The Shanghai Paper Hunt
Our April 4 walk takes us to Historic Hongqiao, where Shanghailanders partook in all kinds of outdoor activities, none stranger or more quintessentially Old Shanghai than the Paper Hunt. "In the beginning, as we can well understand, means of recreation were somewhat limited. Indeed, an old resident has described ...
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Tower of Vice: Shanghai’s Great World
There’s no more notorious symbol of Old Shanghai’s underworld than the pleasure palace that was the Great World—after all, this tiered wedding cake of a building was owned by one of the most powerful gangsters in the city: Huang Jinrong, aka Pockmarked Huang. Read on, for the story: But when the Great World ...
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Memories of Chinese New Year in Old Shanghai
新年快乐！Xin Nian Kuai Le! As we welcome the Year of the Snake in a world of WeChat hongbaos and electronic firecrackers, we wondered: what was Chinese New Year like in old Shanghai? So we went to the experts: the men and women who grew up here. Here are their memories of Shanghai Chinese New Years past, from the 1930s ...
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The Shanghai Garden in Winter: Wintersweet
Take a whiff - it's the season for fragrant wintersweet (la mei, 蜡梅*), and somewhere in a Shanghai lane or garden, a tree is flowering. They appear in winter's barren landscape right at that moment when it feels that all hope is lost and spring will never come, its yellow blossoms the promise of spring sunshine. Song ...
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The Street Formerly Known As Wulumuqi Road
As Wulumuqi Road street signs were taken down in the wake of protests that began early Sunday morning, rumors were flying that the street name may be changed--again. Although most of the street signs do remain, it seems like a good time to take a look at the century-long history of this street, and the different names it's ...
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Shanghai Gangsters: The Big Eight Mob
Before the rise of notorious gangster kingpins like Du Yuesheng and Huang Jinrong, there was the Big Eight Mob 八股党 and a crooked cop named Shen Xingshan. Dan Stein delves into the tale: The Louza Police Station, where Shen likely worked. In February 1909, the International Opium Commission, an initiative proposed ...
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Book Review: Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience
by Susan Blumberg-Kason / In his new (but posthumous) memoir, Shanghai Jewish refugee Paul Hoffmann writes about his three most tumultuous experiences. One was enduring six months of Nazi Vienna, the other the terror inflicted by Sargent Kano Ghoya in the Shanghai Jewish Ghetto, and the third life under the new Chinese ...
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