Category: Links and resources

links to other resources about Old Shanghai

Burgundy wines in Old Shanghai

The previous post was about wine import in 1920-1930s Shanghai (see post French wines in Old Shanghai for details). France was the largest provider for imported wine. Being orginally from Burgundy, I did some research into this specific region that was then famous for its wines and is even more famous today.

Burgundy wines where famous among the elite in 1920s and 1930s Shanghai. The most famous person drinking Burgundy wine was surely Sir Victor Sassoon, owner of the Sassoon house hosting the World famous Cathay hotel and many other buildings in Shanghai. Sir Victor Sassoon wrote a journal and during a trip to France on 2nd August 1934, he had diner as leading Paris restaurant La Tour d’Argent where he was served Clos Vougeot 1925. He must have really liked it as it ordered 24 bottles of it and probably took them to Shanghai.

Journal of Victor Sasson, 2nd Aug 1934 (picture courtesy of Didier Pujol)

As shown in previous post, 1939 wine list of famous Sun sun department store Sky Terrace included Burgundy whites such as Chablis 1929, Meursault 1923 (with a spelling mistake) and Pouilly-Fuissé. Burgundy red were Pommard 1929, Corton 1929 and Macon 1929. It has to be noticed that 10 years old wines were sold and served in restaurants. Even the Burgundy white table wine was from 1933, i.e. 6 years old. Burgundy wines at that time were kept for years before being drunk. Although they still can be kept for decades is properly stored, they are often drunk much younger now. It is noticeable that Burgundy wines were more expensive than Bordeaux at that time in Shanghai.

Wine list from the Sky Terrace Restaurant of the Sun Sun department store, late 1930s (Courtesy of MOFBA)

Some Burgundy houses tried to get into the Asian market using the French colonies as a springboard in the early 1920s until the mid 1930s. While Indochina (today Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) was the largest area controlled by French in Asia, China with its large population was the main target. In a way similar to today, wine houses had agents in Shanghai that would purchase the wines and resell it being both importers and distributors.

Dufouleur wine list, Racine & Cie 1928

French wine in bottles was mostly handled by French people. Just like today, major trading companies imported wines in their portfolio. Above picture shows an add for wine from Dufouleur, a wine house in Nuits-Saint-Georges that is still making wines today. Their wines were imported and distributed by Racine & Cie, one of the major French trading company in Shanghai that also advertised for imported canned vegetables (see post Vegs in a can for further details).

Add for Bouchard Aine wines in Shanghai. L Rondon & Co was the agent

In the same way, smaller import company Rondon was the sole agent for large wine maker and trader, or “négociant” in French, Bouchard Ainé. They already had large range of Burgundy wines imported in Shanghai by agents L. Rondon & Co. Now property of Burgundy wine power house Jean-Claude Boisset, Bouchard Ainé has been back in today’s China since the early 2000.

Ad for Jules Régnier wines, imported by Hirsbrunner in Shanghai, Journal de Shanghai Mai 1928

Trading company Hirsbrunner was the importer of négociant Jules Regnier. Their ads in the press were more interesting than an simple list of wines as they also tried to link their wines with history. The bottled displayed were Grand Chambertin and sparking Burgundy. Jules Régnier & Co does not exist anymore, but I found a picture of their cellar and heaquarters in Dijon.

Burgundy wine history was studied in depth by French scholar Christophe Lucand, who is also the Mayor of Gevrey-Chambertin, one the famous Burgundy village and my home town. While Indochina (today Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) was the largest area controlled by French in Asia, China with its large number of people was the main target. Just like many other manufacturers in Europe and the US, Burgundy winemakers dreamed of having millions of Chinese drinking their wines sending back huge profit. Burgundy wine makers where by far not the only ones having this dream and similar stories are told in fantastic Carl Crow’s book “400 customers”.

Converting large number of Chinese to drink wine was a complete failure and the effort to bring Burgundy wine to China ended in the mid 1930s. Still, foreigners in China’s concession as well as elite Chinese seemed to have enjoyed those wines a lot. It took another 90 years for Burgundy wines to become famous in China, where they now are the darling of wine lovers imported by numerous trading companies.

More information about wine import in old Shanghai can be found in post French wine in Old Shanghai.

Streets of Old Shanghai search engine

One of the difficulties of researching Old Shanghai, is using the old street names references found in historic books, with today’s street names that are totally different in most cases. Long are gone the signs for “Avenue Joffre” and “Rue Lafayette”, and finding a small street on the most accurate maps can be challenging.

La Société d’histoire des Français de Chine, a group of French expats in Shanghai, researching the city’s history (www.histoire-chine.fr) have recently come up with a very useful to solve this issue. Their new online tool is an Old / New Shanghai street search engine.

It is extremely easy to use, just type the street name you are looking for, and the related names will come up immediately, both Old and New Shanghai names. This makes it practical and very useful. The search engine can be found at http://www.histoire-chine.fr/streets-of-old-shanghai/

Much lower tech but very complementary is Paul French’s “Old Shanghai A-Z”, that includes a lot of information about the history of Old Shanghai street names.

That’s Shanghai interview

I was fortunate enough to get interviewed by Shanghai magazine “That’s Shanghai” about Shanghailander.net turning soon 15 years old.

The most enjoyable is that in my first years in Shanghai, That’s Shanghai was the prime source of information about what to do in the city. In a time before social media, getting your hand on the magazine (available for free in most foreign bars and restaurant), was one of the highlight of the month. Great opportunity to grab a cup of coffee and spend one hour reading about new places opening and looking for you friends pictures in the socialite section 🙂

As information is now dominated by the internet and social media, That’s Shanghai is mostly read online, but they still print an actual magazine. Hopefully I’ll get a copy, sit down with a coffee and read it again.

The full article is available following this link: https://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/post/32368/hugues-martin-on-old-shanghai-blog-shanghailander-turning-15

Top 5 posts 2020!

1920s have a reputation to have been memorable years. The roaring twenties were called “Les années folles” in French, meaning the crazy years. The start of the 2020s did not disappoint in craziness, although definitely not is such a fun way. To close this year where I finally started to write regularly again, here is a the 5 most read articles in the Shanghailander blog in 2020.

1 – The rise and fall of the Majestic Hotel
The story of the star of Shanghai nigthlife in the 1920s, that disappeared in the 30s seems is a regular on the top search posts of the blog. The reason why I wrote this post in 2017 was my own interest and the lack of information available on the topic. Apparently I was not the only one searching

2 – China General Omnibus Company
It seems that I am also not the only one to be interested in Old Shanghai transportation, in particular the bus network of the International Settlement. This post from 2017 also includes a pretty unique map of the bus network itself from 1937.

3 – Old Shanghai tramways
Another post on public transportation in Old Shanghai. This topic seems to attract attention. This post from 2017 includes a map of the International Settlement tram network and a tram ticket from the 1920s.

4 – Sainte-Thérèse Church
First post of 2020 in the top 5. It is focused on the mysterious catholic church in the middle of the few remaining lilongs of JingAn district.

5 – Aquarius Water then and now
Published in the middle of a hot summer, this post tells the story of the Shanghai brand of mineral water Aquarius, and its famous Orange Squash. Through modern advertising, the brand became one the Shanghai favorite, that is being relaunched in a modern version in 2020.

Best wished from the Shanghailander blog for 2021! If you want me to share or publish information about Old Shanghai, people places, documents and other related topic, please contact me at hmartin@shanghailander.net .

Ordinary Metropolis – Shanghai: a Model of Urbanism

urbanism 001Books published by scholars both in China and abroad have long shown that China’s modernity was created first in Shanghai, in the 1920’s ans 1930’s. The city rapidly caught on with the rest of the World after World War 1, thanks to numerous exchanges and people travelling between Shanghai, and Europe and the USA. Visible intake were the Art Deco building still visible in the city, dance halls, cars, advertising, department stores and all the other elements that are still found while researching today. They also brought fresh ideas, including in town planning for Shanghai, which is the center of a current exhibition at Shanghai Power Station of Art. It has 2 main parts, one about new Shanghai planning from the 1930’s and the other about 1930’s architecture and design, in particular Dayu Doon’s art deco house built in that area.

Shanghai former Civic Center
Shanghai former Civic Center town hall

The first part of the exhibition is focused on town planning for the new Jiang Wan area: After taking back control of a large part of China, Chiang Kai Shek quickly unified the parts of Shanghai that were around the International Settlement and the French Concession. Creating the Shanghai municipality also made clear that the center of Shanghai was the concessions, so the republican government went on creating a new city center for Shanghai, in what is now Jiangwan area, in today’s Yangpu district. Inspired by Washington DC, the new Civic Center included the new town hall of Shanghai, a museum, a national library and a major hospital. The exhibition shows rarely seen maps and efforts of planning this new district that was only partly built from 1927 until the Japanese invasion in 1937. It also details how land was supposed to be allocated to various functions, the very concept of zoning that is still applied in Shanghai today.

Art deco house
Dayu Doon art deco model house

The second part is focused on the art of architect Chinese modernism, in particular Dong Dayou / 董大酉 (Dayu Doon in English) who was one of the main promoter of Chinese modernism. He designed a model house for the area around the Civic Center, that can be compared with  international modern style of the time, as well as foreign modernist architects of the time in Shanghai Laszlo Hudec (orginally from Hungary) and Leonard & Vesseyre (from France). Another art deco house on display by architect Poy Gum Lee looked really familiar to me, until I realised it is located opposite from my office (See post Poy Gum Lee’s lost building for more about it).

Magazines from the 1930's
Magazines from the 1930’s

Beyond the architect work, the exhibition also includes many examples of graphic art and magazines displaying modern style of the time, showing that Shanghai was the door through which modernity came to China in the 1930’s. This modern movement was not only brought by foreigners, but really embraced by Chinese artists and everywhere in Shanghai. After reading many books on the topic, this is the first time I see such an exhibition in China.

Happy New Year – Most read 2011

Cover Cung Hwa English Weekly, January 1932
Chung Hwa English, New Year 1937

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 about an ancient book about Yunnan and the opening of a new club in Bund 18. Thanks to the team at IT-Consultis for fixing various issues and upgrading the software running the blog. To start the year in a good way I have compiled the most read post during year 2011.

#1 – Reading “The Shanghailander” (May 2011): Writing about this long defunct magazine attracted a lot of attention this year. I believe this is one of the very few copies still available, if not the only one. Published in June 1937, just before the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, the central topic is about places to avoid hot and humid Shanghai summer, including places like seaside resort Qingdao. Articles on the same topic are published yearly in today’s equivalent like That’s or Time Out.

#2 – 20 years on (December 2009): The pictures of 1990 Shanghai are still catching a lot of attention. The difference between this version of Shanghai and today’s is really stunning. Shanghai’s architecture did not change much from the 1950’s until the 1980’s, but the city really caught up with modernity, destroying a lot of its past in the same move during the last 20 years.

#3 – Sam Sanzetti, Shanghai photographer (June 2011): The rediscovery of Sam Sanzetti portraits of Old Shanghai residents took the Chinese internet in a storm. Using the latest social media, the Israeli consulate managed to find back a number of original models of the pictures. An exhibition should follow in 2012. Hopefully, the media exposure will expend to other countries, allowing models to be found in places were Shanghailanders and Shanghainese left such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, the USA and Australia.

#4 – Sin City (March 2008): The adventures of Huddersfield boy Ralph Shaw in Old Shanghai continues to attract readers to this blog. This is not the only first account of life for British single in the city, but it is one of the most well known and the book is really hard to find. Brought from the UK by the army in 1937, Ralph Shaw then moved to become a reporter for the North-China daily news, the most influential paper of North East China.

5 – Up river, Hankou’s foreign concessions (June 2008): Foreign presence in China was not confined to Shanghai by far. Up the Yangtze, today Wuhan, was a very developed city being the main transit point for China’s interior. Hankou was the third largest concession area after Shanghai and Tianjin, leaving an extensive heritage that is still visible today.

Once again, a happy new year reading Shanghailander.net