Recorded Events
We’ve recorded some of our talks and book club discussions for your viewing and listening pleasure! RMB 100 for members, 200 nonmembers.
Scan the QR code to order; payment info for international payments below this post. Questions? Email info@historic-shanghai.com
LIVING HISTORY
Our Living History series offers the rare opportunity to hear from eyewitnesses to the dramatic history of the city, Shanghai history – the men and women who grew up in Old Shanghai.
BETTY BARR AND GEORGE WANG, authors of Shanghai Boy, Shanghai Girl
Ever wondered what it was really like to live in Old Shanghai? Betty Barr, born in Shanghai in 1933, and George Wang, born here in 1927, have lived almost a century of Shanghai’s story, and will join us to share their extraordinary story and their perspectives on life in Old Shanghai.
Betty and George were both born and grew up in Old Shanghai: she, the daughter of missionary educators, he, the son of a poor Shanghainese family. They survived – separately – the Sino-Japanese War (Betty, at Longhua internment camp) and many years later, they met in Shanghai and married in 1984. Betty and George have authored several books, including Shanghai Boy, Shanghai Girl.
LILIANE WILLENS, author of “Stateless in Shanghai”
What was it like to grow up, from birth into young adulthood, in Old Shanghai?
Liliane Willens, our guest on ‘Living History’ was born in Shanghai in 1927 to stateless Russian Jewish parents and lived here – through the glamorous 1930s, the Japanese occupation, civil war, and the early years of the Communist China, until 1951. Liliane is wonderful raconteur – a very special experience!
MARINA CUNNINGHAM, A Russian Jewish Family in 1950s Shanghai
What was it like to be one of the few foreign families in 1950s Shanghai? Marina Shlau Cunningham, whose family remained in Shanghai until 1957, shares rare stories of life behind the Bamboo Curtain for her Russian Jewish family, in this edition of Living History.
Marina was born in Shanghai, where her grandfather had established a successful chain of pharmacies, and grew up in a pretty Mediterranean-style house with a swimming pool on Route de Sièyes (Yongjia Road). In this talk, she’ll describe her family’s Shanghai story and their experiences of 1950s Shanghai: their former French Concession neighborhood and their famous neighbors; navigating school closures and departing friends; community gatherings at the Jewish Club and the Soviet Club; Sino-Soviet celebrations; and hanging over it all, uncertainty about the future.
Marina Shlau Cunningham’s family moved to Quito, Ecuador after leaving Shanghai; they later emigrated to the United States. Marina has a BA in Spanish and Latin American studies from the University of Illinois and a PhD in Slavic Studies from Northwestern University. She taught Russian Literature and Language at Northwestern, William Paterson and Montclair State Universities. At Montclair, she also directed the office of international programs, where she developed linkages between universities overseas, including several in China: Beijing, Tianjin, and her hometown of Shanghai.
TALKS
Paul French on MURDERS IN OLD SHANGHAI
There’s nothing spookier than a gruesome Old Shanghai murder, and no one who knows them better than Paul French, the New York Times bestselling author of City of Devils and Midnight in Peking.
Hear this inimitable storyteller of Old Shanghai regale us with tales of poison, stabbing, love triangles, assassination, and unravel the tantalizing, often surprising tales of whodunit, and why.
Tales like that of the French aristocrat who was unceremoniously assassinated as he mounted the stairs to his office (but by which of his many enemies?); the young American, found shot dead, whose best friend committed suicide before he could be questioned; the Frenchtown power brokers who dropped dead, one by one, after a sumptuous banquet at Green Gang boss Du Yuesheng’s house; a Chinese gold dealer, murdered in postwar Shanghai, as accusations flew between the accused, and the gold remained missing … and more!
TIPPLING SHANGHAI: A brief history of drinking in Old Shanghai
Old Shanghai earned a reputation as a drinking town, and deservedly so! In this illustrated talk, we’ll explore that sometimes grim, sometimes glamorous story, from the early and very seedy sailors bars, to the taipans preferred tipples, what they drank, and where they drank it. We’ll take a look at the stories of Old Shanghai’s most celebrated nightclubs and bars, the characters who ran them, from the shady to the sophisticated; the post 1949 scene; the ‘talking girl’ bars of the 1980s, and more.
SHANGHAI ART DECO STYLE
Shanghai’s glamorous Art Deco style was unique, born of a unique time and place: the energy of cosmopolitan Old Shanghai. It was modern, progressive, cosmopolitan: a visual expression of the 1930s Golden Age of Shanghai. In this lavishly illustrated talk, we’ll trace the origins of the Shanghai Art Deco style, explore how it could have only come into being at this particular moment in Shanghai, and take a look at its expressions in architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic and industrial design, movies, and more. We’ll take a look at how it influenced the city’s aesthetic and became its signature style, even today. And we’ll share some of our own Art Deco collection!
REVOLUTIONARY SHANGHAI
One of our most popular walks goes virtual!
Shanghai may be best known as the engine of the nation’s economy, but our city is also famous for its central role in the Chinese revolution: for it was in Old Shanghai, where tycoons amassed millions and nightclubs hopped, that the seed of revolution was sown, a revolution that would change the fate of a nation.
Join us on a virtual walk through the epic drama of Shanghai’s role in China’s path to revolution. We’ll trace the arc of that history through fascinating and often unlikely characters, from the end of the imperial Qing age to the military victory in 1949, and beyond.
On our journey, we’ll explore the intellectual and social energy of early 20th century movements, (virtually) visit the places where they lived, worked, and made revolution: the homes of heroes, rebels, and legends, the sites of uprisings and protests, and more!
THE WOMEN OF OLD SHANGHAI: Missionaries, Madams, Spies & Scribes
Meet the trailblazing women of old Shanghai, the feisty, independent iconoclasts who forged new paths in what was still very much a man’s world.
Women like Yan Shuhe, founder of the Women’s Bank; Agnes Smedley, revolutionary and spy; left-wing writer Ding Ling; Gracie Gale, owner of Shanghai’s most famous bordello; Dr. Anne Fearn, the physician who treated patients for over 40 years; heiress Daisy Kwok, founder of a fusion fashion salon; explorer Ruth Harkness, who scooped the men and brought back the first panda to the U.S.; Emily Hahn–writer, opium addict, lover of a Chinese poet—and more.
Hear about their extraordinary lives and achievements, see where they lived, worked, and played, the institutions they created, and explore the unique environment of old Shanghai that allowed them to blossom.
LOST PORTRAITS: Shanghai Studio Portraits, 1900s-1950s
What can a collection of old Shanghai photographs tell us about people, society, and the city? Found in the junk markets of Shanghai, these images, frozen in time, offer a window into a forgotten world, telling a compelling story about a place and time that’s long since disappeared.
In these captivating images, we see how people tried out new identities in the portrait studio; how changes in fashion revealed changes in society; the dynamics of family portraits; social transformation in wedding photos; the evolution of the status of women, and more. And we’ll share the stories of the Shanghai photo studios as well, how they evolved as a space for creative collaboration and the creation of new roles and communities.
BOOK CLUB: AUTHORS & DISCUSSIONS
Book Club: Chasing Hepburn-A Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family’s Fight for Freedom with author Gus Lee
Author Gus Lee joined us to share some of the background and insights into the story of his family over a century and a half in China (plus some great not-in-the-book anecdotes!), for a compelling discussion – he’s a spellbinding storyteller!
From the time she was born in 1906, Tzu Da-tsien’s future as a bride to a wealthy landed man was laid out. But all that changed when her father rescued her from her foot-binding ceremony, the first of many clashes between Chinese customs and modern ways.
Then Da-tsien meets and falls in love with Zee Zee, the dashing son of their landlord–but Da-tsien’s mother is determined to secure her big-footed daughter’s marriage to a wealthy older man, and—even though his best friend is a Soong–Zee Zee’s family is on the brink of ruin.
Spanning four generations, two continents, and a century and a half of Chinese history, Chasing Hepburn is a rich portrayal of how an enormous transition of history impacted individuals and families in Shanghai, with fascinating depictions of historical events and characters, all told with the richness of a novel.
Book Club: The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire in conversation with author Joseph Sassoon
Author Joseph Sassoon joined us to discuss his spectacular generational saga of the making, and ultimately, undoing, of a family dynasty (and yes, he is related).
In Shanghai, the Sassoon legacy is mostly remembered through Victor Sassoon, the fabulously wealthy, flamboyant owner of the Cathay Hotel and great swathes of Shanghai real estate–but there’s much, much more to the Sassoon story. He shared insights from the Sassoon archives and the riveting story of this Jewish Baghdadi dynasty, one of the richest families in the world for two centuries: the patriarch and the sons who grew a vast empire across three continents; the pioneering woman who was the first to lead it; the World War I poet; the art collector; the Sassoons who hobnobbed with royalty and lived opulent lifestyles, and how–and why–it was lost.
Book Club: Witness to History From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience by Paul Hoffman and Jean Hoffman Lewanda
In conversation with Jean Lewanda, Paul Hoffman’s daughter and the book’s editor
On the rainy afternoon of November 28,1938, a slight 18-year-old Austrian man took in his first impressions of Shanghai. Paul Hoffmann had left his family and all that was familiar to him in Vienna and was now among a forlorn stream of thousands of Jewish refugees into China to escape Nazism. For the next thirteen years, Shanghai would be his home, and he made the most of the last years of the foreign-dominated world of old Shanghai. Witness to History is the moving memoir of a man caught up in the tides of history, who witnessed and experienced the Nazi revolution in Europe, the Japanese invasion of China and the Communist victory in China in 1949, and emerged from the challenges all the wiser. In Shanghai, he taught mathematics, lived the high life, and worked for an American lawyer, Norwood Allman who was also secretly the US spy chief in China before and after the Communist takeover.
July Book Club: When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s historical novel tells the story of Christopher Banks, born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai and orphaned at nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, Banks is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents’ alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.
Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, the possibility of avenging one’s past, and the Shanghai of the imagination.
Price: RMB 100 members, 200 nonmembers
TO ORDER: Scan the QR below. For international credit cards, email us: info@historic-shanghai.com
