The Forgotten Bride in the Shanghai Lane
We found her in a lane called Chusan Liegh (Zhoushan Li 舟山弄), in the old Jewish ghetto. Who was she, this elegant bride wearing heart-shaped earrings and a fairytale wedding gown? Why was she left here? Who would leave a wedding portrait behind?
The lane, on Zhoushan Lu in Hongkou, stands in the shadow of the Ohel Moshe synagogue. The 1927 synagogue is now the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, and the lane is being cleared out so that its buildings can serve as additional exhibition space for the museum. As families here move out, their discarded items are rescued by scavengers; it seems there’s always a ready buyer for almost anything in Shanghai.
And that’s where we found her, propped up on a table, tied with baby blue raffia and surrounded by a few well-worn Mao-era Little Red Books (in English, Russian, and Chinese) a few tarnished utensils, and an enamel bowl.
A Long Tradition of White Wedding Gowns & Bouquets of Lilies
It’s hard to tell when this photo was taken: bridal gowns are annoyingly ageless, and white wedding gowns have been popular with Shanghai brides since the 1920s. But there’s a hint: the colors suggest color film, rather than pre-1949 colorized photos, and the Shanghai Photo Studio–whose logo is helpfully on the photo–sounds like the name of a post-1949 state-run enterprise.
I posted the photo of our lane bride on Instagram, and a precious clue appeared: a follower commented that their mother’s 1980s wedding portrait was taken in the very same studio: the same staircase, even the same bouquet of lilies! On Twitter, another follower says her aunt’s wedding portrait, also in the 1980s, looks very much like this one.
Imagine: our new bride in the 1980s, the heady early years of reform and opening-up. The practical Mao suit that her mother may have worn as a wedding outfit was no longer de rigeur, and she, the modern 1980s woman, could indulge in this romantic bridal fantasy. Shanghai photo studios, after all, have always been a bit of theater, a place where brides play princess for the day.
The newlywed (or nearlywed) couple would have headed to the Shanghai Photo Studio on 741 Nanjing West Road and joined a long line to get their photo taken.
Once inside, she selected a modest, almost Victorian dress—generously sized and pinned to fit by the in-house tailor–along with heart-shaped earrings, a necklace, and tiara, luxuries that had not been imagined in Shanghai for decades. The make-up artist dabbed her cheeks, the hairdresser fixed the veil, and holding her bouquet of lilies, she posed, chin down, eyes up, for posterity.
The Photographer: Zhu Tianmin
Perhaps she posed for Zhu Tianmin (朱天民) himself, the photographer who founded the studio. Born in Haining in 1917, Zhu, like many photographers of the time, had no formal training, but apprenticed in Zhejiang and Shanghai, opening the Shanghai Universal Photo Studio 上海万象照相馆 on Fuxing Zhong Lu in 1941. By 1946, he had opened two new Universal branches: one in Hongkou, on Tiantong Lu, and the Nanjing Xi Lu one where our bride was photographed, which became the main branch.
The list of celebrities that Zhu photographed reads like a Who’s Who of Shanghai stars: actress Bai Yang, Shanghai’s Golden Throat, Zhou Xuan, Peking Opera legend Mei Lanfang, artist Liu Haisu, even politician Li Zongren. Shanghai was then the Hollywood of China, with a booming film industry, and Zhu incorporated cinematic lighting techniques into his photography, giving them the ‘imprint of Hollywood’. [1]
Part of that imprint was Zhu’s use of light to sculpt Chinese faces for portraiture, an innovation which came about by necessity. Because although commercial photography actually grew during the Cultural Revolution,[2] the advent of those tumultuous years saw studios’ bourgeois backdrops and settings destroyed by Red Guards with light the only medium left for photographers to distinguish their work with. [3]
By 1956, photo studios had all become state-run, [4] and Zhu thrived, continuing to work at Universal and becoming a member of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People’s Consultative Congress for several sessions. In 1968, the studio changed its name to the Shanghai Photo Studio. [5]
Full Circle
Remarkably, for 30 years, these bourgeois, Western-style wedding photos had disappeared, but they hadn’t been forgotten. Photographers like Zhu remembered how to take them; seamstresses remembered how to sew fairytale wedding dresses; and the young women who didn’t know them at all, having grown up surrounded by a much more austere aesthetic, embraced them.
In Chusan Liegh, the wedding portrait on the table of discards haunts me. Why was she left here? Who would leave a wedding portrait behind?
No answers.
The scavengers didn’t want her either. They gave her to me for free.
So I took her home, because someone needs to remember.
REFERENCES
Tong Bingxue. History of Photo Studios in China, 1859-1956. Beijing: China Photographic Publishing House, 2016.
Wang Jie. Nostalgia Trip into old photo studios. Shanghai Daily. 2010, December 31. https://archive.shine.cn/feature/art-and-culture/Nostalgia-trip-into-old-photo-studios/shdaily.shtml Accessed July 21, 2021.
Yeung, P. P. C. (2018, May 1). Framing a socialist face: Studio Photography in Late Mao China. Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences: Comp Lit: The Magazine. https://comparative-lit.blogs.rutgers.edu/2018/05/framing-a-socialist-face-studio-photography-in-late-mao-china/ Accessed July 23, 2021
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/6832035462 (The specific location of the information is on the 6th layer of this post)
老照片，罕见又珍贵，其中有素颜的周洁和41岁的上官云珠. 2020, September 15. The Paper. https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_9173529
[1] https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%9C%B1%E5%A4%A9%E6%B0%91/5634658?fr=aladdin
[2] Yeung, P. P. C. (2018, May 1). Framing a socialist face: Studio Photography in Late Mao China. Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences: Comp Lit: The Magazine. https://comparative-lit.blogs.rutgers.edu/2018/05/framing-a-socialist-face-studio-photography-in-late-mao-china/
[3] Yeung, P. P. C. (b).
[4] Tong Bingxue. History of Photo Studios in China, 1859-1956. Beijing: China Photographic Publishing House, 2016.
[5] https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%9C%B1%E5%A4%A9%E6%B0%91/5634658?fr=aladdin