Alexandre Léonard: The Man. The Art Deco. The Mystery.
You can't talk about Art Deco in Shanghai without talking about the immensely talented Alexandre Léonard. One of the city's leading French architects during the Art Deco age, Léonard designed villas, apartment houses, and civic buildings that would become landmarks of the former French Concession and define the Shanghai ...
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Bookshelf: Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China
When we first meet Bernardine Szold, it’s 1929, and she’s on a train heading for Dairen (Dalian) to marry her fourth husband, suffering dreadful pre-wedding jitters (or perhaps it’s simply a premonition?). Chester Fritz, that fourth husband, did turn out be a mistake, but he had one thing going for him: ...
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St. Theresa’s Church: A Shanghai Story
The story of St. Theresa’s Church is the story of Shanghai. From the 1927 White Terror to French Jesuit missionaries, a 19th century saint, 20th century radios, and a 21st century reimagining. St Theresa’s was completed in 1931, and from the beginning was truly a church of this cosmopolitan city: located in the ...
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Thanksgiving in Old Shanghai
A service of Thanksgiving. A big turkey dinner, with all the trimmings. A hotly contested football classic. It all sounds very traditional, very American, and so it was: it was Thanksgiving in 1930s Shanghai. Thanksgiving Service at Holy Trinity Left: Holy Trinity Cathedral, where Thanksgiving services were ...
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McTyeire: The School for China’s Daughters
Young women in smart uniforms run down the wide steps, ponytails flying, laughing and talking. Clusters of girls sit and chat on the green lawn that fronts the grand building with its own turret. At first glance, they seem like adolescent girls anywhere, but look closer, and the girls of the Shanghai No.3 Girls’ Middle ...
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The Chaste Widow of the Shanghai Racetrack
The Chaste Widow’s Monument, an 18th century memorial arch on the old racecourse, was a legacy of Shanghai before the foreigners came, a bow to an ancient Confucian virtue that stood stubbornly on the racecourse infield until the 1950s. Restored in the 1940s by shipping tycoon and Shanghailander Eric Moller, it was one of ...
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1950s Shanghai Fashion: Making New Clothes from Old
In 1957, Shanghai fashion was all about recycling: turning old clothes into new. That year, the Shanghai Clothing Company published a pattern book, “Making New Clothes From Old”, with patterns to turn your bourgeois changshan (men's gown) into something more proletarian. Inside, there are patterns to turn an ...
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