Shanghailander

Saint-Ignace cathedral was a famous landmark of the Old Shanghai. Built by the Jesuits in 1906 at the spot of any earlier one, its two towers were clearly visible from far away. The Catholic cathedral was located in the Jesuits estate in Shanghai, just outside the border of the French concession. The building suffered a lot during cultural revolution, with both towers severely damaged. It was rebuilt in the 1990’s and now looks more or less like the original. It is open again for religious services for Chinese catholic Church, for Chinese people only.

The Church may look like the original, but two things have changed. First of all the environment has been totally transformed along those years. The cathedral used to be visible miles away, it is now dwarfed by neighboring buildings and shopping centers. Furthermore, the original stained glasses have disappeared, replaced by plain glass. People are working on trying to put back stained glassed in the cathedral. I recently attended a charity concert to raise money to support this project. I was very much looking for it, as concerts in the church are something unheard of and I was not disappointed.

That night’s weather was perfect for it. It had rained the whole day giving a gloomy atmosphere to the city. I was running through the continuous rain, finally getting in after a bit of struggle with the security. The room was full with people, but it was the quietest concert crowd I have ever seen in China. Silence came and shortly after I got in, the Chinese philharmonic orchestra started to play Mozart’s requiem. In this extraordinary of the cathedral and the excellent music, one could quickly feel like we were in 1928, not 2008. It was really a touching moment to be able to experience this great music in such an historical place. That moment was really straight out of the movie “Empire of the Sun“.

The concert finally ended after dies irea, and the crowd of the Shanghai foreign and Chinese high society that was there could have also very well belonged to the 20’s or the 30’s. The succession of big cars and white gloves drivers at the exit perfectly completed the old Shanghai atmosphere. In the night, you could see the car lights only and the rain helped keeping noise from the nearby avenue down. I was walking under the rain in my trench coat, feeling once again in a time travel to old Shanghai enjoying this wonderful and unique evening.

Coming to Shanghai from Europe today is a 10 hours airplane trip. Time difference and the long sitting make it tiring, but it still is quite a short trip. I even know people who go to Europe from Shanghai for less than 24 hours or just a long weekend. Travel between Shanghai and Europe in the 20’s or the 30’s was a much longer journey. Passengers would embark on the cruise in Europe and travel on it for about two months before reaching their final destination in Shanghai. It is certainly difficult to imagine nowadays what it meant to be on the sea for such a long time. Passengers would disembark along the way for sightseeing, while goods would flow in and out of the ship. From writings from this period, it is clear that such a trip was in itself a fabulous adventure.
The main French shipping line was “Messageries Maritimes”. Based in Marseille, they were sailing on the “ligne d’Extreme-Orient”. The company was one of the three major companies of the French Concession (along with “Banque de l’Indochine” and “Compagnie de tramways et d’eclairage electrique de Shanghai”). Its headquarters was located on the French Bund, next to the Consulate (today between Yannan Lu and JinLing lu) in a building that is now occupied by the Shanghai Archives. The current building was erected in 1936, replacing a previous one built in the 1870’s. Following a 1926 brochure of the company, the ships stopped at the following ports of call: “Marseilles, Port Said, Suez, Djibouti, Colombo, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kobe, Yokohama. Singapore omitted on return voyages.” One of the ship traveling along this line was the Porthos, pictured above.

Recently I found a few more postcards of the inside of the Porthos and made some research about the ship (most information come from the website of Philippe Ramona). The Porthos had 112 passengers in first Class. It is clear from the pictures that this kind of travel was luxurious with great food served in a luxurious surrounding. Although the first class cabin was not as comfortable as a luxury hotel room it seems to have been still very convenient.

Second class travel don’t look so bad either with 96 passengers. The chairs of the dining room seem to attached to the ground, but this kind of travel was surely still comfortable. I don’t have pictures of the accomodation of the 90 3rd class passengers, but they were not the worst. Although its luxury was far from 1st class, it was still a world apart from the “rationnaire”, i.e “food ration” class. This was the lowest class which counted from 390 to 1000 passengers. I’m not sure how it looked like but people were clearly stacked on the top of each other for 2 months in the ship. 1st class travel was probably a great experience, but “rationnaire” travel was certainly much less fun and certainly not as glamorous as scenes from the movie Titanic. Long flight on today’s coach class are not always so comfortable, but at least they only last for 10 hours.

Shanghailanders like me are used to the mix of architecture that makes up Old Shanghai. Elements of various nations were taken to create buildings in the city and seeing faux-Tudor style next to Art Deco are quite common. All of them are reminders of the past and often much better than the present rows of unimaginative apartment buildings or ugly office towers.

It’s only when coming to European capitals that one suddenly realizes how Shanghai old buildings are most often imitating the style of the home or adoptive country of the one who built them. I remember taking a suburban train to Paris, and looking at houses from the 1910’s, 1920’s that look very much like the ones in my neighborhood in Shanghai’s French concession (see post “portrait of an old neighbour“). Similarly, Mexican or Spanish revival buildings are very similar to the ones found in California (see post “”Spanish revival architecture in Shanghai” and “California Dreaming“), and German house on Xin Hua Lu are very much in the style.

I had a similar déjà vu feeling walking on Marelyborne road in London a few days ago when I ran into the Court of Westminster (center picture) and could not miss the similarities with some of the Bund’s facades, in particular the customs building. The little tower on large buildings that I so much associate with Shanghai is just typical from British architecture from this period. The building even have the same flag poll with a Union Jack floating on it. It does not take much to imagine a Union Jack floating on every tower on the Bund like it floats on the one in the picture.

Walking around the area, I went to neighboring Regent’s Park. Regent College building does also look like some of the large mansions in old Shanghai. Similarly, some of the Lilong or Shi Ku Men houses have a lot in common with terraced houses in London or with row of houses in The Netherlands. They were also designed to maximise use of limited space and they tend to have a similar design of narrow front with deep rooms piled on the top of each other inside the building.

Old Shanghailanders only reproduced the architecture they were used to in their new home. Just like large columns and small towers represented power in t19th century London, it represented power in 19th century Shanghai on the Bund. With gray sky and brick or gray stone buildings, parts of London from this period feel like parts of Shanghai to me. People of the Empire really managed to re-create the illusion of their home countries far away from home… or Shanghai has become so much a part of myself that I see it everywhere I go.

The colonial past of China and the western powers is quite well known. Most people have heard about Shanghai’s International Settlement and French Concession. Other known famous ports opened by the early treaties include Amoy (Xiamen), Tientsin (Tianjin), Tsingtau (Qindao) and Canton (Guangzhou). Although less known, foreign presence extended to many more locations. The treaty of Nanjing and Tianjin opened the door to a limited number of cities but they were followed by many others, creating local foreign settlements and open ports well inside China.

Suzhou (spelled Soochow before 1949) is a very famous city in China. Center of the silk trade and intellectual gathering point, the city is also famous for its wonderful gardens. Through modernization in the last 20 years, the famous canals of the inner city have been filled up and only little remains from the old charm. For the foreign visitor, Suzhou is quite a disappointment as the century old reputation far exceeds today’s reality. I was recently visiting it, looking in despair at the raw of concrete buildings that makes Suzhou look like any second tier city in China. This is where local help came really handy, taking us to a further away part of the city.

The “Chang men” only gets a few lines in the China Lonely Planet, but it’s surely worth a visit. This “Old street” in the canals is a breeze after Suzhou’s gray streets. It’s quite charming and has a bit to show including the last remains of the wall that used to surround the city in ancient times. The gate is next to a wide canal, probably connected to the Suzhou-Beijing grand canal that used to be one of the major trade route in China. Around this location we spotted a few old houses that looked definitely of foreign style.

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I could not see any indication whatsoever and the houses where in a pretty bad state. Two of them stood next to the river besides a Chinese temple. One was made of gray bricks and dated (looking at the style) from the 1910’s or early 1920’s. It closely resembles some of the Shi Ku Men houses in Shanghai from this period. The other house had a later style with stained windows like on houses in Shanghai, GuLanYu and Malacca. The building date on it stated 1931.

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On the other side of the river, I spotted another old building. Although it has been quiet damaged by “renovation”, its original structure of gray and red bricks is still visible. I would say that this house is probably older, from late 19th century of early 20th. It resembles the first building originally constructed on the Bund in Shanghai, of which few examples still exist. Theses houses were typically trader’s that contained a large storage on the ground floor and living quarters as well as offices upstairs. This house is located next to the river bank with a concrete quay side, making loading and unloading easy. Foreign merchants and Chinese compradors would live around here, trading with local merchants. Goods would be shipped to Shanghai via the waterways to be loaded on boats onward to foreign destinations. Since Suzhou has long been a major silk center, most goods shipped from here must have been silk fabric and garments.

I did some research about Suzhou Japanese concession, though there is only little to be found, so it is mentioned in one site dedicated to similar topics. The treaty Shimonozeki was signed between China and Japan in 1895. I found mention of a foreign concession in Suzhou in 1896. The foreign community probably gathered under the protection (at that time) of the Japanese. The former Japanese consulate building is mentioned in tour guides (Suzhou No 1 Silk Factory | Suzhou, China Attractions – Lonely Planet). As Japanese were heavily involved in textile manufacturing in China at the time, it is not surprising that they established presence in Suzhou.

With a few foreign buildings in a location perfect for trade near to or just outside the city walls, it is highly possible that the area I visited was the foreign concession in Suzhou. Looking at the dilapidated state of the building and the fast expansion of the city, most of what is left will have disappeared very soon. Another page of the history of foreign presence in China will soon be erased.