New Year’s Day – Perfect for going to visit a Macanese pawn shop

The restored Tak Seng On Pawnshop in Macao opens today as a heritage exhibition detailing the history of Macau’s pawnshop business. Macao’s Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) undertook the restoration of Tak Seng On back in 2000. In the process, the old architectural exterior design of the pawnshop, the internal decorations, as well as the instruments and procedures required for a pawnbroker’s business records, were reinstated in accordance with the basic layout of the early period of the Republic of China. And, as of January 1st 2016, you can go in and check it out…
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The New Year’s Eve Special at Fresno’s Old Shanghai Cafe

I’ve blogged before about The Old Shanghai Cafe which stood at 1405 Kern Street in Fresno. For New Year’s Eve 1932 it was reservations only and a late night till 3am. And if you didn’t want to cook at home then they were doing fried noodles for 25 cents a quart! Bargain!!

When Christmas was Shanghai’s Tax Bonanza Time

I posted the other day on the record tax receipts recorded in Shanghai on December 27th 1947. However the whole Christmas period was a pretty solid one for the taxman, even with hyperinflation boosting the numbers. One has to ask if they did so well on soft drinks on Christmas Eve in Shanghai what were the tax revenues on the hard liquor?

Protesting the Japanese Invasion of Manchuria…in Los Angeles

A picture today of women at a march in Los Angeles protesting the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the early 1930s….

A Record Night for Tax Receipts – December 27th 1947

The penultimate Christmas of old Shanghai was a big one – December 1947. Perhaps a little excuse for a big party before the lights started to go out?

Will Rogers Has a 1931 Shanghai Christmas

The American entertainer Will Rogers travelled the Far East in 1931 and had a fairly unique take on the place – “I may be all wet, and probably am, but when an American starts telling a Chinese “How to live,” why it’s like a new dude telling an old cowman how to run his ranch.”

Shanghai was a major stop on his tour and he liked Shanghai so much he returned in 1934 travelling again through many countries. Travelling out to Kobe he was on the same ship that brought the legendary jazz man Buck Clayton to Shanghai that year.

In 1931 he wrote back in his regular column to the folks back home about Christmas in Shanghai…

Merry Christmas from ‘The Shanghai Buster’

This was Bill Fairbairn’s Christmas card from the Shanghai Municipal Police Reserve Unit, better known as the anti-riot squad! The Christmas card was drawn for Fairbairn by the great White Russian cartoonist of Shanghai, Sapajou…Fairbairn was, of course, one of Shanghai’s legendary bad-asses who developed the ultimate fighting knife, engaged in hundreds of street fights, formed the Reserve Unit (Riot Squad) and later trained men and women in “gutter fighting” for behind the lines action in WW2….

A Shanghai Christmas 1935

In case you were wondering (as I of course was) just what Christmas in Shanghai was like in 1935…