Pingliang Road (Ping Liang Road) is one of the major thoroughfares that runs from Hongkou (Hongkew) into Yangpu (Yangtszepoo). As such it attracted some nice villas and houses for various Chinese and foreigners who either decided to live in the slightly cheaper environs of the further north east of the Settlement or who worked in the industrial units of Yangtszepoo which included China’s gas, electric and other utilities. The area is currently getting a caning and quality of architecture is no consideration as the loss of this villa, on Pingliang Road between Dalian Road (Dalny Road) and Jingxing Road (Jansen Road) shows.
This building was recently restored – the faux brick cladding on the outside was not that nice but the roof was repaired and the stand out feature of several attractive chimneys kept in place (they rarely are even on restored buildings due to the limits on real fires in Shanghai). The lower level housing around this villa went last year and it was to be hoped that the villa’s habitable quality and recent refurbishment would save it – but the chai signs have been daubed on it now.
This is hardly destruction of slums – were this building in the former French Concession it would (unless unlucky enough to be in the way of Sinan Mansions!!) be turned into a posh restaurant or bar. However, the Bright Young People of Shanghai rarely venture into the Hongkou/Yangpu environs while it is all pretty much terra incognita to the lychee martini drinking classes among foreign Shanghai. So it’s going…
Note the good condition of the roof, the solid brickwork and the excellent chimneys – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this building whatsoever – except that it is in the way of some developer’s plans
It’s position close to the main road makes it an attractive location…sadly the fashionable classes don’t venture north of Suzhou Creek
and once more with the trademark London plane trees lining Pingliang Road
And finally…what’s left of a similar villa nearby that got it’s roof ripped of and trashed just a couple of months ago
The excellent Wellcome Collection on London’s Euston Road is a fantastic resource for anything to do with the history of medicine. Within their archives are plenty of gems – the other year they did a wonderful job restoring John Thomson photos and then displaying them in London and Peking. Right now they have an interesting exhibition on about the history of drugs in Britain (based around Mike Jay’s new book High Society) that touches on two themes China Rhyming has covered before – opium in the West, the dens, the Chinatown Yellow Perils etc and the Opium Wars. Britain-China: impossible to understand the relationship between the two without understanding opium. And it still resonates – just look at the recent spat over Cameron and his Remembrance Day Poppy in Peking!
To accompany the exhibition there’s an online game – High Tea
Now China Rhyming normally has no interest in online games and all that nonsense but here’s the blurb for this game (and of course how could I resist it):
In this strategic plate-spinning game, you play an independent British smuggler selling opium in China’s Pearl Delta. Buy cheap and sell high to make a profit, but make sure you also obtain enough tea to keep Britain happy. You have ten years before the opium wars begin – can you make your fortune? Based on historical events, this game also shines a light on a questionable episode in the history of the British Empire.
I was recently sorting through my box of papers referring to Carl Crow who I wrote a biography of some years back (see here). Most of the material is unpublished Crow pieces (and I’ll publish a few here soon), letters and Carl Crow Inc ephemera such as this ad. This ad is from 1928 and highlights Crow’s poster business outside Shanghai – Crow had the largest billboard ad network in China and made good money of the business. You’ll see here his terms – so I guess this makes this an interesting document for anyone researching how advertising worked in China between the World Wars.
I love the idea of sending a chit to request a meeting! That’s very old Shanghai.
I’m no specialist on the French in Saigon so please accept my apologies for the basic nature of these posts. Here is a picture I stumbled across very happily recently of the Saigon Hippodrome, the horse racing track and a series of open fields. Apparently some light relief to see the gee-gees but not as well developed as the courses in Hong Kong or Shanghai I think. Sorry, but can’t date this photo accurately.
The Messageries Fluviales de Cochinchine was the French run River Shipping Company of for their Indo-China empire. The company dates back to the 1870s or 1880s when the French navy had to support about 3,000 soldiers in Indo-China and services were also needed for the 50,000 or so people living in Saigon port, the colonial capital. I think a lack of financing meant the line died out by the 1930s. Anyway, here’s a photo I came across recently of the docks of the Messageries Fluviale in Saigon showing their pretty extensive operations. I’m afraid I can’t date the photo accurately.
The lock imposed on maternity wards by the rather dubious infant formula providers and the almost complete absence of a ‘breast is best’ type campaign in China is not really that new it seems. Nestle was touting Lactogen in China back in the 1920s. Actually Nestle are still flogging it! Note that it was made in Australia and shipped in to China.
Robert Bickers,who’s name should need no introduction to anyone reading a blog as specialised as this, has a new book out, The Scramble for China, that is a hefty tome and essential reading. As I’m being paid to review elsewhere you only get the publishers blurb I’m afraid.
In the early 19th century China remained almost untouched by Britain and other European powers – ferocious laws forbade all trade with the West outside one tiny area of Canton. Anyone teaching a European to speak Chinese was executed. But as new technology began to unbalance the relationship, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by the Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain their independence? Humiliated by military disaster, racked by rebellions that cost millions of lives and ultimately invaded during the Boxer Rebellion by thousands of foreign soldiers, it looked as though the colonial Scramble for Africa was about to be followed by the Scramble for China. This extraordinary new book tells this epic story both from the European (mainly British) point of view and the Chinese. The degradation of China in this period is crucially important to understanding China today, whose government and people are steeped in stories of this terrible time and never wish to appear weak again. The Scramble for China is both highly original and brilliantly written – it reimagines these encounters between two equally arrogant and scornful civilizations, whether from the point of view of a Chinese governor or a British soldier. It is an epic of squalor, romance, brutality and exoticism, and it changed the world.
Note the good condition of the roof, the solid brickwork and the excellent chimneys – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this building whatsoever – except that it is in the way of some developer’s plans
It’s position close to the main road makes it an attractive location…sadly the fashionable classes don’t venture north of Suzhou Creek
