The French Book Shop…Latest Editions Arriving

Over the past few months I have experienced the frustration of just how bad China’s few English language stocking bookshops are – Chaterhouse going bankrupt, the Bookazine store in the IFC in Pootung just puts books on the shelf – nothing grouped by genre and nothing shelved alphabetically (and the staff seem surprised that they never sell anything)!! None of them have any idea what a hot book is, how to restock, how to display book and none have any staff who could care less. All rather depressing. So sod that and let’s go back to when Shanghai had good bookshops – and naturally that means going back to before 1949 when books were seen as essential things for reading pleasure and knowledge as oppoosed to either propaganda tools or things to be censored.

The French Book Shop (no relation) on Szechuen Road (now Sichuan Road Middle) looks like a better bet!!

Talking of Hai Alai in Shanghai….

Here’s a close up section of a map sent to me by The Shanghailander Hugues Martin. This is taken from a Japanese map printed around 1932 and clearly shows the location of the Hai-alai stadium

Hai-Alai Today…

if only…I recently read a Chinese memoir of old Shanghai where the author noted the amazingly fast game that Spanish people played in Shanghai with baskets on their hands – hai alai (which was always hyphenated in Shanghai for some reason). The Hai-alai stadium was part of the Canidrome business, now completely destroyed by the urban planners and replaced with some sort of horrendous space ship thing that utterly ignores the traditional feel and perspectives of the area it sits in. Still, there was a time…

23 Coombe Road, The Peak – To Stay or to Go?

Apparently Hong Kong Government heritage advisers, the Antiquities Advisory Board, are ‘considering’ upgrading the historic rating of the oldest surviving residence on The Peak. Hutchison Whampoa (wouldn’t you know it!) would like to demolish the building. The building does now urgently need to be moved up from Grade II status. The property, a European style mansion at 23 Coombe Road – more details here from the excellent Gwulo: Old Hong Kong site. It dates back to the 1870s and was built for an Irishman John Joseph Francis who was a military officer and later a barrister. What exactly the vandals at Hutchison Whampoa want to replace it with remains unclear – ‘redevelopment’ is all they’re saying.

Heritage is definitely more of a battleground in Hong Kong today than it was previously when the developers and big property companies ruled the roost utterly and the SAR lost some marvellous structures, properties and even old trees to be replaced with, eerrr, mostly more shopping malls actually. Now we know Hong Kongers like to shop but surely they don’t need to do it on the site of the oldest property on The Peak (or maybe they do scarily!!). There has been some resistance, brilliantly often from young people, the ones most curmudgeons like to say don’t care! But seems a lot of them do. We’ll see how this fight develops.

Shanghai to New York Via the Panama Canal in an Amazing 34 Days!!

Barber Wilhelmsen was one of the smaller shipping lines sailing out of Shanghai in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Norwegian company dates back to the nineteenth century (there’s a company history here). The company was primarily a tanker operator through to the 1960s. The company still exists as Wilhelmsen Ship Management. Anyway, here they are in 1940 offering Shanghai to New York in an amazing 34 days (via the Panama Canal) – actually quicker I think to jump of at LA and catch a cross country train to New York I think. But hey, who’s rushing!

Sam Sanzetti, Shanghai photographer – courtesy of The Shanghailander

Thanks to The Shanghailander blog’s Hughes Martin for posting a short biography and details on Sam Sanzetti the White Russian Jewish photographer who captured so many great imagines of Shanghai and assorted Shanghailanders. The post also contains a link to the Israeli Consulate in Shanghai’s postings of some works by Sanzetti here.

Egal & Cie – 1940 ads

I’ve talked about the great Roderick Egal before – the leader of Shanghai’s Free French during the Second World War (click here to see my post on French journalist Veronique Saunier’s articles on Egal and Egal’s grave in Hong Kong here). Egal was the nucleus of those French citizens in Shanghai who rallied to De Gaulle’s cause – sadly most of the rest were rampant Vichyites and collaborators. Anyway, Egal was also Frenchtown’s number 1 vintner with a branch in the International Settlement too. What is amazing about the three ads below was that they all ran in the North-China Daily News in June 1940, the month of the occupation of Paris and the Fall of France, a period of especial anguish to a great French patriot like Egal.

Shanghai’s Best Barber Shops (1930s)

Now many of you will know that a classic red and white barber shop pole can mean any number of things in modern day Shanghai. You may get a haircut but then you may get something else entirely!! Gentlemen in need of a trim and a crop in the 1930s had two excellent barber shops to choose from downtown, either at the Cathay Hotel (now the not brilliantly restored Peace Hotel) or the Metropole round the corner (still there of course as the Metropole Hotel on Jiangxi Road). Pushing yourself as both hygienic and offering ‘moderate charges’ appeals to me.