Bad Memorials that No Longer Stand on the Bund

Robert Bickers was in town recently and gave a series of talk about his new book The Scramble for China. In one presentation he went through some of the old statues that sat along the Bund between the 1840s and 1949. Interesting stuff and I know many of you will be familiar with the grand old war memorial to the 1914-18 war and the statues of Harry Parkes and Robert Hart.

More interesting and obscure perhaps was the memorial to General Gordon, remembering his command of the Ever Victorious Army and protection of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion. The memorial was made in Hong Kong and shipped up to Shanghai – it was not liked much apparently. Rather like the stuff designed in Hong Kong and shipped to Shanghai these days – mostly ghastly nouveau riche canteen-like dim sum restaurants and marble palace shopping malls – it was considered gauche. I also like the fact that you can, apparently, take the English out of England, but not England out of the English – British sailors disliked it so much that, when drunk (one imagines a very common state for them) they would abuse it and try and smash it up – binge drinking lager louts in early 20th century Shanghai – my heart swells with pride!

Then there was the Margery Memorial that started out along Soochow Road (Suzhou Road) in 1881 and then got moved to the Bund Public Gardens in 1907. Margery was a British functionary who was about as smart as most of the chinless wonders who work for the Foreign Office these days still and got himself killed rather stupidly in south west China. Rather pompously the inscription apparently read, ‘the path of duty was the path of glory’. Margery was officially praised as an English hero though others suggested he was just a typical Foreign Office burke who annoyed the locals and got his throat cut for his trouble. Anyway, the Margery Memorial was pretty awful too – compared by some as being as bad as the Albert Memorial in London, that most vainglorious of unnecessary totems stuck up in the capital to a waste of space. I thought I’d see if it was possible that Shanghai had once been graced with something as architecturally repulsive as the Albert Memorial – not quite, but it was a close thing!!