Shanghailander.net

Be interested in old Shanghai books and pictures is nice, but making it happen again just for a few hours was an even greater enjoyment. This year’s big celebration (my 40th birthday and 20 years of living abroad) was the perfect opportunity. I have been passing in front of the house we celebrated at for many [...]

I have previously written about Shanghai Art Deco architecture, this post is focused on a different style also popular in Old Shanghai, the Spanish revival Style. A bit like Art Deco was inspired by the 1925 Paris exhibition, Spanish Revival was inspired by the Panama-California exhibition in San Diego in 1915. It was very popular in California [...]

Although I knew very little about Art Deco before coming to Shanghai, I have developed a strong taste for it while living in the city. The style varies from one country to another, but Art Deco is very recognizable (together with its follower streamline design). Old Shanghai was a modern city in touch with the leading world [...]

The World congress on Art Deco is the main international gathering celebrating Art Deco in all its forms. It was initiated in Miami, where the Art Deco district on Miami Beach is the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world. The first congress was initiatd by the Miami Design Preservation League in 1991. Each [...]

Although it was only named in the 1960′s, Art Deco was the dominant style for modern design in the late 1920′s and 1930′s. Named after the 1925 Paris “Exposition des arts decorartifs”, the style was dominated by simplified geometric patterns, inspired by nature and exotic countries. It also introduced streamline design that it is closely [...]

George Orwell was mostly known to me thanks to his novels 1984 and Animal farms. As I recently discovered, he also wrote a famous book about his time in Burma in the 1920′s, “Burmese days”. The book has recently been back in the news, thanks to Emma Larkin‘s “Finding George Orwell in Burma” published in [...]

Old Shanghai is often associated with opium, prostitution and young western men seeking adventure. The police forces, army and other administration clearly took many of them to the Shanghai shore, with a new life in a vibrant city. I have written about several books illustrating the high life of Old Shanghai including Ralph Shaw’s Sin [...]

I would like to send my best wishes to all readers for 2012. Hopefully, this year will see even more interesting (re-)discoveries about Old Shanghai, better preservation of old buildings and many more people interested in this topic. Technical issues stopped all email notification to readers in early December, though I kept on writing posts [...]

When the former building of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China reopened in 2004 as Bund 18, it was the best example of colonial building renovation in Shanghai. The project had all the elements for success, including a building rich with history, a fantastic location, an architect firm specialist in historic renovation brought [...]

I have now read quite a number of little known or privately published books written by Old Shanghailanders. Taken away from a past that seemed a lot of fun and was never to be reached again, many of them told their story in their old age. A few of them include Shanghai Saga by John [...]