More London Chinese Restaurant Stories: Indian Goings-on at the Nanking Restaurant
Posted: April 30th, 2013 | 2 Comments »A second quick London-related posting and also related to some postings I did a while back on early Chinese restaurants in London (see here, here and here). An interesting story then that involves the once well known the Nanking Restaurant on Denmark Street, off the Charing Cross Road. In November 1934 Indian activists in London (many later to become communists) including MD Taseer, Mulk Raj Anand, Jyoti Ghosh, Pramod Sengupta and syed Sajjad Zahir met in a back room at the Nanking to form the left wing and anti-imperialist Indian Progressive Writers’ Association.The Nanking is often described as being in Soho (but is not, to me anyway, as it’s slightly east of Charing Cross Road) though Denmark Street was London’s original “Tin Pan Alley”, though in 1932 the street was mostly Asian restaurants. Here’s a little more on the Nanking from The Queenslander newspaper in 1932 that reviewed the London Chinese restaurant scene….
“….enter Denmark Street, which is now almost wholly given over to Chinese and Japanese restaurants and emporia. Undoubtedly the most amusing of these places is The Nanking, presided over by Mr. Fung Saw. Mr. Fung is some thing of a politician, and to his restaurant come many of the more youthful of the budding Parliamentarians. These, together with composers and song writers, their publishers and film artists, comprise the chief of Mr. Fung’s clientele. The hall of feasting is reached by long, steep steps, which lead to an exceptionally large, light, and lofty basement. There is another and a mere prosaic entrance through a hall door on the ground floor, but somehow no one ever seems to notice it, and so we descend the more picturesque steps. Inside, the decorations are reminiscent of a Chinese junk, and the walls are decorated in vermilion and in greens and yellows, which only a Chinese artist is able to use to Oriental perfection. On the opposite side of the road are two Japanese restaurants, and just round the corner we can enter the banqueting hall of Wah Yeng, who contents himself with catering, to the exclusion of everything else. Mr. Yeng explained that he had a largo back room, which he reserved for Chinese business men, but as Chinese merchants do not so often come to London the hall at the back is usually thrown open to all.”
Sadly I have no picture of the old Nanking or Denmark Street in the 1930s (any offers out there?) but here’s Denmark Street today (ish)
Sajjad Zaheer, one of the founders of the Progressive Writers’ Association, wrote a novella in Urdu, recently translated and published as ‘A Night in London’. (There’s a write-up of it on the ‘London Fictions’ website).
The new edition, brought out by HarperCollins India, includes the founding statement of the PWA, adopted at that meeting at the Nanking Restaurant.
Does anybody have a directory which identifies which building houses the Nanking? There is still one restaurant on Denmark Street – the Giaconda Dining Rooms. Is that the direct successor to the Nanking restaurant of the 1930s?
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