Historic Shanghai

A band of intrepid Britishers has revived the Shanghai branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), 150 years after its establishment.

The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in London in 1823 “for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia.” The early focus of the RAS was the Indian Subcontinent and the Near East – the most important outposts of the British Empire at that time. In 1847, the China Branch of the organization was set up in Hong Kong; a year later, the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society (established, let the record show, by an American, Reverend E.C. Bridgman), became an affiliate of the RAS called the North China Branch.

The club’s outdoorsy founders focused primarily on the study of the flora and fauna of the countryside around Shanghai. The RAS museum was eventually filled with stuffed birds and other creatures done in on the regular hunting forays of the society’s early members. Incredibly, many of these mounted specimens can still be viewed at the delightfully retro Shanghai Museum of Natural History on Yan’an Road (at least for another year or two – best to hurry).

The goals of the resuscitated Shanghai RAS include building a new collection of books, beginning with several dozen copies of the fabled Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (commonly known as the “China Journal”) recently purchased in Beijing by RAS vice president Michael Nethercott (apparently, the only complete set of the China Journal is housed at the Fudan University Library).

All this is by way of introduction to a walk that Peter Hibbard, president of the rejuvenated RAS – Shanghai, led on February 2 from the Astor House Hotel (which figured in the early history of the RAS) to the lovely former headquarters building of the association on Huqiu (formerly Museum) Road. The site was given to the RAS by the British government in 1868, and a building was erected there in 1871. It was replaced in 1932 by the current building, which since the 1950s has been the property of the Shanghai Library. Like the other buildings in the neighborhood, it was vacated two years ago to make way for the “Wai Tan Yuan” redevelopment project.

Suffice it to say that progress on the renovation plan is… slow. The photographs below show the state of this beautiful Chinese Art Deco building, designed by George Wilson of Palmer & Turner (the folks who brought you the iconic Cathay [Peace] Hotel and the stately Bank of China on the Bund).

The former RAS Museum

Way-cool Art Deco ironwork: “Men’s Toilet”

Even cooler stairway in RAS building

Lion mascot atop RAS building