BY JOHN FITZGERALD
Host city of the 2010 World Expo, which will feature 200 national pavilions, including Canada’s and draw an estimated 70 million visitors, Shanghai has loads to recommend it for the discerning traveler grown a tad weary of Berlin, Mustique or Marrakech.
Luxury there certainly is in Shanghai, at least for the sizeable number of Chinese and visitors who can indulge in it. According to a report by a large American accounting firm, China has more than 300,000 millionaires, despite the spooks caused by ill economic winds.
Having visited the city in 2007, I was excited by the chance to do so again last November, this time with a dollop or two of posh and polish.
With 20 million inhabitants, a sizeable number, part of the migrant labour force toiling in low paying factory or construction jobs, Shanghai is the most cosmopolitan of Chinese cities. It’s also constantly being built and rebuilt, with cranes and crews a common sight.
Overlooking large empty lots strewn with bricks and rubble are the half remains of old stores and houses that have been ripped down to make way for expensive residential and commercial buildings.
Bicyclists, anonymous behind masks they wear to temper the effects of the inhospitable air, jockey with cars, trucks, buses, scooters, and dogged pedestrians for the right of way.
Later in my stay, I stroll along messy side streets and through courtyards where the sky is filled with hung clothes drying. Beneath them, strings of red lanterns dangle in the autumn breeze.
Old men with faces that say they’ve seen plenty, sport Mao style caps as they hover over mahjong tables set along the sidewalks. Others, smoking fiercely, sit and watch as their caged birds perform half-hearted exertions.
On nice days, Shanghai has beautiful handovers to twilight, with the sun blushing brightly before sinking into the horizon. Itinerant merchants with deeply tanned faces that mark them as coming from provincial fields set their wares for sale, cheap clothing, mostly, along the side strip of the short spanned steel Garden Bridge. Constructed in 1906, it crosses Suzhou Creek near the Broadway Mansions Hotel.
Shanghai is situated on the coast of the South China Sea, 1,089 kilometers southeast of Beijing. The modern city was mainly developed by the British in the 19th century. Foreign powers such as the British, French, American and Japanese controlled their own concessions or districts during the years of China’s humiliation.
By the 1920s and 1930s, as those with ruthlessness and smarts competed for vast profits in legitimate and illegitimate businesses, including prostitution and hard drugs, Shanghai was the most criminal city in the world. Its voracious underworld was ineffectively policed by four different police departments with their own jurisdictions, rivalries and political loyalties.
Shanghai is where the Chinese Communist Party was born in 1921, the decade-long national nightmare known as the Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and the country’s re-opening to the West launched in 1992 following economic reforms. Today, Shanghai is probably the most exhilarating city on earth.
The Huangpu River is dotted with tankers and barges and all manner of other craft. It runs between the dramatically-shaped skyscrapers of Pudong, developed since the 1990s as China’s financial hub, and The Bund.
It’s The Bund that, for visitors of a certain age and romantic inclination, steals the show as well as the shaded, tree planted streets of the former French Concession. Once part of what was known as the English Concession, when Shanghai was divided into foreign and Chinese districts, The Bund’s storied strip of vintage European-style buildings borders the Huangpu.
At seemingly every hour, the river is sprinkled with barges, tankers, and assorted other craft, and I sometimes hear fog horns blaring before I turn in at night during my visit. From the Huangpu, on steamers and liners, thousands of immigrants, among them, Jews in the 1930s fearing Nazi persecution in Europe, had their first view of The Bund.
Many of The Bund’s office buildings, such as Number 3, among whose tenants is the Shanghai branch of chef Jean Georges Vongericten’s Jean George, the exclusive New York restaurant, Jean Georges, have been expensively renovated. There’s also top-rated Laris, owned by Australian chef David Laris, with its Asian-inspired menu.
I’m a guest at the swank Hyatt on the Bund, in a riverside suite on the 22nd floor that has the most attractive views I’ve yet experienced. But it’s the old-fashioned Astor House Hotel on Huangpu Rd. that truly enchants when I meet it one morning during a lazy walk. Built in 1846, its Victorian façade sits directly opposite the grey coloured Russian Consulate General building, first opened in 1917 and dour looking, like you’d hate to sit in it cellars.
Young, tail-coated staff try not to look bored as they hold positions in the Astor House’s wood-paneled lobby. It’s a showpiece of faded grandeur that has me imagining bustled Victorian ladies edging across the carpet as they make their way to tea in the afternoon.
Guests today are budget-conscious French and Italian travelers but swaths of the Astor House’s past are illustrious. Former Chinese vice-premier Chou en Lai was a guest for an extended stay in 1927 and other luminaries include Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th US president. Despite its diminished circumstances, the Astor House’s still seems as feels as classy as a pearl.
Following a leisurely stop at the Jade Buddha Temple, a major attraction that highlights two magnificent statues of Buddha carved out of white jade, I’m taken one day to lunch at Kathleen 5 where big picture windows overlook the mammoth People’s Square.
Before the Communists took power in 1949, the square and park were part of the Shanghai’s Racing Club. Nearby, I see the Grand Theatre and the Shanghai Museum which is artfully designed to look like a cooking vessel. The museum houses tens of thousands of pieces of ancient Chinese art and Shanghaiers say you’ll find few, if any, of comparable content elsewhere in the country.
Classic men’s shopping is to be had at Dunhill Home which fills a spectacularly restored 1920s era villa in the small enclave known as 796 Huai Hai Lu. At Dunhill Home, you’ll find such essential men’s kit such as beaver gloves, shirts, jackets, tails, ties, sweaters, and a barber shop with a whimsically painted ceiling. If you’re a fan of the gentlemen’s shops in London’s Jermyn St., and who isn’t, Dunhill Home is the place to visit, if only for the experience of seeing a desk crafted from the wing of an aircraft and other unashamedly extravagant enticements.
Staff at a twin villa, the Vacheron Constantin Mansion, sell, repair and will store, if you’ve bought enough of them, the Swiss watchmaker’s timepieces which are so sought-after among flush folks the world over. Master watchmaker, the affable Alexandre Kerguen, has been posted from Geneva to handle repairs, answer questions, and look to the collector’s salon that dazzles with rare watches.
Also on the grounds of this exclusive urban sanctuary is ShangART whose owner, Lorenz Helbling, has put together one of the city’s top contemporary galleries in a space that’s light-filled and airy. Ensconced on the third and fourth floors of the connected villas is the Shanghai branch of Kee, the private club that’s based in Hong Kong. Kee Shanghai also offers a French and Mediterranean fine dining menu in its restaurant.
Pudong, which I view each morning shaving, from my spot in the tub, has many of the city’s sexiest buildings. Among them is the Oriental Pearl Tower, the tiered pagoda style Jin Moa Tower and sleek, bottle-opener shaped Shanghai World Financial Center that, at 101 stories, opened last August to the delight of its many visitors.
On a completely different scale, the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum on Zhoushan Rd in the so-called Tilanqiao Historic Area is not an essential stop. Located in the former Jewish quarter, the museum is effecting and tranquil and I was glad to take refuge there during an afternoon downpour.
With a small but intriguing number of items on display, including a yellowed copy of the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle dating from the Second World War, the museum takes up part of the old Ohel Moishe temple that was built by Russian Jews.
Some 25,000 Jewish refugees lived in the area during the 1930s and 1940s and the temple is where they came together for religious rites during the war. Always open, Shanghai was the only city that didn’t require a visa and the Jews, unlike many others in Europe, managed to survive the war.
END