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 opened in 1917, it wasn’t yet a tower of vice. Fortuitously situated on the corner of Avenue Edward VII (Yan’an Road) and Tibet Road (Xizang Lu), in the former French Concession, it was the brainchild of Huang Chunjiu (no relation to the gangster), and a place for good, clean family fun.

Huang was a pharmacist from Zhejiang province, but his real genius was in marketing. He had made his fortune on a ‘brain tonic,’ carefully designed to appear Western and appeal to a Chinese audience. Today we’d probably call him a snake-oil salesman.