Following on from a note yesterday on the interesting little area around Yunnan Road behind the Great World. I’ve posted before on the sort of OKish restoration of the former Great World (Da Shijie) at the junction of Xizang Road and Yanan Road (formerly Boulevard de Montigny and Avenue Edward VII). With the builders moving out one consequence of the redevelopment of the building has been to expose the backs of the properties that front onto Yunnan Road (formerly Rue Palikao), if you see what I mean. Yunnan Road is now a lively and popular food street and forms one of a network of interesting, though slightly bashed about, streets between Xizang Road to the west and Henan Road South (formerly Rue Imperiale) to the east, and sandwiched between Yanan Road (Avenue Edward VII) and Jingling Road (Rue du Consulat) to the north and south respectively.
The Great World in all its glory…now round the back…
These roads were effectively a bit of a rabbit warren. Post-1949 redevelopment has opened them up a bit with some clearances and park creation while the Expressway has rather ended any charm to the north, but Ninghai Road East (Rue Weikwei) running west-east and the north-south cross roads of Yunnan, Guangxi (Rue de Saigon), Yongshou (Rue des Peres) and Zhejiang (Rue Hue) were all a distinct community of the Frenchtown border area between the wars (though this road layout dates back to the 1860s). This community was notorious for its streetwalkers and its lodging houses were their places of work – shag pads basically, as well as the slightly classier tea houses and Yeji houses where Chinese prostitutes charged clients based on time spent in their company. The girls tended to cluster by their province/town of origin.
The working girls, along with the itinerant storytellers, comics, magicians, puppeteers, sword fighters and swallowers, tightrope walkers, animal fights, fortune teller, qigong displays, fire eaters, monkey shows and freak shows, that crowded the area spilling over from the Great World made the whole district somewhat of a carnival every night. Now, given that the Great World was the major draw and that the girls grabbed their clients from the streets around the entertainment centre you have to assume that the lodging houses that backed on to the Great World were both the best situated and the most convenient and would, therefore, have been the primo shag pads for Shanghai’s most serious slappers between 1917 (when the Great World first opened its doors to all and sundry) and the war.
And so now here revealed, those very salubrious and handily located knocking shops…..these being the backs of the properties on the corner of Yunnan and Ninghai directly to the rear of the Great World. If buildings could talk….
Some odd date stamps popping up around Shanghai – with most really old buildings being trashed one answer is to slap some fake date stamps on the not quite so old. Yunnan Road is a prime example of this and several buildings have done this – one from the late 1990s even stamping itself 1887 (most unlikely for a eight storey building!!). This seems to have happened following the renovation and reopening of the old Great World on the corner of Xizang Road (Thibet Road) and Yanan Road (Avenue Edward VII) last year. The area behind (to the east) of the Great World, though Frenchtown, was once a warren of mostly Chinese-run and patronised flop houses, brothels and various nefarious places that cadged of the crowds looking for a good time at the Great World.
All very interesting and a great little area between Yanan and Jingling (Rue du Consulat). But, this building on the corner of Yunnan Road South (Rue Palikao) and Ninghai Road East (Weikwei Road) is not from 1921 as far as I know. So explorer of Shanghai beware!
BTW: tomorrow – the top working girl shag pads of the old Great World exposed!! (felt a tabloid urge come upon me)
A wee bit of a deviation – but a weird bit of historical ephemera, or rather random computer generation, I came across. Browsing around on Amazon the other day I was looking for a book on the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Mosley’s old repugnant mob of would be Hitlers. I’m trying to get some background information on a particularly nasty character I want to use in a book who was sympathetic to Mosley. I bought a copy of Martin Pugh’s apparently excellent book on the subject.
Anyway, I was fascinated, appalled, amazed, stupified to find that Amazon can sell me the following (for the very reasonable sum of 19 British Pounds)
Jigsaw Puzzle of British Politics – Fascists – BUF – London – 1936
This from a company called Media Storehouse. I worked out that they have some sort of automatic system whereby any picture in their archive, and they have access to thousands of old pictures from the old PA Archive, can be ordered as a jigsaw. Phew…it seems that nobody did market research and found that many parents would love a jigsaw of Oswald Mosley for their children!! The system also automatically creates the text for Amazon which is a funny, if not a little sick:
Bespoke 300 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle 17×12 (43x30cm). The jigsaw is delivered bagged and on a back board making a superb gift. Also supplied are a re-sealable bag, a photo example of the image and a self assemble flat packed box for storage
Image Description: Female members of the British Union of Fascists give the fascist salute for the camera outside their London headquarters
Strangely there were no customer reviews!!
Should you want one as the perfect Christmas present for that veteran of Cable Street or Mitford sister in your life then click here to order
Obviously I have to show you the worst taste jigsaw yet to cross my path!!
To be honest, given all the grey skirts and black shirts I’m not even sure it would be a very challenging jigsaw…keep you busy while you were interned on the Isle of Man though I suppose on those long winter nights
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!
The Great World in all its glory…now round the back…
