Cosmopolitan Shanghai
After a humiliating defeat in the Opium War, the Chinese Empire, until then frozen in the past, got a new chance. Chinese ports are open for trade with the world, and in strategic places, locations have been designated for the settlement of foreign entrepreneurs, so-called “concessions”, for which a special legal system will apply. Thus, in Shanghai, right next to the old Chinese city, a French concession was formed, then to the north of it a British concession, then an American one, and when the Italians, Germans and Japanese joined them, a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial atmosphere was created that is comparable only to that in New York. In a liberal environment, the economy flourished, and along with it gambling, prostitution and opium, the stable supply of which was conscientiously taken care of by the Green Gang, the local Chinese mafia. All the free-spirited ideas of this world and all its vices, unpunished and widely available, mingled in this city of oriental mysticism, adventure and glamour.
That free, cosmopolitan charm of the city culminated after the Great War, when the colony of foreigners in Shanghai was joined by the defeated “White” Russians, with their highly elitist culture, and then by the persecuted European Jews, with their unsurpassed entrepreneurial spirit. The influence of Russian high society ladies, who, at least according to the story, brought a new quality to brothel services, even by Shanghai’s otherwise high standards, should be emphasized.
“No city is, nor ever will be, like the city of Shanghai between the two wars.” It is a mixture of western and oriental character, a city of strong contrasts. That oriental Paris, with all its good and bad, turned out to be a paradise for adventurers,” said Elly Kadoorie, himself one of those adventurers, a Jew from Baghdad, who made his fortune in interwar Shanghai, about the city.
In the unholy trinity of sin cities of that era (Paris, Berlin, Shanghai), the latter somehow became the most challenging and exciting, because it was the freest and most diverse. Entrepreneurs, spies, gamblers and musicians from all over the world flocked to the city. The local Chinese population, who mingled with foreigners, were happy to learn new skills, adding to everything an authentic charm of the Orient. When an American black man opened the first jazz club, the Carlton Cafe, and started bringing in wacky American musicians, their Chinese counterparts, who had never heard anything like that, at first struggled to imitate the black musicians, and later, when they loosened up a bit, they also gave their creative contribution. Composer Li Jinhui, who independently created the pornographic “yellow jazz”, a musical trend that was very popular in Shanghai, stood out in particular.
That particular urban atmosphere flourished until the Japanese invasion in 1938, after which it was barely maintained, and was put to an end when Mao’s communists conquered the city in 1949. Foreigners fled and Chinese intellectuals crawled into a mouse hole, trying to save live head. The most difficult moments for them came during the Cultural Revolution, when the darkness engulfed many of them, including the “yellow jazzer” Li Jinhui. Yet there were still those who, in deep secrecy, between their four walls, listened to boogie-woogie, jazz or bolero from old, crackling gramophone records and cursed softly in French.
And when it all ended, there were still enough survivors, who, little by little, in new circumstances, brought the spirit of pre-war Shanghai back to the light of day.
Interwar architecture
In the atmosphere of interwar Shanghai, construction was abundant and architects were at a premium. While the Chinese part of the city was built in the traditional oriental way with characteristic concave roofs, in the foreign concessions western architecture was valued primarily, in which orientalism appeared only in places as an accompanying eclectic element. Buildings reminiscent of the most beautiful European cities sprung up, all neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque, and later art deco prevailed. The city of New York had a particularly great influence on the interwar Shanghai builders, whose skyscrapers remained a permanent obsession of the citizens of Shanghai.
An economically successful city, it generally expanded towards the west, primarily along the main street Nanjing road, and in the interwar period, the golden age of Shanghai, the area around the Yang’an Buddhist temple was most relevant, which due to high land prices was available only to the elite. That part of the city, Yang’an district, where the richest foreign and Chinese capitalists built their homes, thus became the most fashionable part of the city, where today again, Burberry, Gucci, Rolex and Maserati stores are lurking for new Chinese rich people.
While most of the common people lived in shikumen – typical Shanghai terraced houses, the elite in Yang’an district built their own large Western residences with gardens and clubs for classy and unrestrained night parties.
In the beginning, only architects from Europe were hired for the design, and later a new generation of Chinese architects grew up with them, who learned Western architecture more from examples on the spot than from the school desk.
In the interwar period, the most successful architect in Shanghai was the Slovak-Hungarian refugee László Hudec, and to this day he has the undisputed status of “famous Hungarian architect” in that city. Given that he spent his entire working life in Shanghai, I am not sure if the professional public in Slovakia and Hungary even know about him, but for the final evaluation of that fact, it should be borne in mind that Shanghai is approximately twice the size of Hungary and Slovakia together, and about the difference not to mention the degree of urbanization. Imagine, Mr. Hudec spoke nine European languages, but not Chinese, which completes the picture of everyday life in that cosmopolitan megalopolis.
Of course, in a city where everything is allowed, architecture was not restrained either. Favorites were Spanish, Italian, English, antique and Islamic motifs, and they were best mixed, with some Chinese decorations.
The private house of the Swedish shipping magnate Eric Moller, which gives the impression of a European medieval castle, was built in a style that the Chinese call Norwegian. According to legend, Moller’s daughter fell asleep after reading Andersen’s fairy tales and in her dream saw a magical castle in which she would like to live. She woke up and quickly, until the image disappeared, sketched that castle, and the caring dad found an architect who turned the dream into reality. Later, the villa was very popular among the rulers of Shanghai for not quite fairy-tale purposes, so it was the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek’s intelligence service, then the headquarters of the organization of angry young communists, then a pre-trial prison for corruption suspects. Knowing all this, we should be grateful to Moller’s daughter for, much later, somewhat reluctantly, denying the legend of inspiration from a dream. That villa is now a hotel, which is quite appropriate considering that it has over 100 rooms, where many of Mr. Moller’s pets used to play.
Later, when a residential building was built next to the villa, the Chinese architect who designed it, had in mind the proximity of an important building and knew that it should have some influence on his building. Not knowing what to do, he decided to create stylized towers to rival those of Moller’s mansion and succeeded only in creating a visual mess. But that’s Shanghai. When such uncertainty appears once, we can call it a mistake, but if it appears more than once, then we say that it is a contribution to the vividness of the city.
Another, nearby villa is followed by another legend. The rich industrialist Liu Jisheng was, they say, endlessly in love with his wife, and decided to give her a garden for her 40th birthday next to their otherwise exemplary beautiful classicist mansion, the work of Laszlo Hudec. Hudec was, of course, hired again for the garden project, who was so moved by their love that it reminded him of the classic ancient story of Psyche and Cupid. Furthermore, Mr. Hudec commissioned a statue of Psyche in Italy, and placed it on the fountain in the garden as his personal gift to the Liu couple. The story of “ancient inspiration” seems rather naive to us Europeans, but the Chinese give the impression that they sincerely believe in it. By the way, it is easy to see that Hudec took the basic motifs for the garden project from the painting “The Bath of Psyche” by the classicist English painter Frederick Leighton. The building is today the headquarters of the Association of Writers, and the statue of Psyche is still there, since during the Cultural Revolution it was taken “to an unknown safe place” and thus saved from almost certain destruction.
A little further, at an intersection along Nanjing Road, we again encounter a typical architectural uncertainty. On one side of the intersection is the 1928 Denis Apartments apartment building, designed by Eric Cumine, a young Shanghainese architect of Scottish origin, fresh from studying in England. It is an eight-story brick-faced building, rounded at the base, a textbook example of Art Deco, with cubist decorations on the facade and a charming solution for a recessed attic. A few years later, on the other side of the intersection, another residential building, the Yates Apartments on a very inconvenient small lot, is being built, and architects H.S. Luke and Wu Jingqi, respecting the environment, also opt for a curved brick facade building, but not knowing how many, and since there is no point in imitating the neighboring building, they give up, just in case, almost all decorations, and most of the original charm has disappeared.
The two most instructive buildings in the city were the “Park Hotel Shanghai” and the clubhouse of the Shanghai Equestrian Club, both from 1934, placed practically opposite each other.
The Park Hotel, Laszlo Hudec’s most famous work, is the epitome of mature Art Deco, and was the tallest building in Asia for a long time, and the tallest building in Shanghai until the 1980s. However, we must say that in an architectural sense, the building was designed under the strong influence of the American Radiator Building from downtown Manhattan, which, if it’s any consolation, is not architecturally original itself, but is based on the project of an unfinished building in Chicago. That’s how Hudec joined Shanghai’s obsession with New York, which later led to the fact that on one of the newer skyscrapers there is a literally copied famous art deco pyramid from the Chrysler Building, just because it has a typically New York look.
One of the favorite pastimes of foreigners in the city was horse racing, which was also one of the most profitable businesses. The hippodrome was located in the very center of the international settlement, where the land was the most expensive, on the site of today’s National Park. For the needs of the club, in 1934, a magnificent ten-story neoclassical club house, about 100 meters long, was built, which was impossible to show in a single photo. The architectural firm Spence & Robinson Ltd, founded in Shanghai in 1904, which is still operating in the Far East from its new headquarters in Hong Kong, was hired to develop the project.
Some of the richest residents of the city were not only owners of stables, but also excellent jockeys themselves, and the fiercest rivals on the race track have already been mentioned in this text, although in a different context. They were the architect Eric Cumine, the designer of the Denis Apartments, and the shipping magnate Eric Moller, the owner of that “Norwegian” villa with over 100 rooms.
