Following on from my recent post on the Grand Hotel des Wagons Lits thanks to Bill Savadove, a gentleman of Shanghai, for the following:
This is from the 1909 “Guide to Peking and its environs” by Fei-shi. Just saw the reprint this week!
The Grand Hotel des Wagon-Lits, Ltd.
“This is the hotel par excellence. There are two sections to this hotel. The older one is in the rear, while the front, or new section, along the canal, was added in 1908. This gives the hotel ample room for visitors who generally arrive in spring and autumn. The hotel is, at times, the meeting place of Princes of the Blood and of the highest mandarins of the Empire. Any visitor to Peking who looses (sic) his way should say to a ricksha coolie ‘Liu Kwo Fan Tien’, when he will be taken at once to the centre of Legation Quarter, in other words, the Hotel des Wagon-Lits.”
The pace of destruction throughout Hongkou, Tilanqiao and Yangpu is ferocious and shows absolutely no signs of abating – indeed it is intensifying. Just recently on listing several roads I rather like for ex-pat rag Time Out Shanghai (sorry, for some reason they don’t have a website) I noted the architectural mix that is the few hundred yards of Yulin Road (formerly Yuuin Road) between Dalian Road (Dalny Road) and Lintong Road (Macgregor Road).
However, the portion of Yulin Road to the east of Dalian Road is a lot less lucky – several blocks of perfectly serviceable lilong housing went in the last few years – one nice block was replaced by the traffic police!! Now a decent enough block on the corner of Yulin and Dalian is going as you can see below – too late now to save it if anybody could anyway. This block was actually one of Shanghai’s very real communities, most of the residents worked their whole lives in the nearby Shanghai Watch Company factory which remains on the street. The poor Shanghai Watch Company has fallen rather severely from grace in the last 20 years but remains. That short stretch of Yulin Road must be, or at least was, home to more knowledgeable horologists than anywhere else. They used to gather, and still do in very limited numbers, to sell, trade, barter and just admire and chat about watches every weekend.
No idea what is slated for the site – maybe more offices for the traffic police!
My forthcoming book Murder in Peking features quite a few scenes within and references to Peking’s old Grand Hotel des Wagons Lits in the Legation Quarter. The one my characters visited, slept, danced and drank in in 1937 was not the first Grand Hotel on the site – the first was built in 1905 in Flemish Gothic style, but soon proved to be too small and was replaced in 1914 by a larger building. It was, after the Peking Hotel, the best place to stay and well situated for the Legation Quarter, the government offices around Chienmen and the Railway Station (then at Chienmen and not the current location – see here).
The other day I came across a 1930s luggage label for the hotel showing its crest, a rather intriguing little devil at the top and of course the old Tartar Wall as a motif on the shield and below – the Wagons Lit abutted the Tartar Wall. That section of the Wall, along with most of it of course, succumbed to Chairman Mao’s ridiculous remodelling of Peking.
And the grand old hotel itself – now demolished of course…
As a number of people who know their stuff have recommended it to me I’ll note that Howard Goldblatt’s fairly recent new translation of Lao She’s Rickshaw Boy in both paperback and Kindle form. It comes with a useful introduction too apparently. It’s been years since I last read the book and then it was a crappy Peking Foreign Language Publishers copy too so this might have to be downloaded.
A beautiful new translation of beloved Chinese author Lao She’s masterpiece of social realism, about the misadventures of a poor Beijing rickshaw driver
First published in China in 1937, Rickshaw Boy is the story of Xiangzi, an honest and serious country boy who works as a rickshaw puller in Beijing. A man of simple needs whose greatest ambition is to one day own his own rickshaw, Xiangzi is nonetheless thwarted, time and again, in his attempts to improve his lot in life.
One of the most important and popular works of twentieth-century Chinese literature, Rickshaw Boy is an unflinchingly honest, darkly comic look at a life on the margins of society and a searing indictment of the philosophy of individualism.
I’ve commented on the practise of cultivating slums out of perfectly refurbishable buildings in Shanghai in order to eventually bulldoze them and clear the land for property developers. Here’s an example of a structure, a residential dwelling, that until a couple of years ago was perfectly habitable and eminently refurbishable but has been neglected, chai-ed for a long time to discourage anyone for paying for its upkeep and maintenance, picked away at to allow in weather and rain and is now condemned.
A great shame as it was formerly a rather elegant property close to the junction of Tanggu Road (Boone Road) and Shanxi Road North (Shanse Road North) in Hongkou (Hongkew). ASs the fronting property for the developmnt behind this building was once most attractive with an excellent front facing balcony for surveying life on Boone Road, once a busy thoroughfare though the construction of hideous malls of cheap clothing companies around the area, now a textiles market, have constricted and truncated the street in recent decades.
Boone Road was more popularly known as “Boong†Road by the Chinese who knew the road best for the impressive Shanse (Shanxi) Bankers’ Guild building built in 1892. It also housed the sturdy five-storied Japanese Club (295) built in the English Renaissance style and the Japanese Shinozaki Hospital leading to the area around Boone Road often being referred to as the ‘Japanese Colony’. The residential structures, such as the now sadly neglected and doomed to destruction one below, were impressive and much sought after.
And so yet another beautiful building in Shanghai has been left to rot and will soon be erased for good.
Even though Penguin are my publisher I must confess to a love of the book- and Penguin-related tat they churn out – mugs, bags, coasters, bookmarks, postcards, even bloody deckchairs!! I’ve bought it all…even the DH Lawrence deckchair – how demented is that!
Now if you’re in China you can get plenty of Penguin tat (it’s their fifth anniversary here) and all you have to do is buy some books – easy. So I’m plugging it. By the way, theirs also China-specific Penguin tat. The traditional style enamel workers mug with Penguin logo is a bit of a China special and well worth getting hold of!! Details on the picture and participating bookshops below (that presumably will have stock rooms of this most desirable tat out the back!).
An article popped up in the Shanghai Daily, a government run and controlled English language newspaper here. The paper is a rather awful publication that parrots the government line and seems to support itself with adverts for (ahhemm) ‘massage services’. I generally ignore it. Anyway, it rarely talks about architecture or preservation for obvious reasons – tricky subjects with the Communist censor on your shoulder, and aren’t property prices and some new ugly high rise development called Vienna Black Forest Wealth Mansions or something equally bizarre so much more interesting? Still, the article contains some useful detail on the building’s history and origins and rather a lot of quite odd wistful extemporising on the theme a la the sort of articles that oddly pop up in Chinese airline in-flight magazines on lao Shanghai for some reason.
The article indicates that Shanghai will be holding a series of events this year on its art-deco heritage (no details though and presumably heavily stage managed as per usual), perhaps some in conjunction with Miami Beach, Florida, obviously another art-deco city, have been suggested. Of course, what the official newspaper fails to note, is that Shanghai has destroyed more precious and architecturally important art-deco buildings than anywhere else in the last 25 years and continues to destroy and bulldoze art deco at a furious rate. Not a subject considered suitable for public consumption and discussion that it would seem!!
Shanghai urban planners, retail property giants and assorted other property developers have finally got what they’ve wanted for a long time – the total destruction of Wujiang Road (the former Love Lane). The eastern end of the street is now cleared of all its former buildings that included the old St Anna Ballroom, Van’s Dutch Inn and other once famous locations – I’ve covered the pre-1949 history of Love Lane here previously.
Even Love Lane’s later post-1949 incarnation as a food street was deemed unacceptable to the Shanghai authorities who, despite the popularity of night markets in pre-1949 Shanghai and still today in Taiwan where crowds surge every evening at places like Shilin Market for snacks and traditional foods, have deemed that all traditional food will be dfriven out of the city centre. Several years ago the slightly less interesting western end of the street was cleared and has become a street of 100% junk food outlets – if your sort of cultural experience requires names such as Krispy Kreme, Carls Jnr or Yoshinoya then Wujiang Road is for you.
The eastern end clung stubbornly on selling cheap traditional snacks – it was invariably packed at lunch times and early evenings but was too ‘uncivilised’ for the urban planners who deemed it necessary to ‘harmonise’ Wujiang Road. What will replace the once roomy and elegant structures that lined the eastern end of the street and also fronted onto Nanjing Road West (Bubbling Well Road)? We can expect a high rise or two and yet more junk food restaurants so that the whole street becomes a harmonised horror of generic, bland, corporate food shops.
So long Love Lane…it was great to know you, even in your dotage….
Love Lane itself now cleared for ‘harmionisation’
Here you see the total removal of the frontages onto Nanjing Road West – all scarified to the Gods of Retail Property Prices
The perspective now looking east from Nanjing West Road at the junction with Shimen No.1 Road – in my humble opinion, not a vast improvement!
