Talking of Shanghai Hotel Restorations – The Langham

Spent a few hours at The Langham the other day (The Langham Yangtze Boutique to give it it’s full name – it is of course nowhere near the Yangtze but the hotel there previously was called the Yangtze for decades before) in Shanghai. The property – which is stunning – originally opened as an art deco masterpiece in the 1930s aiming largely for an upmarket Chinese clientele and was touted as “The Third Largest Hotel in the Far East” by the renowned architect, Li Pan.

At the time Li Pan’s design was very advanced – costing 1.2 million silver dollars (which, so Time magazine tells me, is US$325 million in today’s money). The hotel included advanced things like air-conditioning. The Yangtze rather lost its lustre unsurprisingly after the revolution and became a mid-range hotel in Shanghai. There were several rather poor and ill thought and executed ‘refurbishments’ that mostly didn’t help.

One thing I like about the Langham’s restoration of the property is that the room windows open. I’d rather breathe even Shanghai’s pretty noxious air than hotel air-con. There are now 96 rooms in the hotel. The building is now a gleaming white though (as Peter Hibbard, author of The Bund and numerous other works on Shanghai history, tells me  – and I’ve never known him to be wrong on anything to do with Shanghai hotels) it should be blue as it was originally.

Inside now its rather nice (though few if any original fixtures remain) and has a slightly maze-like feel. There’s a rather nice touch every night at 7pm when the hotel basically switches from daytime to night-time operation. To mark this a rather attractive, cheongsam clad singer descends the rather impressive staircase singing the 1930s Chinese classic song Mei Gui Mei Gui Wo Ai Ni (Rose, Rose I Love You). It’s really rather nice – could be cheesy but I liked it.

The Langham Yangtze Boutique Hotel, No. 740 Hankou Road (Near Yunnan Road)