Friday, 9 May 2014
Thursday, 8 May 2014
The Shanghai Club
The Shanghai Club was the most important men's club for influential British residents of Shanghai. The club was originally founded as "The correspondant's Club" in 1861; three years later - in 1864 - a three-storey brick building was erected at the beginning of the Bund to host the club.
In 1905, the Club decided to erect a new and more elegant building with a Baroque design. Completed in 1910, the new Shanghai Club building was to become the symbol of colonial Shanghai in 1920s and 30s, as well as one of the most famous sights of the whole Far East.
The Shanghai Internationl Settlement was established in 1863: unlike Hong Kong, which was a sovereign territory of the British Empire, the foreign concessions were formally Chinese national territory. The agreement opened Shanghai to foreign trade, and soon people all over Europe started pouring into the city.
During the golden era of 1920s-30s, Shanghai was home to more than 70,000 so-called "Shanghailanders", from Britain, United States, France, Netherlands, Italy, Russia, Germany, Belgium and many other european countries.
They were wealthy business men, bankers, jews refugees, fleeing thieves, adventurers and artists. They transformed Shanghai in the most important city of the Far East, a place where nightclubs were opened all night long, gangsters and business men were dealing opium, alcohol and prostitution, artitst were living a bohemienne life and every kind of people and amenities could be found on the streets.
Despite still a Chinese territory, Shanghai was da-facto governed by the power of Western money and finance.
The most iconic symbol of that era was the Shanghai Club. It was an opulutnt and luxurious building, featuring an Italianate Grand Hall located on the first floor, with ceilengs 12 feet high, massive Ionic columns, a marble staircase and twin elevators. The upper floor were home to a smoking room, a library and a biliard room.
But of all the impressive features of the Club, nothing was famous, celebrated and legendary as its Long Bar.
Built in unpolished mahogany, the L-shaped bar was more than 100 feet long, thus making in the longest bar in the world.
The importance of a man could be seen by the place were he was sitting at the bar. The Bund-facing side was home to the most powerful and influential bankers, taipans and diplomats. The more you were moving down the bar, the lower was the social scale of those sitting at it.
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| The original Long Bar |
The Long Bar was an incredibly powerful and vivid metaphore of colonial society and mentality. For both westeners and locals, moving one sit futher at the bar meant moving up on the social scale.
The colonial rule came to an end when the Japanese occupied the city in 1937. The club was closed and occupied by the Japanese administration until the end of the war. It was then expropriated by the new Chinese government in 1949. For more than twenty years in was converted into the Seamen club and then into a hotel. The disgrace went event further, when the building hosted the first KFC in China. The beautiful baroque masterpiece was relegated to the smell of fried chicken and noise of consumism.
The building was closed in 1996 and left abandoned until 2009, when it was sold to Waldorf Astoria and converted in a luxury hotel in 2011.
Today the hotel maintain the facade of the historical building. The interior has been obviously renovated to accomadate the hotel, but the Long Bar has been restored to its glorious past.
The bar has been reconstructed from original pictures, featuring leather coaches, dark wood walls contributing to an authentic, luxurious and opulent athmoshpere.
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| The Long Bar today |
The Long Bar is a must-see sight in Shanghai. Unless you are very wealthy you won't be able to have a full dinner in it, but try it for a cocktail of an afternoon tea. It will be definitely worth the money and time, and it will give you a glimpse of past. You will feel an adventurer, resting on a leather couch after discovering the Far East, with a whiskey in your hands and a feel of 1930s, when Shanghai was the capital of the Far East
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| The building today, at no. 2 on the Bund |
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