or to stay in Shanghai, including Dame Margot Fonteyn, Noel Coward and Charlie Chaplin.

Wallis Simpson was one of the first celebrities to be skewered by the tabloids in the 1930's when she snagged the King of England, who then abdicated his throne to be with "the woman I love". Later in their lives together she was known to say, "You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."

One of the rumours had to do with her trip to China and stay in Shanghai in 1924, when she was separated from her first husband. She went over there to try a reconciliation (he was a drunk and an abuser), but the reunion didn't work. So she had some fun. Some said a LOT of fun. The story was she hung around brothels (ran out of money?) and learned some nifty tricks with which, according to the tabloids, that foreign bitch seduced the poor King Edward who was helpless in face of her wiles. (The actual trick was the "Shanghai squeeze", which I have no idea what that might be, do you?). All of this was supposedly chronicled in MI6's China Dossier, the existence of which has never been determined.

According to a diplomat in China at the same time she was, Wallis was an enchanting conversationalist. Only in English though it would seem, as the only Mandarin she learned was "Boy, pass me the Champagne".
The life, and the lifestyle, came to an end, as it did throughout so much of Asia when the Japanese invaded. After the war Shanghai never really recovered and in 1949 the Chinese Communists took over. For forty years, the city had virtually no development.

Until the 1990's when the second renaissance of Shanghai began...

Many of these images came from a great website Tales of Old Shanghai.