Delores Del Rio Does Chinoiserie (& smoulders in the International Settlement)

Here we have the beautiful Mexican movie star Delores Del Rio examining her extensive perfume collection and enjoying some chinoiserie style – the low chignon hairstyle and the knot-work gown.

Where did Delores get a taste for chinoiserie? Well it was in the air of course in the 1930s but she did make one China-related movie – 1938’s International Settlement (referring of course to Shanghai) – it’s no Shanghai Gesture but it ain’t bad, largely due to Del Rio: “In Shanghai amidst Sino-Japanese warfare an adventurer (George Sanders) collecting money from gun suppliers falls in loves with a French singer (Delores Del Rio).” The supporting cast is not too exciting though Keye Luke (see my posts about him and his art work here) appears.

As far as I know Del Rio never actually went to China – International Settlement was shot on the 20th Century Fox Studios lot on Pico Boulevard in LA. But still…enjoy…

Yet Another Suzhou Creek Makeover – Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid… The Suhe Bay Area is the last gasp of a once great Creek

Yet another plan to muck about with Suzhou Creek – and, as usual, much of the plan is based on rather spurious information. Anyone reading an article (such as this in the every loyal Shanghai Daily) about redevelopment in Shanghai that suggests there will be a people-centred or heritage preservation element knows that as soon as the phrase “upmarket riverside community” is invoked we’re in for trouble. Since the 1990s great swathes of the banks of both the northern and southern side of the Creek have been redeveloped. This has involved 1) mass clearances of shikumen (invariably described as sub-standard or slums by the media) and 2) anonymous new gated tower block compounds that restrict access to the bankside. it is perhaps worse upstream, particularly when you get up around the old Jessfield area and what is now Zhongshan Park and beyond, but has been creeping ever eastwards over the years.

Worrying of course is that, for some unknown reason, the project keeps talking about the Suhe “Bay Area. Shanghai has rivers, creeks, brooks (mostly covered over now), lakes (mostly manmade), docks (mostly defunct), wharves (mostly unused) and docks. It does not have a bay (that would be Manila, or San Francisco you’re thinking of). And if it does have a bay that I don’t know about then it’s not halfway up Suzhou Creek!! The article refers to the “shantytown” of the area, another trigger to get you to think it’s all just slum fit for demolition.

In fact the area now being described as Suhe Bay Area comprises about 500,000 square meters of residential area. Actually already a bit less than 500,000 because they included the Sinza area, which is in the process of being pulled down with all its historic past ignored completely (see my post on that here). Consider that number – 500,000sqm. Sounds like a lot? Well consider that just in the last couple of years 920,000 square meters of residential – mostly shikumen from the 1920s – have been destroyed from the Creek as far north as Beijing Lu  and an equal distance inland on the northern side of the river. 300,000 families have already been moved; a further 5,000 families will be moved by summer’s end – presumably their faces don’t fit the planned “upmarket riverside community”?

Of course a few large and stand out buildings will remain – the Embankment Building, former International Post Office, the Sihang Warehouse (now a museum) but the shikumen will probably all go. This of course leaves a totally unbalanced neighbourhood and architectural legacy. The new bridges over the Creek – 18 planned of which at least ten will be for traffic – are a disaster for anyone with plans to limit traffic in central Shanghai – more pollution, more accidents, more gridlock. The Creek doesn’t need anymore bridges.

Over the last quarter century (and a bit more) the banks of Suzhou Creek have been pecked away at and nibbled by property developers. Nothing of any architectural merit has been built along the Creek since the late 1930s. If this nonsense about the Suhe Bay Area is followed through (and nothing in Shanghai’s disastrous legacy of heritage abuse indicates it won’t) that will be the end of Suzhou Creek both as a vibrant central artery of the city and a community. It will become a vast gated community for the wealthy to closet themselves in surrounded by gridlocked traffic.

A sad end to  once great waterway. Now stand back as the European and American architectural firms scramble unseemly for a contract and ignore all of the above….

The City of Peking Safely Home, 1893

The American steamer City of Peking sailed from Yokohama in January 1893 with a crew of passengers and cargo. All was good for ten days and then the shaft broke and the ship was forced to complete the journey under sail in gale force winds. After 15 days battling the winds under sail and with no engines they made it home. Missing, assumed sunk, San Francisco had been in mourning for the passengers and crew and then the City of Peking reappeared….

The Mystery of the Old Qianmen Brook Solved

You may recall that last month Xinhua was abuzz with talk of a restored brook in the Qianmen District of Peking. I wasn’t convinced such a brook existed to be restored in that area and no maps at my disposal showed any trace. I suggested it might be a fake brook. Well why not we have fake hutongs, fake shikumen, fake temples, fake colonial villas, fake art-deco so why not a fake brook? But there was a real brook, back in the Ming Dynasty….Jeremiah Jenne, a Beijing historian who knows far more than I do about the city, tracked it down – full story here in The Beijinger.

Crime in the City – Singapore

The eighth installment of my Crime in the City series for Literary Hub is now posted – being about Singapore it may interest China Rhyming visitors….

The Funeral of Dowager Empress CiXi, November 1908

The Empress Dowager CiXi died on 15 November 1908 in the Hall of Graceful Bird at the Middle Sea at Zhongnanhai. Her funeral was naturally a big deal. Here some pictures taken by a Dutchman, Henri Borel, who happened to be in Peking at the time…

CiXi

The foreign ambassadors at Peking join the funeral procession

Mongolian camels carry tents to the internment site

The imperial bier (coffin) joins the procession

The imperial bier close up

Russian Women Merchants of Harbin, 1929

A picture by the Japanese steam liner company NYK (aimed at showing the touristic attractions of a holiday to Manchuria) of two Russian women (and a baby) outside their curios store in Harbin in 1929….

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (& its links to China)

Laurey Spinney’s new book Pale Rider is about the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 – however it also goes over the old ground of whether or not the epidemic originated in Asia, China specifically and also considers the theory that it was brought to Europe by the Chinese Labour Corps (who travelled both via the Mediterranean and the Pacific and across Canada to Europe.

With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918–1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I.

In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. Telling the story from the point of view of those who lived through it, she shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered; and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test.

Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology, and economics, Laura Spinney narrates a catastrophe that changed humanity for decades to come, and continues to make itself felt today. In the process she demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant – if not more so – as two world wars in shaping the modern world; in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts.