Well…not that much really but a few interesting bits and pieces and, most importantly, a couple of trains. As you’d expect in modern China a lot of space is taken up with nonsense about new train lines and the future. I was delighted to see a bunch of Chinese schoolkids inside the day I went getting a dreary lecture from a museum guide telling them not to worry about the old stuff (!!) but just think about the new fast train between Shanghai and Beijing. I’m pleased to report that the kids unanimously spent 10 seconds on the high speed train and then ran en-masse to see the steam trains, leaving the guide fuming. He didn’t understand that high speed trains are good but not romantic and that nobody would be interested in seeing Harry Potter go to Hogwarts on a Maglev!!
The Shanghai Railway Museum does have a 1940 US-built steam train that did run in China – see below. Also very nice is the 1930 carriage which also has a back viewing platform – those of you familiar with Shanghai Express (1932) will recall a key scene between Clive Brook (Doc Harvey) and Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Lily) on just such a carriage viewing platform – and I found a pic of that! Also worth a look is a smaller (and again US built) 1920s train that apparently used to run in Kunming – though not sure it’s the one I’ve previously posted – I offer both below for comparison.
A magnificent 1940 built US train
A 1930 carriage
the rear platform of the carriage
Shanghai Lil and Doc Harvey on the rear viewing platform of the Shanghai Express in 1932 working out their relationship issues – He was smart enough to know that despite her spectacularly dodgy past Dietrich was worth sacrificing everything for…obviously
A US-built train from 1920 that worked in Kunming
A picture from the 1930s sometime of the Yunnan-Hanoi train at Kunming station – similar sort of engine (admittedly this is the comment on a non-professional train spotter!)
A lot of railways for a while on this site – apologies to anyone who’s anti-railway. The original Shanghai railway stations are all gone now but images of them live on in the Shanghai Railway Museum which is in the right sort of area though for railways in Shanghai at 200 Tianmu Road East (Boundary Road – as it was the boundary between the northern extent of the Settlement and Chinese Shanghai and the original location of the Shanghai-Nanning Railway Station). The station was variously known as the Shanghai-Nanning station and, after 1916, the Shanghai North Railway Station. It got destroyed in 1932 by the Japanese and then again in 1937. After 1950 it was known simply as Shanghai Railway Station and then relocated to its current location in new premises, but close by, in 1987. By a matter of months, I just missed taking a train from the old station!!
the old Shanghai Railway Station in 1907
the recreated building that now houses the Shanghai Railway Museum
You don’t have to go that far back to remember when chimneys cropped up all over Shanghai. In the main areas of Puxi where the demolition and rebuilding has been most aggressive only one or two now exist. Quite a few though linger on out in the more working class environs of Hongkou (Hongkew) and Yangpu (Yantszepoo). However, the factories or utilities they’re attached to are mostly no longer in use and so they’re coming down steadily. Of course probably only a couple will survive – one or two may be preserved – the chimney at the Nanshi Power Plant was saved as long as EXPO was on as an attraction but I’m not sure whether that protection will extend now EXPO is over, and anyway they adapted it, painted it etc so it was changed. I know I’m on a complete loser hoping some industrial architecture gets preserved in a city that can’t even preserve international-level art-deco classics or totally unique architecture such as shikumens, but still…
Anyway, in order to remember and sing the praises of the humble Shanghai smokestack – initially a symbol of Shanghai as the mightiest city in the Orient and then as the symbol of Communist industrial advancement rampant – I offer you one about to go (on Tongbei Road – formerly Thorburn Road on the Hongkew/Yangtszepoo borders) and the former magnificence of the old Yangtszepoo Waterworks and its chimney in all its glory.
I just read Simon Bradley’s wonderful book on St. Pancras railway station. Truly a great read. As a born and bred North Londoner the station has been part of my life as long as I can remember and was for most if it a wreck, though an impressive one. Its resurrection, refurbishment and new place as the Eurostar terminal is amazing and every visit to London now I make sure to pass through the station – the glass roof and the Sir John Betjemen statue are enough, let alone the idea that you could step on a train in St Pancras and get of in Paris!! If you’d told me that when I was a kid I would have called the men in white coats.
Anyway, Bradley’s book got me think that we are perhaps not appreciating the remaining railway station architecture of Asia as much as in Europe where various stations from Paris to Venice remain either as stations or for other uses. Europe has lost plenty too – Glasgow St Enoch, the arch at Euston for instance. In Asia some stunning railway stations remain while others have disappeared. So I’ll try and dig some up and root out some photos of stations that have been consigned to the bulldozer too. Any suggestions let me know – Kuala Lumpur’s Moorish architecture station is a must, the old Kowloon station too while some of China’s northern cities have terrific stations from the days of the China Eastern Railway.
Here’s a couple of links from previous postings to get things moving:
I’m down in Singapore for a few days in April working and doing a little research for a book – came across this video on CNNGo Singapore, an old film of the then British Colony. It’s fun but doesn’t answer my research question – around the period between 1900 and 1920 where were the brothels in Singapore, both the Chinese ones and the bordellos staffed with foreign girls?? If anyone knows please do pass along some addresses?
People keep asking m about these so here they are, still with a few left in print.
In 1935, the Shanghai Municipal Council issued a map for visitors to the city. The man they hired to produce it was an American called Carl Crow. Crow collaborated on the map with a White Russian cartographer and artist V.V. Kovalsky. The map was a spectacular success and instantly became a collector’s item and is now extremely rare. For this reason I decided to reproduce the map in a full colour edition.
Crow arrived in Shanghai in 1911 establishing the China Press newspaper. The city was his home for the next 25 years as he worked as a journalist, adman, hostage negotiator, police sergeant, farmer and propagandist. He became a best-selling author, known for his wry, observant and sympathetic portraits of life in Shanghai. Arriving as the Qing Dynasty was collapsing and leaving as the city was being bombed in 1937, he left behind an enduring written legacy of Shanghai between the wars … and this map.
Each map is 20†X 25†(50.8 cm X 63.5 cm), full colour and with a copy of Carl Crow’s signature added.
Maps are available by collection in Shanghai or by post at the following rates:
I noted previously in some detail the new book from Tess Johnstone and assorted Shanghailanders of new walks that covered various interesting bits of the city from Frenchtown to the old Jewish ghetto to the Western Roads. The authors are reprising their talk about their walks this coming Saturday at the Deke Erh Gallery on Taikang Road between 2-4pm. If you missed them all at the Literary Festival then you’ve got another chance now.
There’s also a review of the book here from Urbanatomy
A magnificent 1940 built US train
A 1930 carriage
the rear platform of the carriage
Shanghai Lil and Doc Harvey on the rear viewing platform of the Shanghai Express in 1932 working out their relationship issues – He was smart enough to know that despite her spectacularly dodgy past Dietrich was worth sacrificing everything for…obviously
