Shanghailander.net

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 [...]

Paul French has long been one of the known writer and researcher on today’s China. Besides his business writing and advisory, he is clearly fascinated by Old Shanghai and the Republican period, having published several books on the topic including Carl Crow’s biography “A tough old China hand”. His blog www.chinarhyming.com has numerous followers, he is [...]

Old Shanghai was a place where people from many origins came to, including architects. Added with a long construction boom, this created the patchwork of architectural styles that is still visible today. The most famous architect firms of Old Shanghai were the Brits of Palmer & Turner, the French of Vesseyre & Leonard and the Hungarian Hudec. [...]

After a few days of search, at least 6 people in the Sanzetti pictures (see post: Sam Sanzetti, Shanghai photographer) have been found. You can find some pictures of these people and their original photographs at the following link on Yahoo China: http://news.cn.yahoo.com/newspic/news/19184/?f=E364_3_1 A regular reader of this blog, Ms Liliane Willens (see post: A date [...]

Sioma Lifshitz arrived in Shanghai on a freighter from Vladivostock in 1922. The 20 years old energetic Russian jew had no money but lot’s of dreams and soon started to work in a photography studio under the name of Sam Sanzetti. It took him 5 years to open in own studio in 1927, becoming one [...]

I mentioned Saint-John University in earlier posts. Another famous alumni of the main University of Old Shanghai is Zhou Youguang, the man who invented Pinyin. Born in 1906, he went to the US to work as a Wall Street Banker after graduation. Returning to China after 1949, he lead the committee that created Pinyin, introduced [...]

Imported foreign food in today’s Shanghai is still an essential support for foreigners living in the city. In the nearly 8 years since I have been in the city, local alternatives have been developped but they are rarely matching the original. Moreover, as the foreign communities grows and grows and more and more Chinese people [...]