Rebirth: New Shanghai

From the invasion of the Japanese of the city proper in 1941 (the Japanese actually had invaded in 1937 and controlled much of the rest of China), Shanghai never really recovered to its previous role, that is until recently. Soon after the end of the war with the Japanese, the Chinese communists won the civil war and took over in 1949. Since then, through all the upheavals, nothing was done to grow the city.


By the way, even though the rest of China had been invaded, Shanghai, or at least the International and French Concessions, which were under their own foreign-backed governance were therefore "protected" as diplomatically off limits to the Japanese invaders. Shanghai was not taken over by the Japanese until Pearl Harbour when all bets were off and all hell broke loose. There's a great scene at the beginning of the Spielberg movie Empire of the Sun, when the little boy runs across a field past the end of the garden of an expat mansion, where a posh costume party is on, up over a ridge to charge smack into a Japanese military encampment, where the soldiers were sitting around waiting. Waiting. Waiting for Pearl Harbour and the signal to "go". The sense of tension between the invasion threat and the on-going privileged existence of the expats is compelling.

Anyway fast forward to the 1990's. Mao is out and China is opening up. Fast. With the whole Hong Kong thing, the Chinese government was keen to establish another modern Chinese city, which would be an international financial and business centre. They decided it would be Shanghai and embarked on a massive building and modernization transformation of the city. It doesn't hurt that the very top leaders of the Party are former mayors of Shanghai.

Amazing energy.


At one point, during the 1990's according to Lonely Planet over half of all the world's construction cranes were at work in Shanghai. (Would love to know how that was calculated.) Over 30 square km of shikumen neighbourhoods like the one we stayed in (see earlier post) have been razed to make way for huge apartment and office buildings. These folks are serious! Shanghai now has the fastest train in the world, the tallest office building (for the time being) and the longest arched bridge in the world. They plan to build the world's largest ferris wheel in time for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

This stuff is in the way. What do you wanna do?
Make way for progress!

Our landlord in Shanghai was talking about our neighbourhood. Our little hotel was in the villa that his grandparents built in the 1930's. He said that it was a great neighbourhood for the old people. They had lots of friends around, the market was across the street, they knew the neighbourhood and all the people, they played mah jong in the courtyard - it was a good life.

I asked him about all the neighbourhoods that had been made gone by the high rises. Including all those we could see on the next block from our terrace. How did people feel about that?

He said people were just fine with that. Modern buildings, modern plumbing, modern electricity, modern design, modern world. What's not to like?

Just so long as there remains space for old ladies and mah jong and bad habits.

That's all I'm going to want, ultimately.

Shanghai artist Liu Bao Jun

War on Drugs

The city of Shanghai originally developed because of a war on drugs.

Prior to 1832 foreign trade with China was very restricted. The Chinese only allowed foreign ships into one port, Canton, and entry was very regulated. After stopping in Macau to pick up a Chinese pilot and written permission to enter Chinese waters, all ships proceeded to anchor at Whampoa, an island 13 miles south of Canton. Hundreds of boats would be at anchor, loading and unloading cargo, which would then be taken on smaller boats to the warehouses in Canton. Sailors with rare exception were confined to the ships. Those officers who were allowed to Canton, were restricted to certain parts of town. No firearms were permitted to be carried by foreigners in the city and foreign women were forbidden from entry. Back in the Whampoa harbour, where the sailors were stuck on their ships, brightly decorated Chinese Flower Boats traveled the waters carrying Chinese ladies of pleasure, some with musicians playing Chinese music.

However, the foreigners were not happy with all the restrictions. While they were very keen to get the silks, spices, tea, cotton and ceramics in great demand back home, the Chinese were not particularly interested in what the foreigners had to offer. This frustrated the foreigners as silver flowed into China and balance of payments were, well, unbalanced.


The British came up with the bright idea of drug dealing. Something addictive, so the Chinese would come back for more. Both the British and the Americans started bringing in opium from India and Turkey, which was much better than the Chinese home grown. Opium was illegal in China and had been since the 1790's but by the 1830's, the foreigners were bringing in 1400 tons a year. When the Chinese government, concerned about the huge number of addicts among their people, tried to shut down the opium trade, seizing and burning 20,000 chests of opium owned by the East India Company, the British went to war over it for two years, to keep the right to bring the drugs into the country.

Eventually the Chinese were defeated by the British and The Treaty of Nanking was signed in 1842, opening key ports, including Shanghai to foreign trade. The United States and France were close behind, negotiating their own treaties and by 1849, Shanghai was divided into districts each with its own administration. Thus was formed the International Concession, settled and governed by the British and Americans and the French Concession governed by the French. These areas of Shanghai were occupied by foreigners for the next 90 years.

The second half of the 19th century saw the rapid growth of a new city, incorporating foreign influence and money. Shanghai flourished.

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.

Shanghai - The 'Hood

We’re not in Barrhaven anymore, Toto

On our recent trip to Shanghai, my first visit to China, we stayed in an amazing little hotel in the French Concession. One of only a very few small “boutique” hotels (so far), it was originally a villa built in the 1930’s and was the home of the grandparents of the current owner.

To reach it, you walk through the gates from the main road, where you find yourself in one of the neighbourhood enclaves called shikhumen, or lane houses. Walking down the alley, you pass the homes where the locals live, some with communal sinks and water taps outside, and laundry hanging everywhere. To my great delight, being a recent huge fan, one day I watched a group of ladies play mah jong, along with several others sitting beside them observing.



Unlike in the Philippines, where the universal norm is that if you make eye contact you are greeted with a smile and a “Good morning ma’am”, the Chinese are not as forthcoming (don’t know anyone else quite so open and friendly as the Filipinos are). However, armed with one of only two Chinese words I know – ni hao (hello), I went nee howing my way through the alley, and always got greeted and smiled at in return. To the consternation of the hotel manager, who apologized profusely, our visit was unwittingly timed to coincide with major construction in the laneway, replacing pipes, so navigating our way to the end of the alley was also an adventure.

At the end of the alley is a tall gate and behind it is the house and garden of our little five room hotel. The garden, shady and a little overgrown, is filled with sculptures, many of Buddha, peeking through the shrubs and vines. Walking in to the building you are in an art filled lounge and bar area. Climbing the stairs to the third floor, we had an entire “penthouse” apartment to ourselves. Living room, dining area, kitchen, bedroom and bath as well as two terraces looking over the trees and roof tops. Breakfast was served in the garden – a typical Chinese breakfast of greens-filled pan-fried dumplings, or noodles with bok choy, or a thin crepe-like omelette, along with a clear soup with tofu and bok choy, fruit and great coffee.

Cooler than Pluto.



Back out on the main road, the street life was amazing. Across the road was an indoor wet market, with piles of fresh vegetables, buckets of crabs and other squirming somethings. Walking along the street you pass little shops (about 8-10 feet wide) – dry goods, noodle shops, smoke shop, wine store (yay), CD/DVD’s, clothing, tea shop, you name it. In the backs of the shops invariably a television set would be on and kids and adults would be eating a bowl of something. Hanging on bamboo poles or any available hook of wire is laundry – all over the street, out of windows, in passageways. People are napping, playing some kind of checker game or cards and generally living lives right out on the streets. A few walk around in pajamas. I mean real pajamas, with fuzzy wuzzies all over them!


One day, we were walking past a group of people hanging out on the sidewalk very close to our gate. Among them was a little girl about 3 years old, so I paused and did my “nee how” thing. Her Dad or uncle or whoever prompted her to say “hello”, after which every time she’d see us she’d jump up and down and get excited “Hewoh, hewoh”. Fun. - Cars, bikes, scooters pass by along with some finding creative ways to transport large loads of scrap metal or wood.




This is still a neighbourhood where life goes on in the shikumen as it has for generations. It was a blast to call it our own for even a few days. Who knows how long these will remain as they are. Because this is not what modern Shanghai is all about. Shanghai is changing. Rapidly.