Tours & Talks
APRIL 2025
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APRIL WALKS
Qingming Long Weekend ~ April 4-6
Friday April 4, 10am (public holiday) /QINGMING WALK: Historic Hongqiao and The Foreigners’ Cemetery /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
In Old Shanghai, if you wanted to hike, go horseback riding, or perhaps build a bucolic mansion, you went to out to the rolling countryside in Hungjao. Hongqiao—as we call it today–is no longer rural, but on this walk, we’ll discover the legacy of its former life as Shanghai’s fanciest suburb: the country homes of the Soongs, Sassoons, of war heroes and warlords, a swish golf club, the Paper Hunt tradition, and more!
And since it’s Qing Ming, the day when Chinese visit ancestral graves, we always like to visit the graves in Shanghai’s Foreigner’s Cemetery, to remember the men and women who died in a faraway land. When the cemeteries around Shanghai were repurposed in the 1950s, new grave markers were created and moved here, to what was originally the Wanguo International Cemetery.
The graves here tell the stories of those who lived here long ago, from Royal Ulster Riflemen to Jewish tycoons, communist heroes, and ordinary men and women. We’ll also visit the charming “Celebrities Cemetery”, now flowering with spring blooms, the final resting place of some of Shanghai’s most beloved artists, writers, and performers. And of course, the centerpiece of the cemetery, the grave of Shanghai daughter – Soong Ching Ling, Madame Sun Yat-sen – and her parents, the family that once ran China.
One of Shanghai’s favorite – and most unusual – Hongqiao pasttimes, the Paper Hunt!
NEW Saturday, April 5, 2pm /DEEP DIVE: Route Victor Emmanuel III (Shaoxing Lu) /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
This month, our deep dive takes us to a gorgeous street, 420-meter long street, yet one whose treasures belie its length. Named for a king, the former Route Victor Emmanuel III was home to the children of warlords and wives of gangsters, a Russian orphanage, an Art Deco French officer’s club, a movie star, a mayor’s modernist lane, and publishers, so many publishers! It was a lively place, with kidnappings and murders, illicit affairs and gunpoint robberies … and even a bit of Historic Shanghai’s own history!
So much history, so many stories, in just one Shanghai street.
Sunday, April 6, 2pm /ALONG THE RIVER: Historic Ports, Docks, and Warehouses /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
The story of old Shanghai’s wealth and cosmopolitanism lies along the Huangpu River, in the ports, docks, and warehouses that were her engine of growth, and sent her people and goods into the world.
On this walk, we’ll see the port from which a young Deng Xiaoping left for France; Jardine’s cotton mills, Wing On’s warehouses, an historic granary, a castle for waterworks, the Southern Manchurian Railway port. And we’ll take a ferry ride across the river, to explore both sides.
NEW Saturday April 12, 2pm DEEP DIVE: Hongkou Edition /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
Old Hongkou, just across the Garden Bridge from the Bund, was a wild tapestry of contrasts, and a participant in some of Shanghai’s defining historical moments. Yet even as it’s being renewed at a rapid clip, its historic enclaves remains little known and explored – time for a deep dive!
Join us on a walk that will take us through the heritage of Hongkou, from empty streets to bustling ones, Victorian architecture, missionaries, revolutionaries, writers, the Japanese legacy, historic apartment houses, Shanghai lane neighborhoods, and more.
Sunday April 13, 2pm WARLORDS OF OLD SHANGHAI /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
Once, the warlords ran China, and Shanghai, too. They were larger than life and immensely colorful. The Mukden Tiger. The Christian General. The Dog Meat General. The Philosopher General. They had their own armies, enormous political influence, and of course, homes and lives in Shanghai. Join us as we explore the history of these fascinating characters in Shanghai through the places they lived, and the assassinations, uprisings, and events of their eventful lives—and find out how their legacies still reverberate. With thanks to Historic Shanghai member Dan Stein who inaugurated this tour!
Easter Weekend
Saturday April 19, 10am EASTER WALK: Shanghai’s Jesuit Enclave /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
The Jesuits left Shanghai a rich legacy of architecture, learning, and the arts. On Easter Saturday, we’ll visit the host of beautiful buildings they left that tell their story: the glorious Gothic St. Ignatius Cathedral, the Observatory, Jesuit library, convent, schools and orphanage, and the final resting place of the first Chinese Jesuit convert, whose name was given to this area. The Jesuits also left us the western artistic tradition, taught first at their famous T’ousewei Orphanage, which we’ll also see, and how they transformed the arts in China.
Saturday April 19, 6.30pm BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY: Deco After Dark with drinks /RMB 300 members, 400 nonmembers, includes a delicious cocktail/mocktail
Everything looks different at night, and Shanghai’s glorious Art Deco is no exception. Join us for a dazzling look at the city’s Art Deco buildings by night, all dramatically lit up. From the Bund to Broadway Mansions and the wild neon of Nanjing Road, we’ll admire Shanghai’s Deco heritage, share stories of the city’s nightlife in the good old, bad old days, and finish up with a cocktail.
Sunday April 26, 2pm AUSSIE WALKABOUT: Australians in Old Shanghai /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers
Join us on a walk through the story of the Australians of Old Shanghai, a fascinating group of swashbuckling adventurers, merchants, and writers, whose legacy remains in the landscape. There’s Donald of China, perhaps the most influential advisor of the Republican period; the Kwoks and the Mas, the Chinese Australian fruit merchants who established Shanghai’s great department stores and made great fortunes; there’s the Customs expert on smuggling who may’ve smuggled himself; the liquor merchant, journalists, and more. We’ll see where they worked and played, the institutions they ran, and the legacy they’ve left.
NEW April 27, 11am SPRING IN A CHINESE GARDEN: Guyi Garden with Shelly Bryant, author of Classical Chinese Gardens of Shanghai /RMB 350 members, 450 nonmembers, includes tour with Chinese garden expert, entr tickets, dumpling lunch
Springtime, when the earth awakens, is the ideal time for a stroll through a blossoming classical Chinese garden. All the more so when our guide, Shelly Bryant, literally wrote the book on Shanghai’s classical gardens (Shelly is the author of Classical Gardens of Shanghai).
On this walk, Shelly will share the history and secrets of Guyi Garden, the poetry and literature at its heart, the ways in which Chinese gardens differ from Western ones. It’s an eye-opening journey into a Chinese cultural masterpiece that is, at the same time, a beautiful slice of nature.
Dumpling Lunch! Guyi Garden is the home of xiaolongbao, Shanghai’s famous soup dumpling, so of course we’ll follow the walk with a lunch featuring xiaolongbao!
April 27, 7pm APRIL BOOK CLUB: Murder in the Maloo: A Tale of Old Shanghai (1923) by Qi Fanniu and Zhu Dagong, translated by Paul Bevan /RMB 100 members, 200 nonmembers
Paul Bevan, the book’s translator, will Zoom in to discuss the book with us.
Sensational adventure stories were all the rage in early 20th century Shanghai, and Murder in the Maloo: A Tale of Old Shanghai represents an excellent example of this most popular of popular fiction categories.
Translated into English and published here for the first time, this historical novel tells of the exploits of Ma Yongzhen, a martial artist and gangster who was ruthlessly murdered by rival gangs in 1879. The story takes the reader into the world of the Shanghai gangster and the dens, courtesan houses, and teashops they frequented.
It is very loosely based on a true story, as Ma Yongzhen was in fact an historical figure, who rode the horses of his native Shandong province and walked the streets of Shanghai in late Qing dynasty China. The book follows Ma’s rivalry with local gangland bosses, the unscrupulous Scrofulous Bai and the murderous mastermind, Cheng Zimin. For much of the story, Ma Yongzhen appears to be unstoppable in his quest to dominate the Shanghai underworld, until a dastardly plan is laid to attack him unawares.
In addition to translating the novel, Paul Bevan has written an illuminating introduction and an essay that vividly describes the city of Shanghai as Ma Yongzhen would have known it.
For more on the Book Club, click here.
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