Winter Sports on the Racecourse

The former Shanghai race track (today’s People Square) remains an open space in the middle of the city. Horses racing around the horse track are long gone, but pictures of the race are a common sight nowadays. Although the Shanghai Race Club is also long forgotten, people are once again enjoying the view from the top of the building that is now the Shanghai Art Museum,  having a drink or a bite at (now gone) Kathleen’s 5 restaurant. What is much less known is what the inner space of the race track was used for.

The Shanghai Recreation ground, as it was known then, was a massive sport center. The large open space was divided in a number of fields accommodating various sports and activities. The Race track was used only periodically, but the recreation ground was clearly an everyday feature of Shanghai’s life. Like in many other places, British colonists brought there love of sports and horse racing with them, and they combined them in one location. A similar feature is still in used today in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley sport ground that is enclosed within the horse race track.

The Shanghai recreation ground was remodeled twice a year to accommodate a winter and a summer layout. Winter layout for 1938 (pictured) included 4 “soccer” grounds, 5 hockey grounds and 2 rugby grounds. Just like today’s expat, foreigners in old Shanghai would spend their winter weekends enjoying some fresh air while practicing team sports, all of it followed by a sizable amount of drinking. Having been a rugby player for a few years, I get a good picture of the “after matches atmosphere”. The summer layout included a baseball ground and a polo ground, another sport that is again practiced in Shanghai though in a far more remote location nowadays.

Similarly to Singapore’s cricket club, there were two pieces of ground reserved for the “Shanghai cricket club” and the “Shanghai recreation club”, both for cricket and tennis. The Shanghai cricket club also had a club house or a “pavilion” built on the side of its dedicated plot, it was roughly where Baraborossa restaurant is nowadays. The pavilion, a mock Tudor style building can be seen on the top left hand side on the picture above. The map also displays the SLBC (Shanghai Lawn Bowls Club) pavilion, as well as a few bowling greens. The most surprising feature was a 9 holes golf course with the tees spread over the whole field. The first tee and the 9^th green were conveniently located near the golf pavilion, perfect for a drink before or after a game of golf. At some point, the Shanghai recreation ground was also used as a military airfield. At that time there was probably no time to play golf anymore.