Shanghai – First Impressions No.14 – Henry Champly Goes Topside, 1932

Posted: September 2nd, 2013 | No Comments »

Shanghai: Topside, Bottomside – Henry Champly – 1932

 

Has Anybody Told you Anything about Shanghai?

“Shanghai, my dear sir!” the admirals said to me, shaking their heads.

“Oh yes, Shanghai and Shanghai women!” murmured the senior officers.

“Ah, but above all, Shanghai women!” exclaimed the midshipmen.

“But after all,” I said to the lot of them, “you have dallied in many another port under the sun. Don’t you count your adventures with girls anywhere else?”

“No!” they replied. “For pleasure and passion, for Women, there are only two cities in the world beyond compare: Shanghai and Paris.” (They did not even put Paris first) “Come on, let’s take another turn around the deck…Here’s something that happened to me in Shanghai…”

 

We walked round and round, with the supple stride of sailors, on the holy-stoned planks of the quarter-deck. In between the long-muzzled guns we caught the warm, acrid breeze of the China Sea, and a shower of cinders. Whenever duty robbed me of my momentary trainer in this endless walk, another one emerged from the chartroom, or descended from the masthead. We readjusted our stride to the roll of the ship – one, two – and my fresh companion, too, quite casually conveyed to me that he had something on his mind.

 

“Has anybody told you anything about Shanghai…and the women there?”

 

So much so that in the end, drunk to the point of exhaustion with these stories, despite their charm, I pretended that I had some work to do, so that I could go down to my cabin, fling myself on my berth, and drowse there, obsessed by these words: “Shanghai…The Shanghai women…”

 

Now I look back with affectionate nostalgia on those lurching walks of ours, like bears uncaged, on those burning decks that creaked beneath us. How frank, how wholesome those comrades of mine were! And all their love stories, even when they ended badly- how much more elevating they were than the embittered, sickening confessions of land-lubbers!…

I had the honour, at that time, of navigating as a guest aboard the stout ships of our (French) Far Eastern Squadron.

They were not modern ships. Their obsolescence proved the pacifism of the French Republic. But the crews who were sacrificed in them in advance, in case those old ironclads should ever have to give battle, deserved being called upon to play a part less desperate.

 

What attractive fellows you find in that Navy of ours! Even when they go unwashed, for lack of fresh water, they are still clean in their souls, and you can see it in their faces. Even the middling among them, even indeed the bad-hats, are transformed by force of circumstances, by tradition and way of life, into good company. I am extremely fond of mixing with them. It is as tonic as a dose of oxygen, that “yarning” of theirs, even on shore.

 

Yes, I heard plenty of anecdotes about Shanghai, aboard the nimble Duguay-Trouin; the Waldeck, with all her smoke-stacks; aboard the Inconstant, in which they gave me the honorary rank of fore-top-man because I made no bones about paying my tribute to Neptune – in other words…seasickness.

…..

Shanghai the unique, Shanghai the stupendous! Shanghai, with all its majesty, all its medley, all its parti-coloured pleasures – Shanghai, city whose romance had become legendary, but which still remains blatantly realist…

…..

We got into the Wangpu…With our baggage all strapped, pending the customs examination, we went up on deck. It was a morning of wintry sun, just like February in Bordeaux. Once we rounded Wusung Point, I watched intently for my first sight of this new Babylon about which I had heard so much.

 

The first thing I saw was blackened ruins: a good beginning.

 

“The Japanese bombardment,” Marcel told me. “This was once a Chinese fort. That was once a beach hotel, and villas…They’ll build them up again. Just a warning to Europe…”

 

The liner wound her way, very gently, in between any number of cargo-ships, sampans, and junks, through the greasy water. On both banks of the river, docks began. Then red rounds on white squares fluttered at the top of squat grey masts. They were Japanese destroyers, flying aboard the victors’ destroyers.

 

“That’s the Bund over there,” said Marcel.

 

In between the big moored ships of every nation we were approaching a water-front made up of colonnades, domes, and tall buildings in American style. Marcel went on:

 

“Well, does it surprise you?”

“No, it doesn’t,” I replied. “But it brings the Parisian, who has an instinct about cities, to life in me. Yes, this really is a big city. And I can see for myself, at once, that it’s a very mixed one…”

“Look right at the end of the quay,” said he. “The lowest building of all: that old, dirty, overwhelmed one. That’s our poor French Consulate.”

“It’s a glorious flag that flies over it, all the same.”

“You needn’t tell me…And now, right in front of us, you have the International Concession and the public gardens, built on piles over a lagoon…That’s where the Bund ends and Broadway begins. If you want to meet the least glorious Frenchwomen in Shanghai, you’ve only to go for a walk there in the evening. They’ll be going for a walk there, too…”

“I’ll go.”

“But don’t judge Babylon from its streetwalkers. There are other things about it too.”

“So I see,” I murmured. “There’s all the creative genius of the Whites. The only question is whether Shanghai, just like Paris, London, Berlin, New York, and Buenos Aires, isn’t teaching the Coloured nowadays that all this marvellous genius of the Whites has, as its ultimate result, the prostitution of Woman….Those poor fellow countrywomen of mine, the streetwalkers on the Bund, can tell me what they think about it.”

“What they’ll say to you,” said Marcel, “is ‘Coming, dearie?’”

 

Henry Champly, The Road to Shanghai, (London: John Long, 1934)

 

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