I posted a while back about how travelling around China so far this year I hadn’t seen any Xinhai centenary related events, campaigns, exhibitions, posters etc. This obviously contrasted to the high profile of the anniversary in Taiwan, the Republic. I speculated that perhaps the historical-ideological powers that be weren’t quite sure how to handle the anniversary given that Xinhai did involve a bit of harmony disrupting which isn’t quite flavour of the month these days with the bosses in Beijing.
However, Sun Yat-sen pictures have appeared, so Shanghaiist informs me, in Tiananmen Square in time for the annual May holidays in the PRC.Only red flags in evidence as you can see and I haven’t actually been there to see if there’s any interesting text about but here’s the good Doctor all the same.
As I mentioned GG Scott’s Holy Trinity Church yesterday it seems only right to note the Cathedral School next door that drew most of its boys from the families of the congregation of Holy Trinity.Cathedral School was posh, similar to a British public school but without boarders and was housed in the rather nice art-deco building adjacent to the church. One rather well known old boy is of course J.G. Ballard who talked about the school in Empire of the Sun (I’ve put a link in but if you’re reading this blog and you’ve not read Empire of the Sun you really need to take your business elsewhere!!) and in this article in the Sunday Timesshortly before his death.
Down along Jiujiang Road (formerly Kiukiang Road) is the school building where a small plaque remains to the foundation stone:
Cathedral School – Henry Lester Endowment for British Boys and Cathedral Church House and Hall
This corner stone was laid by CF Garstin Esquire CBE
British Acting Consul General at Shanghai
on the 19th Day of December 1928
The wonderfully named Charles Fortesque Garstin had a minor reputation as somewhat of a fighter against the opium trade and the, in 1928, rising power of the Green Gang etc. He moved from Acting to full in consul in 1929. And so the foundation stone was laid. What anyone walking past these days who bothers to stop, crouch down and read of CF Garstin’s actions that, presumably cold, day in December 1928 makes of him I do not know. But he lingers on down there on Kiukiang Road all the same.
Now China Rhyming is not the place for restaurant reviews, nor is China Rhyming in any way qualified to provide them. But let joy be unremitting in that someone, a Hong Kong food/restaurant group in fact, is reopening a place called Jimmy’s Kitchen, once the legendary western restaurant/diner of Shanghai.
A couple of Jimmy’s references – here on Shanghaiist with a sample menu from the old days and another here with an advert for the specials from China Rhyming back in 2009. In the old days the place was considered affordable by most – while it’s not top end by any means for Shanghai these days it is probably beyond the pay packets of any visiting soldiers on a 48 hour pass.
What is nice to see is that the old Jinjiang Hotel (formerly Victor Sassoon’s Grosvenor Mansions) is finally being used sensibly. When I visited a couple of weeks ago I walked through the usual faux marbled and poorly designed lobby up into the hotel bar, which was as dreary, overpriced and deserted as ever with cheap B&Q-style garden furniture, overlit, bored and shabby staff and tiny cups of crap coffee for extortionate prices served luke warm – what we’ve come to expect from all Jinjiang hotels. I stepped into Jimmy’s Kitchen on the same floor and the place was jumping with lively conversation, laughter and staff (admitted still being trained) who were universally friendly and giving it their best shot. The contrast was quite staggering – a professional restaurant within a hotel that, frankly, hasn’t changed since the 1980s. That’s progress right there I suppose.
And it’s taken me a couple of weeks to find this picture – Jimmy’s is re-opening with a party tonight so I’m just in time with the pic of the old Jimmy’s (bottom right) down on Nanking Road in its hey-day.
I’ve noted before the restoration of the the Holy Trinity Church (often referred to by the Chinese as the ‘Red Church’) on Jiujiang Road (formerly Kiukiang Road) and Jiangxi Road (Kiangse Road). The church was originally designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. No more famous name in church construction, or perhaps in all English architecture, is there than Scott.
Recently I read Simon Bradley’s book on the history of London’s St Pancras Station, the most striking portion of which, the Grand Hotel, was designed by Scott. An excellent little book, a most beautiful station, a wonderful restoration job and very enlightening on Scott and his style of designing. In a sense GG Scott and Shanghai were made for each other, as Bradley’s pen portrait of the man shows clearly – GG Scott was basically a brand that sold globally. There are something like 800-1,000 buildings bearing Scott’s name; churches or church restorations being the single largest category Scott did, though you can find his hospitals, universities and, of course, the much loved and equally much hated Albert Memorial (for my money – the stupidest monument London ever got – and therefore, wonderful in its own quirky way).
Scott never visited many of his overseas constructions including his church in Shanghai and others in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, India and Newfoundland. He was a brand, an architect who delegated the work. Scott provided outline sketches that were worked up into blueprints by his team – the ‘starchitect’ brand was the thing.
This seems so Shanghai (and not a little Beijing too) to me – a designer brand that Shanghai must have though with no real roots or connection to the place. A transplant that might just confer a little celeb on an otherwise rather insecure bunch. Just as now so many crave a Louis Vuitton flagship store so in the nineteenth century the nouveau riche Shanghailander upstarts craved a GG Scott. Just as Shanghai’s officials now crave the tallest, shiniest, most penile skyscraper with upmarket hotel brand and lobby Starbucks so the old Shanghailanders wanted to buy themselves respectability with a GG Scott church. And at one time the steeple of Holy Trinity was the tallest structure in Shanghai. Of course, the parallels are obvious – though to this blogger at least the Holy Trinity remains a thing of beauty which is more than can be said of the Westin Hotel and its pompous and somewhat retarded crown!!
As this blog always says – history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme!
Word is rolling round that my new book, Midnight in Peking: The True Story of a Brutal Murder in the Last Days of Peking, is out this summer. I’m supposed to being keeping quiet about it but a few early readers of proof copies have been talking about it on Facebook and elsewhere and now there’s this article in the China Daily on Penguin’s forthcoming China publishing programme which includes me, so I guess I can link to that without getting into trouble.
One for the real Shanghai architecture twitchers and Hongkou train spotters here!!
A bit of demolition (what else!) along Zhoujiazui Road (Point Road) and Gongping Road (Kung Ping Road) in Hongkou (Hongkew) – a block cleared revealing some Shanghai roof cross beam patterns for the architecturally curious.
What sounds like a potentially fascinating talk at the Beijing Bookworm this Wednesday
Wednesday 27 April
The Engineer and The Warlord – presented by Beijing Postcards
7.30pm
20/30rmb
Beijing Postcards shares fascinating footage and tales from the roaring 20s, where warlords shifted sides and assassinated each other as often as they changed concubines. Simon Gjeroe explores the complicated relationship between the engineer Robert Christensen and the warlord, Zhang Zoulin. Christensen documented the life and death of the hot-tempered former bandit who ruled Manchuria as his own.
