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Stateless in Shanghai: Living History with Liliane Willens

What was it like to grow up, from birth into young adulthood, in Old Shanghai? Glamour, chaos, deprivation, hope? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. The delightful Liliane Willens, our guest in the ‘Living History’ series, was born in Shanghai in 1927 to stateless Russian Jewish parents and lived here – through the glamorous ...

Shanghai’s Cathedral School for Girls: A Ballerina, A Sci-Fi Author, and Mao

Well, well. They’re refurbishing the Cathedral School for Girls on Avenue Haig/Huashan Lu, and look who’s popped up over the entrance! The posh Cathedral School for Girls (sister school to the Cathedral School for Boys) was established around 1918 on Yates Road/Shimen Yi Lu and moved to the Avenue Haig premises ...

The Battle of Shanghai: An Illustrated Guide

On August 14 1937, the day after the Battle of Shanghai began, misfired bombs rained death and destruction on civilians in downtown Shanghai. "Bloody Saturday" claimed 2,000 lives in what was then the deadliest aerial bombardment the world had seen, and for the following three months, the Battle of Shanghai ravaged the ...

Girl Reporters: The Newswomen of Old Shanghai

The ranks of the foreign journalists of Old Shanghai were mostly filled by hard-bitten men, but by the 1920s, some of the city’s best and most interesting correspondents were women, or as they were known then, “girl reporters”. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a changing world, these women were the first ...

The Royal Asiatic Society Building: The Museum on Museum Road

I first saw the old building in the summer of 2000, coming out of a lane on Huqiu Lu. It stood there, in all its modernist majesty, still glorious despite half a century of neglect. We asked the residents at the lane entrance just opposite the building about it. One middle-aged man, shirt doffed in the stifling Shanghai ...

1972 Nixon Visit: How Shanghai Changed Since 1946

Fifty-three years ago this month, on February 21, 1972, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon flew into Shanghai on a landmark trip that would lead to the Shanghai Communique, signalling the beginning of a rapprochement between the United States and the People's Republic of China.  America suddenly had China fever, and China ...

Vintage Shanghai Comedy: “Da Li, Xiao Li & Lao Li 大李,小李和老李“

There are so many reasons to love this 1962 screwball comedy - let us count the ways: Scenes of 1960s Shanghai. You think images of 1930s Shanghai are rare? Try 1962, the year the Great Leap Forward ended. This is a rare film documentation of the period, including what may be the only existing footage of the Art Deco ...