A Short Break and Time for a Smoke on the SS Shanghai-Maru

I’m off to London for a week or so on business so no time to post as regularly. As it’s a slow time of year I’ll leave you all to recline in a very comfortable chair with a cigar, a glass of something decent, a good book and a selection of international newspapers. Oh yes, as you can see, sailing to Shanghai on the SS Shanghai-Maru was a real chore!! If this is an even half way accurate representation of the actual smoking room on the ship then I’d have just spent my time quite happily going backwards and forwards. Think upon it as you squeeze into your EasyJet seat to go on holiday this August!

By the way, the SS Shanghai-Maru was a Japanese owned liner (part of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha – NYK – fleet) built around 1923 by Denny W & Bros of Dumbarton reflecting the sort of quality you could expect from the Clydeside shipyards. In 1943 she collided with  another ship about 75 miles north east of Shanghai and sank.

Back soon…

The Blue Funnel Line

A couple of people asked after my post on the Liverpool Chinese and the centenary of the Liver Building about the Blue Funnel Line – well here’s some links about the Liverpool based line that was once the major trading shipping line between England and China:

Liverpool Museums Exhibition on the Blue Funnel Line

The Ships of the Blue Funnel Line

Blue Funnel information and memorabilia

Book buzz: the ones to watch 2011

The Australian Booksellers Association held its annual conference in Melbourne last weekend – here are the books expected to do well and create some waves in the second half of 2011 down under. Read the lists and the self aggrandizing point of this post will become apparent.

Apologies for self-promotion but you know….If i don’t nobody will!

Liverpool’s New Museum Features Chinese Scousers

While we’re on the subject of cities with a connection to China (Marseilles yesterday), it’s worth noting that Liverpool’s wonderful Liver Building is celebrating its centenary. Many will know that Liverpool is officially twinned with Shanghai – both ports obviously, both great trading cities, Liverpool has always had a large Chinese community with many hailing originally from Shanghai and Ningbo, courtesy of the Chinese sailors who worked the Blue Funnel line. Many will also note the slight similarity between the architecture and frontage of the Bund in Shanghai and the Liverpool waterfront and the Liver Building in period terms.

This week is also the opening of the 72 million quid Museum of Liverpool. A friend who’s popped in in the first few days informs me that Liverpool’s Chinese community is represented in the museum, particularly an interesting photography of the annual Chinese Picnic organised by the Chinese Freemasons in the 1930s – amazing how many English kids there are with labels on sporting Chinese names – hey, anything for a free picnic right? I assume, or at least hope, that the exhibit also deals with the nasty, spiteful and racist expulsion of many Chinese seamen from Liverpool after World War Two that left wives without husbands and breadwinners and children without fathers and mentors. It was one of the most shameful moments in post-war British history.

anyway – here’s a couple of resources for the Liverpool Chinese story:

Liverpool and its Chinese Seamen

Liverpool Chinatown

And the beautiful and majestic Liver Building

The MM Iraquaddy? It was Marseille

The other day I posted a picture of the wonderful old MM Iraquaddy but asked where the picture was taken. A few emailed me and all agreed that the city behind the ship is indeed, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the home port of the Messageries Maritimes line, Marseille (is there an ‘s’ or not? I’m never sure). That indeed does appear to be the splendid Marseille Cathedral and so below some pictures of the same stretch of Marseille waterfront from slightly different angles (just further to the right on the Iraquaddy picture would have been the lighthouse and old fort that would have helped identify the port) and the beautiful cathedral itself. Of course Marseille was France’s main port of embarkation for all points East.

A New Threat to the Bund

Not a year goes by without a new threat to the Bund. In recent years alone we’ve seen destruction (classic world class art-deco Bank of New York building etc), gutting (the ripping out of the interior of 3 on the Bund of its beautiful bannisters and wood panels for instance and currently a similar process happening at 1 the Bund for some cadre club), additions out of character (The Peninsula Hotel with its cheap facade that ruins the northern sweep of the Bund and uses inappropriate materials that clash with the grey stone of the classic buildings), privatisation and goonery (you try being a peasant visiting Shanghai and wanting to sit down a moment anywhere controlled by the Rockbund goons in their neo-fascist sub Paris CSR goon-fits) and perspective distortion (go to Pudong, look across at the Bund and tell me the sight of the Westin Hotel with that crass disgusting crown thing on top doesn’t ruin the perspective and put you off your dinner!). At the same time some good things have happened – it’s been good to see the pavements widened, the number of car lanes reduced, the horrible pedestrian bridge at the Yanan Road intersection removed and the equally horrid car ramp at the Suzhou Road/Garden Bridge end removed (and the ending of the filthy coach park that used to congregate underneath it.)

Still, now a new threat and one from a bunch who really know how to do bad architecture – SOHO. Anyone resident in Beijing will be familiar with just how bad SOHO can get – from their latest horror of a deserted development on Nan Sanlitun to various other monstrosities across the city. Now, according to this article, they want to come and deposit their architectural excretions in Shanghai too. Seven skyscrapers on the old French Bund (Quai de France) that will overshadow the historic Bund from the south. Truth be told hardly anything is left of the old French Bund, it’s always received a lot less attention than the Settlement’s river frontage – this project, if it goes ahead will leave nothing and, I would predict, be the death knell for the entire old town too that would lie just behind the glittering new towers (at least, like most SOHO projects, they’ll glitter for 6 months and then just look scrappy).

The MM Iraquaddy Under Full Steam…But Where?

I’ve made a few references over the years to the great French shipping line Messageries Maritimes (MM) who regularly sailed from China to Marseilles and also ran ships around French Indo-China (for instance, here’s an MM related post). So here’s a picture I came across recently of the MM Iraquaddy. And a fine old girl she is too under full steam. I assume Iraquaddy to be a French corruption of the River Irrawaddy in Burma. Here’s what’s driving me crazy though – can anyone tell me which river frontage that is behind the Iraquaddy? It’s not Shanghai sadly. It looks French, or at least the buildings to the far left do and the central building looks like a railway station (also French like I think – at least it reminds me of the old Gare d’Orsay, now the Musee d’Orsay in Paris on the Seine) but I don’t know Marseilles well enough.

Any experts that can tell me where the Iraquaddy was when this picture was taken?

Around the Northern External Roads

Much is written (including by me admittedly) on Shanghai’s western External Roads – just search in the box for Amherst Avenue (Xinhua Road), Columbia Road (Panyu Road), Great Western Road (Yanan Road), Edinburgh Road (Jiangsu Road), Yu Yuen Road (Yuyuan Road), Jessfield Park (Zhongshan Park) etc. The western external roads tend to get written about as they were home to many interesting characters and, quite frankly, foreigners live there now. The northern external roads, or  extra-Settlement roads, are a very different matter – terra incognita to most foreigners in Shanghai unless they are out at Fudan University.

Th northern external roads are to the northern edge of Hongkou (Hongkew) and bordering the Chinese districts of Zhabei (Chapei) and Boashan (Paoshan) – I’ve mentioned some of the border roads before (see here) as well as Hongkew Park (now Lu Xun Park – here and here). Foreigners lived in the northern external roads, particularly up around Hongkew Park where a few old villas and nice longtangs left (just) hanging on.

One major group of foreigners that did spend time in the northern external roads were soldiers and sailors. There were plenty of places that were designated for them, targeted them and were deemed ‘within limits’ by the various national armies while both Blood Alley and the western Badlands were both deemed ‘out of limits’ invariably.

Here’s the the Hollywood Bar and Restaurant at 77 Chung Shan Road (Zhongshan Road) – conveniently with a foreign sailor standing outside looking like Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh (which was released in 1945 about the time of this photo).

Sadly that building is long gone – indeed that area was among the earliest of Shanghai’s clearances, back in the late 1950s and 1960s when Hongkou was largely cleared for block style working class housing – housing that is itself being cleared now to make way for high rises. If you want to see the spot roughly where the Hollywood stood just go to the new Hongkou Carrefour on Zhongshan Road and Huayuan Road – but it’s not much fun.

However, round the corner are a few feint traces of the old style of the area.

First up here’s an old villa on Tonghuang Road, just to the north of Hongkew Football Stadium and adjacent to the new Carrefour. It’s now a restaurant called (I know, I know…but it’s Shanghai!) Petrus Mansion. No idea what the food’s like but at least it means the building remains.They may think they’re classy but they’re only a stone’s throw from the old Scott Road (Shanyang Road) where over 30 low end brothels operated in what was charmingly known as “The Trenches”, an area you went to when you wanted to trade down from Blood Alley or the Badlands!!

Just round the corner from Petrus Mansion (I know, I know…) is a rather nice remaining longtang at No.467 Dongjiangwan:

and note the original Crittall windows…