The Tale of Rue de Pali-Kao – Paris and Shanghai Frenchtown United

Posted: October 2nd, 2023 | No Comments »

Shanghai’s French Concession had a Rue Palikao but I did not know until the other day that Paris has a Rue de Pali-Kao (why Paris went for a ‘de’ and a hypen I don’t know)….

Shanghai’s was alternatively spelt Palicao sometimes and constructed around 1865, hence
it is quite narrow. The road was a continuation into the French Concession of Yunnan Road, close to the Great World Amusement Palace and known for its numerous night time streetwalkers.

The Paris version is in Belleville and was known as the Rue Napoleon till 1864 – how fortunes change. It is not Paris’s most beautiful street though there is a small garden and an artists commune once flourished on the street in the 1980s.

Both roads are of course named after a decisive battle in the Second Opium War that took place in Palikao (now Baliqiao), otherwise known as Eight Mile Bridge near Peking. On 21 September, a combined Anglo-French force that had recently occupied Tientsin (Tianjin) engaged the Chinese army numbering some 30,000-strong at Palikao. The Anglo-French forces inflicted massive losses (perhaps as many as 25,000) on the Chinese army and then proceeded to invade Peking. By contrast, the French lost
only 1,000 soldiers. The French troops were led by Charles Guillaume Cousin-Montauban (1796-1878), who was later awarded the title of Count of Palikao by Napoléon III and also got a road named after him in the Concession. The Chinese detested Cousin-Montauban for obvious reasons and it was alleged he had made a fortune during the subsequent looting of Peking though these allegations were not conclusively proved.

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