The Bulldozing of Old Shanghai – The End Huangpi Lu South

I made a point yesterday about the tragic destruction of the former Rue du Consulat (Jinping Lu), the last fully arcaded street in the former French Concession. Tragically that is not all the destruction that is occurring in the old Frenchtown – Huangpi Lu (Rue Bayle) and Hefei Lu (Rue du Pére Froc) are also being bulldozed. This is also incredibly sad – the buildings were all structurally sound, many had been refurbished on both sides of the Huangpi Lu and it was a genuine community. The eastern side of the street is coming down; the western side is plaqued as a “Model Quarter”, but it’s future cannot be assured now of course and plaques mean nothing in Shanghai. An especial tragedy is the loss of the corner structure on the junction of Huangpi and Hefei – these marvellous (and unique to Shanghai) corner buildings are now a seriously endangered species across the former concessions.

As I mentioned yesterday it is upsetting yet important to archive the philistine destruction of a once great city’s architecture. At some point I am convinced young Shanghainese will gaze around their architecturally bland and soulless city and wonder why it had to be trashed. There’s no going back of course, Shanghai is very close to finished architecturally now – a few stand out buildings and a Bund are not representative of anything if no ordinary houses, lanes, retail shops, fire stations, cop shops, schools etc exist. They’re like the dinosaur in London’s Natural History Museum, impressive but without any perspective.

It’s also important to challenge the still off-heard comment (at least a lot of people say it to me at events) that no further destruction will occur in Frenchtown, that the Party, the government and their developer cronies know the tourism and heritage value of the former French Concession. Sadly that is utterly untrue. The horrific faux heritage of Xintiandi shows that; the destruction of the Jian Ye Li shikumen cluster to create a luxury Capella hotel shows that; the bulldozing of Jinling Lu shows that and now the bulldozing of Huangpi Lu/Hefei Lu shows that.

The pictures below show the boarded up stretch of Huangpi Lu and the final picture shows the junction with Hefei Lu facing east indicating that the entire enormous block is slated to go….

The Loss of Shanghai’s Rue du Consulat (Jinling Lu)

If I start to write about the Rue du Consulat in Shanghai’s former French Concession, it’s beautiful colonades, the wonderful shops and apartment buildings, how in Shanghai’s brutal summers that street was a sanctuary of shade and how now that street is being totally destroyed I’ll just cry. So here’s a link to Katya Knyazeva’s history of the street and a few pictures (because we must archive the philistine vandalism and destruction of a city’s heritage too as well as celebrate its past architectural glory) of the street as it comes to its final end….

Dreams of Boulevards des Arcadiens by Katya Knyazeva

And that dream now….(well late March when I was last there)

The shuttered shops of Jinling Lu

The side streets running south down towards Laoximen (also of course being flattened) also boarded up

the corner roads off Jinling Lu now blocked off as whole destruction of the rear of the apartment buildings over the street level shops continues apace

many of the rears of the buildings are already gone leaving only frontages now – the street can never now be restored

and here the total and utter eradication of Shanghai’s built heritage…

AFONG, A Photographer in Hong Kong, Wattis Fine Art, Hong Kong – 21/6/18 – 21/7/18

AFONG, A Photographer in Hong Kong

a collection of original albumen prints of

Hong Kong, Canton and Macao

c.1860 – 1890

from Thursday 21st June 2018

Afong – Wellington Street, Hong Kong c.1879

The exhibition continues until Saturday 21st July 2018

Wattis Fine Art Gallery
20 Hollywood Road, 2/F, Central, Hong Kong
Tel. +852 2524 5302 E-mail. info@wattis.com.hk

www.wattis.com.hk
Gallery open: Monday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump

Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860–1937

Anne Reinhardt’s new book on ships, shipping and nation building in China looks very interesting….

Remembering June 4 1989….

The Burlington Hotel, Bubbling Well Road

My eternal thanks to Jamie Carstairs and the Historical Photographs of China project at Bristol University for permission to use this image of the Burlington Hotel.

The Hotel features briefly in my new book City of Devils but, although I had read references to it in various places (not least the Shanghai Municipal Police records as a place of illegal gambling on occasion) I’d never seen a photo of it. It stood  at 135 Bubbling Well Road (now Nanjing Xi Lu) until they changed the numbers in the mid-1930s and it became 1225 (which has led to some confusion over the years as to where it was). It is now sadly under the enormous, and distinctly less appealing, JC Mandarin  Hotel. According to Edward Denison is his essay Chinoiserie: An Unrequited Architectural Affair contained within Anne Witchard’s collection British Modernism and Chinoiserie the hotel’s architects were the British firm of Robert Moorhead and Sidney Halse.

The hotel was around for a long time and may have had several iterations and lots of refurbishments and adjustments. It was one of the first hotels in Shanghai to offer central heating in all rooms (1904) as well as telephones in every suite and modern elevators. A certain Mr Bourke was a long serving manager.

Adverts from the mid-1930s offer single rooms at $8 and doubles for $15 – the hotel accepted Chinese guests. During the ‘Solitary Island’ period the hotel was occasionally a base for Free China hitmen sent into Shanghai by the Nationalists to assassinate supporters of Wang Jing-wei’s puppet collaborationist government. The hotel continued to operate as the Burlington during the war, though seems to have become a little more down-at-heel – they staged boxing matches in the ballroom to attract customers. ITs fortunes continued to fall – indeed during and after the war it was often referred to in memoirs as ‘seedy’ – signs saying ‘NO COOKING IN ROOMS’

You can see a luggage label for the Burlington here on the Picture This site

My post on “Old Bill” Hawkins and the Burlington Hotel gang is here

Image courtesy of David Noyce and Historical Photographs of China, University of Bristol.

When Shanghai Boo-ed Harold Lloyd

Silent-era comedy star Harold Lloyd’s first talkie Welcome Danger in 1930 was partly set in San Francisco’s Chinatown and featured some very negative portrayals of Chinese people which resulted in loud booing in Shanghai cinemas. This audience outrage, which the Shanghai Municipal Police reported almost turned violent, led to a change in policy in the Settlement. Whereas before the Nationalist government censors in Nanking had been able to censor and ban movies within the Chinese-controlled portions of Shanghai they had not been able to influence screenings within the foreign concessions. However, the Shanghai Municipal Police, concerned with public security (and at the urging of cinema managers fearing a boycott by Chinese patrons), agreed to liaise with the Nanking censors and potentially follow their lead on banning films. Welcome Danger was withdrawn after a short run in the Settlement and an apology issued to Chinese patrons by cinema managers.