Historic Shanghai

Shanghai’s climate is notorious for its steamy summers, bone-chilling winters and the uncomfortable “Plum Rains” every June. One thing it is not known for is snow, of which it gets very little. When it snows in Shanghai, it is a big deal. Children irk their teachers by running to the windows to […]

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The presentation entitled “Shanghai Ren, Shanghailanders and other Interlopers” organized by Historic Shanghai on 27 January was well-attended, with almost 200 Shanghai fans packing the Glamour Bar to hear Lynn Pan, Tess Johnston and Wm Patrick Cranley speak.Pan’s section on Chinese contributors to the city’s development described the close relationship between “legitimate” Shanghai of businessmen, […]

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Frederick Townsend Ward[An excerpt from “Old Shanghai’s ‘Others’: Sailor, Whores, Half-breeds and Other Interlopers” by Wm Patrick Cranley]Some foreigners fell between the cracks and lived on the edge of the terra incognita that was mid-19th century Shanghai. One such man was Frederick Townsend Ward, an American born in1831 in Salem, Massachusetts, which at […]

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Enthusiastic Historic Shanghai fans will recall with great fondness the very special visit to Shanghai of author and ex-Shanghailander Rena Krasno in October 2007 - what she referred to as her “farewell tour.” An active 80-something-year-old now residing in California, Rena bluffed that this would be her last visit to her childhood home. We doubt […]

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Tess Johnston is a Shanghai institution.  She’s been documenting Shanghai’s disappearing historic buildings for a quarter of a century – so long that many of the buildings she and her partner Erh Dongqiang featured in the original 1992 edition of A Last Look: Western Architecture in Shanghai are just a memory.

As usual, Tess is so modest and […]

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For those of you not yet initiated into the cult, Laszlo Hudec was one of the most talented architects of the 20th century – and 90% of his work was produced in Shanghai. A versatile virtuoso, Hudec designed in the Neo-classical, Georgian, Gothic, Byzantine, Art Deco and International styles. Just about everyone who […]

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See an article on the “new and improved” Historic Shanghai in the 23 January 2008 edition of the Shanghai Daily.

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On Sunday, 27 January 2008, 4:00 pm at the Glamour Bar, Historic Shanghai presents “Shanghai Ren, Shanghailanders and Other Interlopers - The People Who Made Shanghai, 1800 - 2000.”A panel discussion in celebration of Historic Shanghai’s 10th anniversary, with Lynn Pan, Tess Johnston and Wm Patrick Cranley, three of the city’s most prominent experts on old Shanghai.The panel will offer […]

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Historic Shanghai is finally here. A place on the web where people from anywhere can find out all about here: the fascinating city of Shanghai. Who were the people who made Shanghai into the “Paris of the East” (0r is that “Whore of the Orient”)? How did it come to pass that the […]

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