September – The Month to go Fur Shopping in Shanghai in 1934

Shanghai may still be one of the best cities in the world to buy a fur and, in 1934, there was one major purveyor of furs for the discerning lady – The Siberian Fur Store on the Bubbling Well Lane (now the less charmingly named Nanjing Road West). The store was, I believe, owned and run by White Russian Jews (the Klebanoff family I think) and was a fur bank as well as fur store (so you could store you coats there in the hotter months in air conditioned vaults). It was not a store for everyone, you needed some serious gelt to make a purchase and the store was so well known and has lived in the memory of many old time Shanghainese (it made a brief appearance in Ang Lee’s Lust Caution if I remember rightly too).