Shanghai Umbrellas for the Plum Rains
There are some things in life you can absolutely count on. Death, taxes … and the plum rains. Such a poetic name. Such a drippy season. Since there’s just no avoiding it, we at Historic Shanghai embrace it. Walks in the rain, big hair … and most importantly, a collection of Old Shanghai-themed umbrellas. We've ...
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Shanghai Spring: Violet Cress, An Ancient Hero, and a Peace Sign
Tiny violet flowers breaking through the wintry ground: It's one of the first signs of spring in Shanghai. The emergence of the Chinese violet cress (Orychophragmus violaceus) every March is a reassuring sign that no matter what else is going on in the world, spring will come. Violet cress appears during the solar ...
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Memories of Chinese New Year in Old Shanghai
新年快乐！Xin Nian Kuai Le! As we welcome the Year of the Horse in a world of WeChat hongbaos and electronic firecrackers, we wondered: what was Chinese New Year like in Old Shanghai? So we went to the experts: the men and women who grew up here. Here are their memories of Shanghai Chinese New Years past, from the 1930s ...
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The Shanghai Garden in Winter: Wintersweet
Take a whiff - it's the season for fragrant wintersweet (la mei, 蜡梅*), and somewhere in a Shanghai lane or garden, a tree is flowering. They appear in winter's barren landscape right at that moment when it feels that all hope is lost and spring will never come, its yellow blossoms the promise of spring sunshine. Song ...
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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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Old Shanghai Beers
By The Little Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising in the R.O.C (MOFBA) // For almost 30 years, a single brand dominated the local Shanghai beer market: U.B. (友啤), created by the Shanghai Union-Brauerei AG. As its name suggests, U.B. had German roots: it was incorporated in 1912 by a German company, Schwarzkopf ...
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Last Call: Keven Café, the French Concession’s Diner
Last call at Keven Café, the western restaurant that became the French Concession’s beloved neighborhood diner. The café, which closes today, sat unassumingly on leafy Hengshan Road for 25 years, a comfortingly enduring presence amidst the meteoric transformations of the last quarter-century. Keven Café, in the ...
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