Shanghai and Hong Kong Modern Metropolis Exhibition
Posted: June 30th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui East currently has an exhibition running called Modern Metropolis: Material Culture of Shanghai and Hong Kong. It’s on until the 17th of August so plenty of time to pop along.
There’s some interesting stuff that’s been dug up from the Shanghai History Museum including some old Shanghai Municipal Council signage, Race Club paraphenalia and various bits and bobs of ephemera from old film stars, clothes etc.
What is rather silly is the attempt to position Hong Kong as the equivalent of Shanghai between the world wars in terms of style and innovation. Complete bollocks of course but perhaps to be expected from a Hong Kong museum. There’s little of interest in terms of style and design from Hong Kong until after 1949 when Shanghai slid disastorously backwards under the communists and Hong Kong got a bit more interesting.
The idea that Hong Kong was a “thriving metropolis” (as the brochure would have it) on a par with Shanghai in the 1930s of course doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny and (arguably) only got interesting when hoardes of Shanghainese moved to the city to escape the communist ‘liberation’. Hong Kong was of course very much a port city, a British colony and renowned for nothing much except its drunken sailors, invariably idiotic colonial officials and disease rates while Shanghai was booming in creativity. Read anyone’s memoirs from the time – a posting to the East that named Hong Kong was to be dreaded; Shanghai a blessed a sigh of relief. Despite this nonsense about equivalency it’s still worth popping in for an hour or so if you’ve got some time to kill in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong music and cinema started to supplant Shanghai’s in the early 30s, and was more important from the Japanese occupation of Shanghai on (except maybe the few years before the Communists took Shanghai). Unfortunately a lot of the earliest movies were destroyed by the Japanese.
We’ll have to disagree there Jeffrey – I see nothing in Hong Kong prior to 1939 to rival the creativity of Shanghai during that period in cinema, writing, music or thought.