I don’t remember where I first came across Sue Anne Tay’s photographs of Shanghai demolition and destruction but they instantly struck me as poignant. I’ve posted about them before and received the inevitable emails about the benefit of slum clearance etc etc which always strikes me as naive and ahistorical and ignores how so many buildings became slums in Shanghai through state and purposeful official neglect.
Anyway, I’m also jealous of Sue Anne Tay as I’ve been snapping construction sites, demolition and threatened heritage in Shanghai and elsewhere for years and my photographs are functional (at very best) and usually just crap. I just don’t have the eye for photography in the same way as I can’t draw. She does have an eye clearly.
And now there’s an exhibition of her work in Shanghai hosted by the good folk at Southern Barbarian (who’ve also hosted friends of mine including the photographer Andre Eichmann and North Korea poster collector Nick Bonner). The exhibition is opening this Saturday and if you’re in Shanghai you can go see it and sample some of Southern Barbarian’s huge range of beers.
To see some examples of Sue Anne Tay’s work have a look here
After yesterdays post on the general demolition of Da Yuan Fu Hutong (Datianshujing Hutong) running off Morrison Street (Wangfujing) and behind the Peking Hotel a couple of pictures of the small attempt to preserve some of the western end of the hutong and perhaps generate a bit of business among tourists. It’s been a bit laggard in getting going and remains a fair way of the tourist path at the moment but still, better than total destruction I guess. It’s one of those old town/new town things that are popping up all over China these days in fairly generic fashion.
Beware of cheap tat all ye who enter here
When I visited not much was happening but the lanterns were up
Hopefully these businesses can drum up enough business to keep the place free of bulldozers
That parts of Da Yuan Fu Hutong, known these days as Datianshujing Hutong, lasted as long as they did is quite remarkable – but the remaining structures days are now numbered it appears. Da Yuan Fu Hutong originally ran of off Morrison Street (Wangfujing) and just behind the Peking Hotel, which of course remains. Most prominently the hutong was home to the once well known and regarded Hotel de la Paix, known commonly as the Telegraph Hotel, a fairly respectable establishment situated in a traditional courtyard. It degenerated a bit in the mid to late 1930s and housed mostly stateless White Russians and Jewish refugees with nowhere else to go.
It was known as the Telegraph because the building had originally housed the offices and staff quarters of the Great Northern Telegraph Company (Det Store Nordiske Telegrafselskab A/S), a Danish telegraph company founded in June 1869. The Great Northern was running a telegraph service between Kamchatka and Peking and stops in between. They rented the courtyard of a Manchu Prince on Da Yuan Fu Hutong and constructed an impressive European style building that became widely known around the start of the 20th century as The Danish Mess.
The Prince took the money from the Danes (Dane Gelt?) and retired to Mukden (Shenyang) as Manchu princes are wont to do. What was left was a traditional courtyard residence as well as the sizable European residence – it proved to be too big for the 5 Danish full time employees and their occasional guests from up-country so they sold up and the new owners converted the buildings into the Hotel de la Paix. The Great Northern had apparently skimped on construction and the Danes only had earth floors and rather sub-standard plumbing. Still, for years apparently the Danish flag flew at the courtyard’s outer gate even after the new owners had tiled the floors and put in some water boilers and a flush toilet.
A small development has occurred at one end of the hutong – I’ll post on that tomorrow
Anyway, here’s the roll of destruction on the major street facing side:
A old courtyard entrance surrounded by rubble – maybe once a Danish telegraph engineer or two came to work this way?
a saddleback roof still evident behind some destruction
Apropos of nothing except that I was up in Peking last week for the Beijing International Book Fair (the book fair where literary cops walk round confiscating books they don’t approve of!!) and it happened to be a ‘do’ for Penguin to celebrate their five years in China. I rather liked their little five years decal and they happen to be my publisher so I thought I’d stick it up all the same.
I have no idea where Dutch people go in Shanghai to get together these days and frankly, who cares. Still, when the Dutchies wanted to celebrate the Netherlands Royal Wedding of 1937 between their very own Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (somewhere in Germany apparently) they headed to Van’s Dutch Village Inn on Love Lane (Wujiang Road).
Of course, as noted in previous posts (see here and here), the eastern end of the old Love Lane is currently taking a severe battering with several buildings coming down and others, including the old St. Anna’s ballroom and Margaret Kennedy’s old bordello, being gutted completely. What will be left when the wreckers have finished is hard to tell – the western end of Wujiang Road with its horrific confection of chain stores, donut junk food parlours and fast food crap does not bode well.
Still, in January 1937 it was a party at No.15 as Van’s Dutch threw open their doors to all with plenty of booze and better food than you’ll find down on Love Lane today at Krispy Krap or whatever generic chain balls is there this week. Incidentally, the marriage lasted and the current Queen Beatrix was one of their kids. Princess, later Queen, Juliana died in 2004 and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands died just months later.
Summer may be drawing to an end but the annual summer excursions by boat from Shanghai to Tsingtao continued through until the end of September, courtesy of the Dairen Kisen Kaisha line. The ships sailed every other day and even the first class fare seems pretty affordable to me and a far nicer way to get from Shanghai to Tsingtao than a clanking China Eastern plane in cattle class. Still, everyone wants to get everywhere in a rush these days and ignore scenery while staring at their Blackberry screen moronically so the service has faded away. Still in 1937….
I’ve covered the ongoing decision making process about the redevelopment of the old police barracks and married quarters on Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road before. While the modernist and highly functional buildings look set to be preserved what exactly will be their new use is still up for grabs. It seems to be between a truly innovative and useful creative hub or another chance for the usual coffee and tat brands to slip in under the wire. And worryingly Pansy Ho is involved in one bid and that’s usually not good news for heritage. More details on this round up courtesy of CNNGo Hong Kong.
I screwed up a bit here being a bit late with this one – but if you can get along to it before Tuesday 7th you can catch the 125th anniversary celebration of Vancouver’s Chinatown with art and photos celebrating it all at 163 East Pender Street. The whole thing was put together by Sheila Hall of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Judy Lam-Maxwell of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum (which I think must be unique – at least I know of no other country that has a museum devoted solely to the Chinese who served in their military?).
Now I don’t know much about Vancouver or its Chinatown but their brochure tells me it dates back to around the 1850s and of course the 1880s with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. You can find out more here on the website of the Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Area. I’ve also loaded up the pdf brochure for the exhibition here – Chinatown125_Brochure_final1.
As someone who divides his time pretty evenly writing about China now and China back then this seemed like a place to throw all the interesting bits that fall through the cracks somehow and never get used anywhere else. It's basically the stuff that doesn't get used in my writing about modern China or in the books I do about old China — i.e. probably of little interest to anyone but me and therefore ideally suited to an obscure blog up a dark cul-de-sac of the Internet. I'm also adding the odd 'Deviation Posting' about non-China stuff that interests me — Paul French
