The Shanghai Cafe – Tuscon, Arizona, 1940s

Another of my occasional blog posts on places that used the name Shanghai – they usually have interesting tales behind them. This is an advert from August 22nd 1942 in the Tuscon Daily Citizen for the Shanghai Cafe. Chinese food along with steaks and “American Dinners”. There is a story behind the Cafe, which is told on the website accompanying the New York Historical Society’s Chinese American Exclusion/Inclusion exhibition – click here.  The story is also told in even more detail on the Angel Island website here.

I won’t copy all their information – you can read it for yourself and it is a good story of the struggles of Chinese Americans to get around the Exclusion Act, settle, build families and business between the wars. It seems, in short, Gin Shue came to Tuscon from China in 1922 and opened a grocery store. Around 1929 he opened the Shanghai Cafe at 10 South 4th Avenue with a grocery store attached. After some trials and tribulation courtesy of the US Immigration Service he managed to open in larger premises at 266 East Congress Street. The new Shanghai Cafe included six tables and eight booths with waitress service. An immigration officer that visited the Cafe reported its a “first class establishment.” In the early 1940s Gin Shue moved the Shanghai Cafe once again, this time to Stone Avenue, on the corner of 17th Street. I assume this is the location for the ad below.

Afraid I don’t know anymore and don’t know Tuscon at all – when the Cafe closed or moved again I am not sure, what exists on Stone Avenue at the corner of 17th Street today I also have no idea…