Malraux’s Modern Canton – Mid-1920s

Speaking yesterday of Malraux’s description of Raffles Hotel in Singapore in The Conquerors, I also rather like his description of the modern portions of Canton in the mid-1920s…Canton’s modernism gets rather crowded out by all the hoopla over old Shanghai (yea, I know – guilty as charged) but is worthy of more study and comment….

“At Canton, where once were ancient pagodas, there are now California hotels, shops with thirteen stories, and those terrible skyscrapers, which have a cinema on the ground floor, a theatre on the first, all manner of amusements on the second – automatic machines, bowls, acrobats, gladiators, dancers; on the third, a smoke-room; on the fourth a tearoom; on the fifth, a select brothel; on the sixth, offices. Higher still, flats occupied by ladies of doubtful reputation, and higher yet, more offices. On the roof, a garden and a Russo-European restaurant.”

The Canton Bund and Daixin Department Store, 1920s