Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Non-Fiction 2017 | Page 7

Old Shanghai, China's Frontier City
Regents Primary School of Shenzhen, Ma, Alice – 8
About a century ago, in 1920’s, the so-called "The Oriental Paris" of old Shanghai, everything was
blustery and capricious.
O
ld Shanghai was a wild place, dangerous and full of intrigue, it was a frontier city. East met West,
North met South, the good and evil mixed together on the seedy streets of this "Paris of the East".
The city was full of pretty women and treacherous gangsters, and the pungent smell of opium was thick
in the air.
Shanghai is a frontier city of old and new now. You can walk along the Bund to visit traditional
Shanghai buildings and experience Old Shanghai. You can also spend half a day in Tianzifang to
experience real Old Shanghai lifestyle. May be to visit Zhujiajiao, a town with 1,700 years of history,
known as Shanghai's Venice.
The lifestyles of Old Shanghai are quite different from the New Shanghai lifestyles. Many people
consider Old Shanghai as a certain kind of lifestyle, thus the impression of Old Shanghai denotes words
like: clubs, nightlife, fashion and pretty girls in Cheongsam.
Old Shanghai was not just a place crowded with long alleys and opium dens. It was also full of
garishly-lit clubs, where the drinks flowed freely and the music played into the early morning. The most
famous of those late-night hangouts was the Paramount, or the Chinese Bai Le Men, literally "The Gate
of 100 Pleasures". If you want high-class debauchery, this is the place to go.
The Paramount was built in the last century where the International Settlement met the local quarter.
Designed in 1931, the Paramount was three storeys tall which included a kitchen, a banquet hall, a
ballroom and an elegant entry hall. Beautiful rosewood floors in the ballroom were supported by armored
plates taken from army trucks, it was said that the Paramount dance floor could hold over a thousand
people at once.
In its heyday, the crowd was full of local tycoons, socialites, politicians and also the house's famed
international hostesses--beautiful Russian, Japanese and Chinese dancing girls. The Paramount was a
meeting place of hugely contrasting cultures, but it was not always pretty, the seedy underbelly of
Shanghai was never too far away.
After liberation, the ballroom of excess--the most famous of all of Shanghai--saw a series of
changes, closing down, becoming a movie theatre, and then a nightclub again, and finally a disco. Of all
the dance halls in Shanghai, the Paramount is the only one that is still standing today.
We may consider the Old Shanghai people as those who can speak the Shanghai dialect. There are
still many Old Shanghai Buildings in Shanghai nowadays.
Shanghai is a paradise for architecture lovers. In Shanghai, you might have the experience like this:
walking along the lovely lanes of old Shanghai streets and appreciate its traditional Shanghai buildings,
while turning around and surprised by a modern fancy building in front of you.