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The Shanghai Floods of 1940

Posted: June 18th, 2015 | No Comments »

Shanghai is currently undergoing the plum rains. They appear to be heavier than normal this year and have caused extensive flooding. It happens every so often and always has. I suspect that things get a bit backed up these days as my theory is that despite massive population increase and all those new apartment blocks not as much sewer and drainage piping has been added. Certainly my observation of new blocks going up in the French Concession in the 1990s was that they just connected to the old French installed piping. A lot more people + same pipes = a lot of backing up!

Still, there have been bad years before – 1940 was a famous flood and followed 1939 which many had thought the worst on record, but 1940 was worse…

Hers is the French Ambassador in 1940 Henri Cosme (for the record a complete shit: the representative of the Vichyite collaborationist French government in China and later their ambassador to Tokyo) in a sampan on a Shanghai Street. Aahh, the old days, I wouldn’t give much for the chances of the current French Ambassador punting down a Shanghai street in a sampan to check French citizens in Shanghai are all OK?!

So here’s today’s challenge old Shanghai hands – where is he? Behind him is a sign that probably says “Palace”. the building is not big enough to be the Palace Hotel but there was a Palace Dance Hall on the Avenue Edward VII (Yanan Lu now), the road that marked the boundary between the Settlement and Frenchtown – seems logical he might have gone to the borders of Frenchtown to survey the damage? But, any other suggestions.

The_Montana_Standard_Tue__Nov_26__1940_



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