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Historic Shanghai’s Best Books of 2018

Shanghai’s history could never be painted with a single brush, a single perspective, a single tale. Perhaps that’s true of all cities, but it’s especially so in this cosmopolitan metropolis, where east and west, communism and capitalism, tradition and revolution, coexisted. And to complicate ...

Old Shanghai Eggnog

Oh, how they loved eggnog in old Shanghai.  But of course: it was very boozy, very fun, and very rich, which is a pretty apt description for the spirit of old Shanghai. And luckily for us, their recipes survive. So just in time for Christmas partying, we bring you a pair of ...

Top 10 Historic Shanghai Gifts: Our Annual Guide

Revolutionary ornaments. 1932 maps. Old Shanghai memoirs. Mao-rabilia. There are gifts, and then there are Shanghai heritage gifts for the true aficionados. If you've got one in your life*, you know we're a little harder to buy for, so we've done the hard work for you: Historic Shanghai has ...

A Chinese artist, a cartoon boy, and a former French Concession house

by Maura Elizabeth Cunningham Zhang Leping (1910–1992) was a Chinese cartoonist, most famed for his Sanmao the Orphan comics. In the late 1920s, Zhang moved from his coastal hometown to Shanghai, where he quickly found work as a commercial artist and cartoonist. He debuted the Sanmao the Orphan ...

Stray Birds on the Huangpu: A History of Indians in Old Shanghai

The image of the turbanned Sikh policeman, hong tou ah-san to generations of Chinese, remains the popular image of Indians in old Shanghai. But the reality that editors Mishi Saran and Dr. Zhang Ke unveil in their new bilingual anthology, Stray Birds on the Huangpu: A History of Indians in Shanghai ...

Inside Old Shanghai’s American Club

This Saturday (Nov 2, 3pm), ahead of the U.S. election, we're taking a stroll through the story of Americans in Old Shanghai. If there had been such a thing as election watch parties in Old Shanghai, they would certainly have been held in the stately American Club. Here's its story, and a peek ...

Shanghai Shoot ‘Em Society

If you need proof that living in Old Shanghai really was like being in a Bonnie and Clyde movie, consider the story of the Shanghai Shoot ‘Em Society, reported in colorful detail in The China Press newspaper. It was November 24, 1929, just a month after the dramatic stock market crash in the U.S. A ...