Astor House, Shanghai

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The Astor House Hotel (礼查饭店), (known as the Pujiang Hotel (浦江饭店) in Chinese since 1959), which has been described perhaps hyperbolically as "once the most luxurious hotel in the world",^[1] was the first Western hotel established in China.^[2] Established in 1846 as Richards' Hotel and Restaurant (礼查饭店) on The Bund in Shanghai, it has been in its present location at 15 Huangpu Lu, Shanghai, near the confluence of the Huangpu River and the Suzhou Creek in the Hongkou District, near the northern end of the Waibaidu (Garden) Bridge, since 1857.^[3][4]

Contents 1 Location 2 History 2.1 Richards' Hotel and Restaurant (1846-1860) 2.1.1 Peter Felix Richards (1846-1856) 2.1.2 Vacher and Wills (1856-1860) 2.1.2.1 Relocation (1857) 2.2 The Astor House Hotel (1859-1959) 2.2.1 Henry Smith (1859) 2.2.2 DeWitt Clinton Jansen (1860-1894) 2.2.3 Jacob Rosenfeld (ca.1895-ca.1900) 2.2.4 The Astor House Hotel Company (1900-1915) 2.2.4.1 Renovation (1907-1911) 2.2.4.2 Re-opening (1911) 2.2.5 Central Stores Ltd. (1915-1917) and The Shanghai Hotels Limited (1917-1923) 2.2.5.1 Edward Isaac Ezra and the Kadoorie Family 2.2.6 Hong Kong Shanghai Hotels, Limited (1923-1954) 2.2.6.1 James Harper Taggart 2.2.6.2 Renovations (1923) 2.2.6.3 Chinese Civil War (1927) 2.2.6.4 Decline in prestige (1929-1932) 2.2.6.5 28 January Incident (1932) 2.2.6.6 27 February 1932 arrest at the Astor House 2.2.6.7 Highlights (1932-1937) 2.2.6.8 Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) 2.2.6.9 Post-War Era (1945-1949) 2.2.7 Government control (1954-1959) 2.3 Pujiang Hotel (1959-2002) 2.3.1 Shanghai Hengshan Mountain Group (1988 to today) 2.3.1.1 Nadir (1988-2002) 2.3.1.2 Shanghai Stock Exchange (1990-1998) 2.4 Astor House Hotel (2002 to today) 2.4.1 Renovations 2.4.2 Future plans 3 Notable guests 3.1 1860-1894 3.2 1895-1915 3.3 1915-1929 3.4 1930-1939 3.5 Unconfirmed guests 4 Notable residents 5 References in popular culture 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Location

The Astor House Hotel has been located on the North Bund of Shanghai, near the northern end of the Waibaidu Bridge (Chinese: 外白渡; pinyin: Wàibáidù Qiáo) (the Garden Bridge in English),^[5][6][7] since its relocation from the southern end of The Bund near Jinling East Road,^[8] in 1857. Today the Astor House Hotel is located on a 4,580 square metre site and has a total building area of 16,563 square metres with 134 rooms and suites.^[9] It is near the confluence of the Huangpu River and the Suzhou Creek, near "the point where the Soochow Creek poured its silt into the river's clouded yellow waters."^[10] It is sited at the intersection of Huangpu, Daming (formerly Broadway), Changzhi, Bei Suzhou, and Zhongshan dong yi roads.^[11] Its mailing address is 15 Huangpu Road.^[12] For many years, the Hotel was the best known landmark in the Hongkou District and the centre of foreign social life before the opening of the Cathay Hotel.^[13] The Hotel occupies an entire block, and is across the road from the Russian Consulate, and previously the embassies of Germany, the United States and Japan.^[14] The Hotel is located near Huangpu Park (simplified Chinese: 黄浦公园; traditional Chinese: 黃浦公園; pinyin: Huángpǔ Gōngyuán), which opened in 1886 as Public Garden; across the road from the Broadway Mansions since its construction in 1935; the Hongkou market, "Shanghai's biggest market, where farmers brought their fowl and produce to sell every day";^[15] and Little Tokyo, the Japanese part of Shanghai.^[16]

[edit] History

The story of the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai provides a revealing insight into the history of China itself. According to Rob Gifford, "The Astor House Hotel has witnessed the whole sweep of China's emergence into the modern world, from English opium running in the 1840s through the tea dances of polite society in the 1920s and to the excesses of Maoist China in the 1960s." ^[17]

[edit] Richards' Hotel and Restaurant (1846-1860)

[edit] Peter Felix Richards (1846-1856)

In 1846, four years after the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing which declared Shanghai an open treaty port, and established the British concession in Shanghai, an American sea captain,^[18] Peter Felix Richards and his wife, Rebecca,^[19][20][21] opened the first western hotel in China, on the river front^[22] in the Huangpu District of Shanghai,^[23] on The Bund near Jinling Road East,^[24] facing the Huangpu River.^[25] The hotel was "a single and ordinary building",^[26] in the Baroque style.^[27] Named after its founder, Richards' Hotel and Restaurant (礼查饭店) initially targeted the seafaring clientele that made up the bulk of travelers to 19th century Shanghai. One contemporary account describes corridors and floors whose color and design echoed those on ships. ^[28] Almost a century later, John B. Powell recounted the origins of the Hotel: "The Astor House Hotel ... had grown from a boarding house established originally by the skipper of some early American clipper, who left his ship at Shanghai.^[29] A string of sea captains followed the original as managers of the hotel.^[30] The very first public meeting of the newly established British Settlement was in the newly opened Richards' Hotel on 22 December 1846.^[31]

[edit] Vacher and Wills (1856-1860)

On 16 April 1855 Richards purchased a ship, the Margaret Mitchell, which had run aground off Woosung and required extensive repairs to make it seaworthy.^[32] However, on 15 May 1856 Richards was declared insolvent by decree of the British Consular Court in Shanghai, and all of his assets (including the Margaret Mitchell and the Astor House Hotel) were assigned to his creditors, including Britons William Herbert Vacher and Charles Wills.^[33][34] By March 1862, Richards was described as "an enterprising speculator" and was still in China.^[35]

William Herbert Vacher (born ca.1826 in London; died December 1899 in Hastings, England),^[36] a leading freemason,^[37] was a member of the Shanghai Municipal Council from 1855-1856,^[38] and represented Gilman and Bowman, a British hong established as a tea trader in 1840,^[39] and was by 1859 chairman of the influential Shanghai British Chamber of Commerce.^[40] Vacher retired as a partner in Gilman & Bowman in 1865, and returned to England, where he became the first manager of the London office of the newly established The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation later that year.^[41] In 1873 Vacher was forced to resign when it was discovered that he "had made disastrous speculations in South American railways, and had lost both on his own and the bank's account" £81,000.^[42]

Charles Wills, a British trader and freemason,^[43] was a representative of Jardine, Matheson & Co.. In 1856 Wills built a wooden bridge crossing Suzhou creek,^[44][45] to link the British Settlement in the south and the American Settlement in the north.

[edit] Relocation (1857)

Probably 'because of an unbeatable combination of lower priced land and convenient access"^[46] created by the construction of the Wills Bridge, a vacant lot was acquired at the current location in the Hongkou District in the unofficial American concession, and the Richards Hotel was re-located there during 1857.^[47] . The property was slightly larger than 22 mu (about 3.6 acres),^[48] and the new Hotel was a two-story East India style building.

On 24 September 1857 the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society,^[49] which in 1858 became the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, met at the Hotel from its earliest years until it relocated to its own premises on Huqiu Lu (formerly Museum Road) in 1871.^{[50][51][52][53]}

[edit] The Astor House Hotel (1859-1959)

[edit] Henry Smith (1859)

In 1859 the Richards' Hotel and Restaurant was sold to Englishman Henry Smith, who changed the name to the Astor House Hotel.^[54][55] According to John B. Powell, "He christened his establishment in honor of the then most famous hotel in the United States, the Astor House in New York; however, he was compelled to add the designation "hotel," as the fame of the New York hostelry had not yet reached the China coast. Aside from the name, the two establishments had little in common."^[56] According to actress Grace Hawthorne, who stayed at the Astor House in 1894, the year of long-time owner, DeWitt Clinton Jansen's death:

The man who named it, some thirty years ago or so, had been to New-York and found in the Astor House a model of elegance and hotel excellence. He returned to Shanghai, and forthwith named his hotel the Astor House.^[57]

[edit] DeWitt Clinton Jansen (1860-1894)

In 1860 DeWitt Clinton Jansen (born at Shawangunk, New York on 8 November 1840; died 6 November 1894 in Shanghai),^[58], a former American merchant sailor, and colporteur in China's interior, purchased the Astor House Hotel.^[59] Jansen was to own the Hotel and reside there with his wife, Ellen McGrath Jansen (died 1919),^[60] and their six children,^[61] until his death in 1894.^[62] Jansen was a polyglot, fluent in a number of Chinese dialects.^[63]

Under Jansen's ownership, there was increased foreign patronage due to his innovations such as a billiard room, and a public bar, and organising dances and plays to be held at the Hotel. Urban myth suggests that "in the nineteenth century, you could order opium from room service at the Astor House."^[64] However, despite being one of the better hotels in Shanghai, the lack of internal plumbing was known to cause death to some guests, including members of the Japanese ship Senzai maru who stayed at the Astor House Hotel for ten weeks in 1862: "Three crew members died, at least one from dysentery contracted as a result of inadvertently imbibing the filthy waters of the Wusong River in which everything they consumed had been washed.^[65] On 17 September 1862 "a fatal case of cholera occurred in the house", causing the illness of "the wife of the proprietor of the hotel ... [who] was seized with the same disease" and of the seventeen military officers of the 31st Regiment who were billeted at the Astor House Hotel, "nine of them were attacked with sickness, and three of the number invalided."^[66]

In 1867 the Astor House Hotel was the earliest in Shanghai to use coal gas to provide lighting. About that time the Astor House Hotel received a more favourable evaluation: "Several hotels or taverns exist in the different settlements, but the only establishment of high pretensions is the Astor House, situated in the Hong-kew Settlement, close by the bridge crossing the Soochow Creek. Good apartments and tolerable accommodation can be found here by strangers. Charges, about $3 per diem.^[67] Egerton Laird indicated in 1875: "I am stopping at the Astor House, which seems clean and comfortable."^[68] By now, the hotel was "four large neo-Renaissance brick buildings linked together by stone passageways."^[69] American travel writer Thomas Wallace Knox (1835-1896) recorded this description of the Astor House Hotel after his stay in 1879. He found it

a less imposing fare than the Astor House of New York, though it occupied more ground, and had an evident determination to spread itself. A large space of greensward was enclosed by a quadrangle of one-story buildings, which formed the hotel, and consequently it required a great deal of walking to get from one part of the house to the opposite side....Some rooms were entered from a veranda on the side of the court-yard....On the other side there was a balcony...As this balcony was well provided with chairs and lounges, it was a pleasant resort on a warm afternoon. The house was kept by an American, but all his staff of servants was Chinese.^[70]

Benjamin David Benjamin, a Sephardic Jew, and colleague of Elias David Sassoon, in his efforts to acculturate to the prevailing British society in Shanghai, frequently entertained his friends at the Astor House from 1879 to 1883, "running up bills of as much as $70-90 for the evening".^[71][72] In its desire to be the premier hotel in Shanghai, "the Astor House was eager to be the first in Shanghai with the latest mod cons."^[73] On 26 July 1882, when Shanghai lit its first fifteen electric street lamps, seven were installed in the Astor House Hotel, making it the first building in China to be lit by electricity. Also in 1882 the Astor House hosted the first Western circus in China. In 1883 the Hotel was the first building in Shanghai to install running water. At this time accommodation was $3 a day.^[74] By the end of 1887, the Astor House was described by Simon Adler Stern as "the principal American hotel in Shanghai"^[75] The Astor House Hotel was "a landmark of the white man in the Far East, like Raffles Hotel in Singapore."^[76] By 1890, "For foreigners the Astor House was the center of social activity....At the Astor House bar tradespeople gathered every morning for an eleven-o'clock drink. It was at the Astor House that the important foreign balls were always held, in the banquet hall, but the Chinese at that time did not join in these revels.^[77] By 1892 Frederick J. Buenzle, an American sailor, rescued from assault by Jansen, became the night manager at the Ascot House for two years until "the sudden and untimely death" of Jansen.^[78][79] Mr U. Videau also assisted in managing the hotel by 1894.^[80]

On 6 November 1894, during an installation meeting of the Masonic lodge, where he was the first District Deputy Grand Master,^[81] Jansen "suddenly fell back in his chair, gave one or two gasps for breath" and died.^[82][83] At the time of Jansen's death, the Astor House was described as a "first class hotel in all these words imply" and was listed in Moses King's "Where to Stop.": A Guide to the Best Hotels of the World.^[84]

[edit] Jacob Rosenfeld (ca.1895-ca.1900)

There are claims that Jacob Rosenfeld,^[85] a Jew of Russian ancestry, whose family exported cotton from Kaifeng, Henan province, and were prominent textile manufacturers in the Polish city of Łódź, then part of the Russian empire, and Berdychiv, then the second largest Jewish community in the Russian Empire, owned the Astor House Hotel, before migrating to the Russian Hill area of San Francisco, California in 1900.^[86]

By 1897 the Hotel was managed by Lewis M. Johnson (born Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada), who was responsible for booking the first motion picture to be shown in Shanghai (and probably in China) on 22 May 1897, in Astor Hall in the Astor House Hotel. The Animatoscope, then considered "Edison's greatest invention",^[87] was presented by Harry Welby Cook, and accompanied by pianist Albert Linton.^[88] On 5 November 1897, China's first prom was hosted at the Astor House, which celebrated the 60th birthday of Cixi, the Emperor Dowager, thus "ending the social stricture that women should not attend social events";^[89] In 1899, Cyrus Foss described the Astor House as "the best hotel in Shanghai, and quite good. All the servants are sleek, neatly dressed Chinamen."^[90]

[edit] The Astor House Hotel Company (1900-1915)

According to a US government report concerning commercial opportunities in China, "The Astor House Hotel in Shanghai started as an American owned and operated concern. Subsequently it became a shareholders' company",^[91] the Astor House Hotel Company. In 1901 the first telephones were installed in Shanghai, with the Astor House having the first telephone used. In the first Yellow Pages telephone directory published in Shanghai, its number was "200". By 1904 Mr A. Haller was the manager.^[92]

[edit] Renovation (1907-1911)

The 1904 announcement of the rebuilding of the Central Hotel (reopened in 1909 as the Palace Hotel) as a luxury hotel on the Bund, ^[93] and the demolition of the nearby Garden Bridge, and construction of the current Waibaidu Bridge in 1907, which involved the resumption of part of the Astor House Hotel's property, forced the owners of the Astor House Hotel to begin extensive renovations in 1907.^[94] At that time, the Hotel was described as "the leading hotel of Shanghai...., but has an unpretentious appearance, and is about to be reconstructed."^[95] By this time, Captain John Davies had become manager of the Astor House and "a more genial and hospitable gentleman never carried out the duties of that position."^[96] Room rates were between $7 and $10 per day (Mexican).^[97] The hotel employed 254 people, with each hotel department "under special European supervision".^[98] Prior to the reconstruction and renovations, the Astor House was described in glowing terms:

Leading straight from the entrance to the main residential portion of the house is a long glass arcade. Upon one side of this are the offices, where the clerks and commissioners will attend promptly and courteously to every want; upon the other is a luxuriously furnished lounge, and, adjoining this, the reading, smoking, and drawing rooms. The dining room has accommodations for five hundred persons. It is lighted with hundreds of small electric lamps, whose rays are reflected by the large mirrors arranged around the walls, and when dinner is in progress, and the band is playing in the gallery,the scene is both bright and animated. There are some two hundred bedrooms, each with a bathroom adjoining, all of which look outward, facing either the city or the Whangpoo River. Easy access is gained to the various floors upon which they are situated by electric elevators. The hotel...generates its own electricity and has its own refrigerating plant."^[99]

Architects and civil engineers Davies & Thomas (established in 1896 by Gilbert Davies and C.W, Thomas), were responsible for the re-building of the three principal wings of the Astor House Hotel.^{[100][101][102]} The Astor House Hotel was restored to a neo-classical Baroque structure,^[103] making it once again "the finest hotel in the Far East".^[104] Construction commenced in 1907. The new addition (the Annex) was based on plans drawn by "Shanghai’s leading architects of the time",^[105] British architects and civil engineers, Brenan Atkinson and Arthur Dallas (born 9 January 1860 in Shanghai; died 6 August 1924 in London), established as Atkinson & Dallas in 1898.^{[106][107][108][109]} After the death of principal architect Brenan Atkinson in 1907,^[110] he was replaced by his brother, G.B. Atkinson.^[111] The intention was to rebuild the hotel "on modern lines". Included in the plans were: "the dining room, facing the Soochow Creek, is to be extended along the whole front of the building. Winter gardens are being constructed, the writing and smoking rooms, and the private bar and billiard room will be enlarged and the kitchen placed upon the roof."^[112]

During the renovation period, future US President William Howard Taft, then US Secretary of War, and his wife, Helen Herron Taft,^[113] were honoured at a banquet organised by the American Association of China in the large dining room at the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai on 8 October 1907, with over 280 in attendance, at that time "the largest affair of the kind ever given in China."^[114] During the dinner, Taft made a significant speech on the relationship between the United States and China, and supporting the Open Door foreign policy previously advocated by John Hay.^[115][116] Organized Sunday School work in China was born at Shanghai on 4 May 1907. "This beginning of Sunday-school history in China took place in Room 128 of the Astor House, Shanghai, occupied at that time by Mr. [Frank A.] Smith."^[117] The opening of a tram line in March 1908 over the new Garden bridge along Broadway (now Daming Lu) past the Astor House Hotel by the Shanghai British Trolley Company,^[118] greatly increased both access and business.^[119] Also in this period, the first western movies shown in China were shown at the Astor House Hotel.^[120] On 9 June 1908, a motion picture with some sound was first shown in China in the open air in the hotel's garden. By May 1908 the manager was Mr. W. Brauen.^[121]

[edit] Re-opening (1911)

The restoration was completed in December 1910.^[122] Advertising itself as the ‘Waldorf Astoria of the Orient’, its new 211-room building, with a 500-seat dining room, opened in January 1911.^[123] Another advertisement described the Astor House Hotel in even more glowing terms:

"Largest, Best and Most Modern Hotel in the Far East. Main Dining Room Seats 500 Guests, and is Electrically Cooled. Two hundred Bedrooms with Hot and Cold Baths Attached to Each Room. Cuisine Unexcelled; Service and Attention Perfect; Lounge, Smoking and Reading Rooms; Barber and Photographer on the Premises. Rates from $6; Special Monthly Terms."^[124]

According to Shanghai historian Tess Johnston, at the time of its re-opening in January 1911, the refurbished Astor House Hotel was described as follows:

The grand staircase, with marble dado and red panels on white background, leads upward to passenger lifts [elevators], a ladies cloak room, a very prettily furnished ladies' sitting room, a reading room with several comfortable sofas and easy chairs upholstered in leather, a private buffet with a polished teakwood bar, and a large billiard room. Farther up the grand staircase is the main dining hall, almost the whole length of the building with a gallery and verandah on the second floor and well lighted by a barreled ceiling of glass. On the Astor Road side is a handsome banqueting hall and reception rooms, both decorated in ivory and gold, and six private dining rooms. There were six service elevators, bedrooms with private sitting rooms, and luxury suites under the dome. An advertisement in Social Shanghai in 1910 bragged, "The Astor House Hotel is the most central, popular and modern hotel in Shanghai.^[125]

Additionally, the Hotel now had a 24 hour hot water supply, some of the earliest elevators in China, and each of the 250 guest rooms had its own telephone, as well as an attached bath. It also had "the most commodious ballroom in Shanghai, [was] renowned for its lobby, special dinner-parties, and balls."^[126] In 1911 John H. Russell, Jr. told his daughter, the future Brooke Astor, that the Hotel offered "the finest service in the world", and that in response to her question about "a man dressed in a white skirt and blue jacket beside every second door", was told by Russell: "They are the 'boys.' ... When you want your breakfast or your tea, just open the door and tell them."^[127]

On 3 November 1911, during the Xinhai Revolution that would lead to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in February 1912, an armed rebellion began in Shanghai, which resulted in the capture of the city on 8 November 1911, and the establishment of the Shanghai Military Government of the Republic of China, which was formally declared on 1 January 1912. Business as usual proceeded for the Astor House Hotel, where rooms were available from $6 to $10 per night.^[128]. On 11 December 1913 the Astor House Hotel hosted a banquet for both the New York Giants of John McGraw and Chicago White Stockings of Charles Comiskey baseball teams, which included Christy Mathewson and Jim Thorpe, who were touring the world playing exhibition games.^[129] This transnational tour was led by Albert Goodwill Spalding, owner of the White Stockings, "professional baseball's most influential figure."^[130] At that time

No hotel in Shanghai, and few in the world, surpassed the Astor House Hotel. A handsome and impressive stone edifice of arched windows and balconies, the hotel stood six stories high and sprawled over three acres of land near the heart of the city.^[131]

On 29 December 1913 the first sound film in China was shown at the Hotel. Around the end of World War I, the Sixty Club, a group of sixty men-around-town (a mixture of actors and socialites), and their dates would meet at the Astor House each Saturday night.^[132] While praise for the renovations was almost universal, they strained severely the Hotel's finances. According to Peter Hibbard, "[D]espite their architectural bravura and decorative grandeur, the formative years of both the Palace and Astor House Hotels were overshadowed by an inability to cater for the fast changing tastes of Shanghai society and her visitors".^[133]

[edit] Central Stores Ltd. (1915-1917) and The Shanghai Hotels Limited (1917-1923)

[edit] Edward Isaac Ezra and the Kadoorie Family

In 1915 the Hotel was bought by Central Stores Ltd. (renamed The Shanghai Hotels Limited in 1917), which was owned primarily by Edward Isaac Ezra (1883-1921),^[134] the largest stockholder^[135] and the managing director of Shanghai Hotels Ltd., and its major financier,^[136] who had made his fortune through the importation of opium and real estate investments. The Kadoorie family, Iraqi Sephardic Jews from India,^[137] who also owned the Palace Hotel at number 19 The Bund, on the corner with Nanjing Road, had a minority share holding in the Astor House Hotel. American journalist John B. Powell, who first arrived in Shanghai in 1917 to work for Thomas Franklin Fairfax Millard, the founder of what later became The China Weekly Review, described his new accommodation at the Astor House Hotel:

the Astor House in Shanghai consisted of old three- and four-story brick residences extending around the four sides of a city block and linked together by long corridors. In the center of the compound was a courtyard where an orchestra played in the evenings. Practically everyone dressed for dinner, which never was served before eight o'clock.^[138]

According to Powell, "Since most of the managers of the Astor House had been sea captains, the hotel had taken on many of the characteristics of a ship."^[139] By 1917 the Hotel was managed by Captain Henry "Harry" E. Morton (died 2 October 1923, aged 53 in Manila)^[140] of the Royal Navy,^[141][142] "a retired ship captain who ran it as a ship, the hotel had corridors painted with portholes and trompe l'oeil seascapes and rooms decorated like cabins; there was even a "steerage" section with bunks instead of beds at cheaper rates."^[143] While at that time the Hotel charged about $10 a day Mexican for accommodation,^[144] "a room in the "steerage" ... [cost] $125 a month, including meals and afternoon tea. That figured out at about $60 in United States currency."^[145] According to Powell,

the "steerage" section ... consisted of single rooms and small suites at the back of the hotel. The section resembled an American club, because practically all of the rooms and suites were occupied by young Americans who had come out to join the consulate, commercial attaché's office, or business firms whose activities were undergoing rapid expansion. Sanitary arrangements left much to be desired. There was no modern plumbing. The bathtub consisted of a large earthenware pot about four feet high and four feet in diameter....The Chinese servant assigned to me would carry in a seemingly endless number of buckets of hot water to fill the tub in the morning.^[146]

Shanghai was considered the "Paradise of Adventurers", and the "ornate but old-fashioned lobby" of the Astor House was considered its hub.^[147] The lobby was furnished with the heavy mahogany chairs and coffee tables.^[148] By 1918 the lobby of the Astor House, "that amusing whispering gallery of Shanghai",^[149] was "where most business is done" in Shanghai.^[150] After China signed the International Arms Embargo Agreement of 1919, "sinister-looking German, American, British, French, Italian, and Swiss arms dealers appeared in the lobby of the Astor House . . . to dangle fat catalogs of their wares before the eager eyes of any buyers."^[151][152] In 1920 the lobby "with its convivial atmosphere, presents to the visitor a welcome oasis, where congregate travelers from afar to chat pleasantly."^[153] Another recorded: "The effervescence at the Astor is more tangy than elsewhere. All the latest scandal of the town is an old story in its lobbies almost before it occurs."^[154] Powell added: "At one time or another one saw most of the leading residents of the port at dinner parties or in the lobby of the Astor House. An old resident of Shanghai once told me, "If you sit in the lobby of the Astor House and keep your eyes open you will see all of the crooks who hang out on the China coast."^[155] According to Ron Gluckman, "Opium was commonplace, says one woman who lived in Shanghai before World War II. 'It was just what you had, after dinner, like dessert.' Opium and heroin were available via room service at some of the old hotels like the Cathay and Astor, which offered drugs, girls, boys, whatever you wanted."^[156]

In 1919, Zhou Xiang (周祥),^[157] "an Astor House bellboy, rewarded for recovering a Russian guest's wallet with its contents, spent a third of it on a car. That car became Shanghai's first taxi, and spawned the Johnson fleet, now known as the Qiangsheng taxi",^[158] which is "now ranked number-two by the number of taxis in the city behind Dazhong. The Shanghai government took over Qiangsheng after the Communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949".^[159] By 1920 the Astor House Hotel was making a handsome profit under the leadership of Ezra. By 1920 Mr. W. Sharp-Bardarson was the manager.^[160]

[edit] Hong Kong Shanghai Hotels, Limited (1923-1954)

[edit] James Harper Taggart

The death of Edward Ezra in 1921, and Sir Ellis Kadoorie in 1922, resulted in James Harper Taggart, a "Lowland Scot of evidently very humble parentage",^[161] former manager of the Hong Kong Hotel, becoming managing director of Shanghai Hotels Ltd.,^[162] which merged in October 1923 with the Hong Kong Hotel Company, "Asia's oldest hotel company"^[163]to form The Hong Kong Shanghai Hotels, Limited (HSH).^[164] Taggart "played a leading role in revolutionising the modern hotel business in Shanghai by introducing novel concepts, such as dinner dances and European-style grill rooms."^[165] After the first radio broadcast in China on 26 January 1922, the Astor House Hotel was among the first to install a receiving set to hear the inaugural broadcast, locating it in the Grill room.^[166] Another innovation was The Yellow Lantern, an exotic and exclusive curio shop, located off the lobby shop, operated by Jack and Hetty Mason, where rare Oriental treasures, including embroideries.^[167][168] By the early 1920s, the Astor House Hotel had become "an international institution in fame and reputation."^[169] The Shanghai Rotary Club (Club 545), which was formed in July 1919, began meeting at 12.30pm each Thursday at the Astor House Hotel for tiffins in 1921, and again for five years from 1926.^[170] The Shanghai Stock Exchange was housed at the Astor House Hotel from 1920 until 1949.^[171] According to Peter Hibbard,

The “Roaring Twenties” saw Shanghai entering a period of frenetic growth, only tamed in the late 1930s, with the old fabric of the city being torn apart in a rapacious drive towards modernisation. The city was staking its claim as a great international city, with a modern skyline and manners to match. Apart from its rapidly growing foreign population with their ever-increasing demands for sophisticated entertainment, the number of foreign visitors began to boom in the early 1920s. The first of a long stream of round-the-world cruise-liners began to call on the city in 1921 and by the early 1930s, Shanghai was playing host to around 40,000 globetrotters each year.^[172]

The influx of White Russian refugees from Vladivostok after the fall of the Provisional Priamurye Government in Siberia in October 1922 at the close of the Russian Civil War, created a significant community of Shanghai Russians. Denied the benefits of extraterritoriality, and having few other resources, there was a proliferation of white slavery, brothels and street prostitution, and new nightspots on Bubbling Well Road and Avenue Edward VII^[173] also reduced patronage at the more sedate tea dances at the Astor House: "For foreigners, the better cabarets offered a welcome alternative to club life and the stuffy tea dances at the Astor House Hotel ... around which the foreign colony's social life had previously revolved."^[174]

[edit] Renovations (1923)

By the beginning of 1923, there were those who felt the Astor House Hotel needed improvement. Further, while "The Astor House on Whangpoo Road, with its palm garden and its French chef, was the largest and best place to stay," the opening of the Majestic Hotel in 1924 eclipsed the Astor House once again.^[175] One guest who attended a New Year's Eve event in 1922 indicated: "We hied to the Astor House, a place far removed in space and comfort from its namesake in New York city."^[176] The owners began remodelling the hotel again in 1923.^[177] By April 1924 the manager was Jacques Kiass.^[178] In 1924 the American aviators who made the first aerial circumnavigation of the world, indicated: "Upon entering the lobby, had it not been for the Chinese attendants, we should have thought ourselves in a hotel in New York, Paris, or London.^[179] According to Frederic E. Wakeman, "The tea dance was one of the first cultural events to bring the Chinese and Western elites of Shanghai together. High society initially met at the Astor."^[180] At one time Chinese visitors were not allowed into the lobby or the elevator. However, by now, "smartly dressed Chinese youngsters, Shanghai's jeunesse dorte, enjoyed the tea dance at the Astor House."^[181] These afternoon tea dances at the Majestic Hotel and the Astor House became "the first places where 'polite' foreign and Chinese society met. At both venues, more whiskey than tea was served. These 'teas' dragged on late into the evening, with drunken guests occasionally falling into the magnificent fountain that occupied the center of its clover-shaped Winter Garden ballroom."^[182] Elise McCormick indicated in 1928, "Tea dances at the Astor House formerly took place only once a week. Later the demand caused them to be introduced twice a week and soon they were taking place every day except Saturday and Sunday, with a dinner dance in the ballroom practically every night."^[183]

[edit] Chinese Civil War (1927)

On 21 March 1927, during a battle between the Kuomintang and the Communist forces during the Chinese Civil War, the Astor House Hotel was struck by bullets.^[184]

By November 1928 the manager was H.O. "Henry" Wasser.^[185][186] Another valuable employee was Mr Kammerling, a Russian Jew (born in Turkey) who became Reception Clerk: "With an amazing flair for languages and the opportunity to work with people of many cultures, Mr H. Kammerling eventually learned to converse fluently and faultlessly in German, English, French, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and one or two other languages, as well as his native Russian and Turkish."^[187]

[edit] Decline in prestige (1929-1932)

Despite the 1923 renovations, by 1930 the Astor House Hotel was no longer the pre-eminent hotel in Shanghai. While James Lafayette Hutchison, on his return to the Astor House after several years absence in the United States, noticed no changes ("I walked across the bridge and registered at the old Astor House Hotel, then went to my room to clean up. The same subdued, cavernous lobby with the same white-gowned boys leaning against the the tall pillars, the same mystic maze of halls leading to a sparsely furnished bedroom")^[188] the completion of the Cathay Hotel in 1929, "threw a painful shadow upon the old-fashioned Astor House."^[189] According to Gifford, "The center of social activity shifted in the 1930s from the Astor House around the corner to the Cathay. Its jazz was even more jumping, its rooms were even more Art Deco a-go-go."^[190] In 1912, when the American Consulate was constructed on Huangpu Road, and just after the re-opening of the Astor House after extensive renovations, the Hongkou area was considered "a most desirable location", however by 1932 the area had deteriorated, due in part to the proliferation of Japanese businesses and residents, with many Chinese refusing to cross into the Hongkou district. In April 1932 The China Weekly Review indicated that the Hotel "incidentally had slumped into a second rate establishment due to the construction of newer and more modern hotels south of the [Suzhou] creek."^[191] Further, Fortune magazine in describing the Cathay Hotel highlighted the problem for the Astor House: "Its air-conditioned ballrooms have emptied all the older ballrooms in town. And the comfort of its tower bedrooms has brought wrinkles to the foreheads of the managers of the old Astor House and the Palace Hotel.^[192] While the Astor House was less expensive than the Cathay Hotel, it also lacked air-conditioning.^[193] American historian William Reynolds Braisted recalling that on his return to Shanghai in 1932, after an absence of a decade:

The Palace Hotel and the Astor House were now far outclassed by three hotels built by a wealthy Baghdadi Jew, Sir Victor Sassoon: the magnificent Cathay Hotel on the Bund, the Metropole in midtown, and the Cathay Mansions across the road from the Cercle Français in the French Concession.^[194]

According to Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair, by 1931 the Shanghai Press Club used the Astor as their regular meeting place,^[195] and overseas Chinese frequently stayed there.^[196]

[edit] 28 January Incident (1932)

In response to the Mukden Incident, and the subsequent beating of five Japanese Buddhist monks in Shanghai by Chinese civilians on 18 January 1932, and despite offers of compensation by the Shanghai municipal government, Japanese forces attacked Shanghai in the January 28 Incident. A good deal of fighting took place near the Astor House Hotel.^[197] Reports to the United States Department of State indicated: "Chinese shells once more fell in neighborhood of wharf area of Hongkew. The shells were clearly heard passing between British Consulate and Astor House."^[198] On 30 January 1932, during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, a reporter for The New York Times, reported on the impact of the Shanghai Incident on the Astor House Hotel:

At 11:30 o'clock this morning the Japanese inexplicably began firing machine guns down Broadway past the Astor House Hotel....The streets were then filled with milling masses of frightened, homeless Chinese, some of them wearily sitting on bundles of household goods. Immediately there was the wildest panic. . . . Chinese women with their bound feet and with babies in their arms were attempting to run to safety as their faces streamed in tears.^[199]

On 30 January 1932 the Japanese "effected the seizure and military occupation of virtually all parts of the International Settlement eastward of and down the river from Soochow Creek, which area includes the postoffice, the Astor House Hotel, the buildings of the Japanese, German and Russian consulates and the city's main wharves and docks."^[200] The fighting and shelling in the vicinity of the Astor House Hotel "resulted in consternation among the guests",^[201] but the arrival of four American naval vessels on 1 February 1932 partially alleviated their concerns.^[202] On 25 February 1932, American Consul-General Cunningham ordered all Americans staying at the Astor House to evacuate due to fears of the artillery of the counter-attacking Chinese forces.^[203] However, despite "many Chinese shells" falling in the vicinity of the Astor House that night, the American guests refused initially to evacuate the Hotel,^[204] but by 30 April "many guests moved out of the Astor House hotel",^[205] along with most non-Japanese residents of the Hongkou district.

[edit] 27 February 1932 arrest at the Astor House

On 27 February 1932 Japanese sailors pursued Chinese Brigadier General Ken Wang (Wang Keng or Wang Kang), then a recent a West Point graduate,^[206], whom they believed to be a spy,^[207] into the lobby of the Astor House Hotel and arrested him,^[208] in violation of the international law that operated in the International Settlement,^[209] without explanation or apologies, and refused to turn him over to the police of the International Settlement.^[210][211] After a strike of Astor House employees,^[212] and a scare caused by a "convivial guest" throwing an empty bottle out of one of the Hotel's windows at midnight,^[213] eventually Wang was released but detained by the Nanjing government,^[214] which was forced to deny three weeks later that Wang had been executed for treason.^[215]

[edit] Highlights (1932-1937)

By 1934 "the Astor House Hotel's tea dances and classical concerts [were] popular...during the Winter season."^[216] In 1934 the Astor House's tariffs were, in Mexican dollars (approximately 1/3 of an American dollar): "single, $12; double, $20; suite- for two, $30."^[217] One of the more interesting frequent visitors to the Astor House Hotel was Mr. Mills, a gibbon, who accompanied American journalist Emily Hahn,^[218] the sometime paramour of Sir Victor Sassoon, from 1935 until her departure for Hong Kong in 1941.^[219] In 1936 American artist Bertha Boynton Lum (1869-1954) was enthusiastic in her description of the Astor House Hotel: "The rooms are huge, the ceilings unbelievably high, and the baths large enough to drown" in.^[220] American Charles H. Baker, Jr., in his 1939 travelogue The Gentleman's Companion, describes the drink that caused him to miss many steamships as "a certain cognac and absinthe concoction known as The Astor House Special, native to Shanghai".^[221] According to Baker, the ingredients for the Astor House Special are: "1 1/2oz cognac, 1tsp maraschino liqueur, 2tsp egg white, 3/4oz Pernod, 1/2tsp lemon juice, and club soda", however "the original recipe calls for Absinthe instead of Pernod."^[222]

[edit] Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)

The Hotel was damaged during the Battle of Shanghai when the Japanese invaded Shanghai in August 1937 at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War.^[223] After Japanese machine guns were set up outside the hotel, and Japanese troops searched the Astor House for an American photographer, Americans living there evacuated on 14 August, with one, Dr. Robert K. Reischauer, subsequently killed later that day in the lobby of the Cathay Hotel by a bomb dropped from a Chinese war plane.^[224] Subsequently Japanese troops seized the Astor House Hotel,^[225] but by 18 August, the Hotel management recaptured the Astor House.^[226] In the following days, some 18,000 to 20,000 Europeans, Americans and Japanese evacuated to Hong Kong, Manila, and Japan, ^[227] including Lawrence and Horace Kadoorie, who fled to Hong Kong.^[228] The Hotel was damaged again on 14 October 1937 by bombs from planes of the Chinese government and shells from Japanese naval guns.^[229] On 4 November 1937 a Chinese torpedo boat launched a torpedo in an attempt to sink the Japanese cruiser Izumo,^[230][231] then "lying moored to the Nippon Yusen Kaisha wharf close to the Japanese Consulate General, just east of the mouth of Soochow Creek",^[232] near to the Garden Bridge,^[233] exploded outside the Astor House breaking several windows.^[234][235] American foreign correspondent Irène Corbally Kuhn,^[236] one of the writers of the 1932 film, The Mask of Fu Manchu, and then a reporter for The China Press,^[237] described the hotel as "the most famous inn on the China coast, redundantly identified as the Astor House Hotel,"^[238] and also the damage inflicted upon it during the 1937 Japanese invasion: "from the street the boards were up over the shop fronts."^[239] On 23 November 1937, it was reported that "The Japanese at present have the Astor House Hotel filled with socalled Chinese traitors".^[240]

The vacuum created when the British owners of the Astor House Hotel fled to Hong Kong in September 1937 allowed the Japanese occupation forces to assume control of the hotel until the surrender of the Empire of Japan on 14 September 1945 on the USS President Harrison.^[241] The Astor House Hotel was occupied by the Japanese YMCA, until 1941.^[242] The Japanese subsequently leased the hotel for a three-year term to another party, with "a reasonable return" remitted to the absent owners.^[243] On 6 November 1938 four hundred members of the White Russian diaspora in Shanghai met at the Astor House Hotel (across the road from the Soviet embassy) to discuss forming an ant-communist alliance with the Axis Powers: Japan, Italy and Germany against Soviet Russia.^[244] In July 1940 Time magazine reported that, in response to the unapproved anti-Japanese thrice daily broadcasts on radio station XMHA (600 kilocycles on the AM band) of "burly, tousled, tough-tongued, 39-year-old"^[245] veteran American journalist Carroll Duard Alcott (1901-1965),^[246][247] "The embittered Japanese began operating a maverick transmitter from Shanghai's Astor House Hotel, which set up a terrible clatter whenever Alcott began to broadcast. Alcott told about it. The Japanese denied it. Alcott told the number of the hotel room where it was housed. Finally the Japanese turned their transmitter over to some Shanghai Nazis.^[248] The jamming continued by the Japanese from the top floor of the Astor House.^[249] Alcott, who had worn a bullet-proof vest, had two bodyguards, and carried a .45 automatic after threats to him by Japanese authorities, was ordered to leave China by the Japanese-sponsored government of Wang Ching-wei in July 1940,^[250] refused to quit his broadcasts, but eventually departed Shanghai on 14 September 1941 on board the President Harrison,^[251] after four years of broadcasts.^[252]

During the Japanese occupation the Astor House was also used to house prominent British (and later American) nationals captured by the Japanese.^[253][254], Later the Astor House Hotel was used as the Japanese General headquarters,^[255], before being leased as a hotel for the duration of the war.

[edit] Post-War Era (1945-1949)

During World War II and the Japanese occupation, "the Astor House fell into decline, and its elegance was soon no more than an almost unimaginable memory."^[256] In September 1945, the owners, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd (HKSH), leased the hotel to the US Army.^[257][258] According to Horst Eisfelder, a German Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, lunch at the Astor House during the American army occupancy was a real treat: "For only US 5¢ we had freshly prepared pancakes and a bottle of icy cold Coca Cola, which also cost five cents".^[259]

By 1946 White Russian refugee Len Tarasov had become manager of the Astor House Hotel, but was fired when a Chinese businessman leased the Hotel^[260] from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd (HKSH) in 1947. The Chinese management subdivided the first floor to create 23 rooms, and rebuilt the shops on street level, opened a cafe, and re—opened the bar. On 27 May 1949, the People's Liberation Army marched into Shanghai, and on 1 October 1949 the People's Republic of China was proclaimed, forcing Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to flee. According to some accounts, Chiang had his last dinner on the Chinese mainland at the Astor House on 10 December 1949, before flying into exile on the island of Taiwan.^[261] By 1950 the agreement between the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd and the Chinese company expired. While the HKSH wanted to resume management of the hotel, the Chinese company was reluctant to relinquish control. Diplomatic tensions between the new Chinese government and the United Kingdom further complicated the dispute.

[edit] Government control (1954-1959)

On 19 April 1954 the Hotel was confiscated^[262] and control of the hotel passed to the Land and House Bureau of the Shanghai people's government. On 25 June 1958 the hotel was incorporated into the Shanghai Institution Business Administrative bureau.

[edit] Pujiang Hotel (1959-2002)

On 27 May 1959, the name was changed from the Astor House Hotel to the Pujiang Hotel (浦江饭店),^[263] and the hotel was permitted to receive both foreigners and overseas Chinese guests. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Hotel declined substantially, with the dining room on the top floor being changed beyond all recognition. One 1983 guide described the Hotel as "slightly run-down",^[264] while a 1986 guide warned: "Despite its exceptional location near the Bund, ... the Pujiang is recommended only to travelers well prepared for 'roughing it'".^[265]

[edit] Shanghai Hengshan Mountain Group (1988 to today)

In 1988 the Pujiang Hotel was incorporated into the Shanghai Hengshan Mountain Group (上海衡山集).^[266]

[edit] Nadir (1988-2002)

At that time, one assessment indicated: "Today the Pujiang is run down and can get cold and clammy in winter - otherwise its nice."^[267] At the end of 1989, the Pujiang was "Shanghai's official backpackers' hangout," with at least eight dormitories accommodating twenty people in each.^[268] Accommodation in "the cheap if austere dormitory rooms",^[269] was inexpensive. In 1989, a bed in the dormitories was 17 renminbi, including breakfast,^[270] while four years later it had only increased to 20 renminbi per night, while a private room was 80.^[271] At the end of 1992, the then Pujiang Hotel was described negatively: "Until recently, the Pujiang Hotel on Shanghai's waterfront was distinguished only by its sooty exterior, grimy windows and gloomy interior decor of dark wood paneling and peeling plaster. During the 1920s, when the building was known as the Astor House, it had been one of the most deluxe hotels in China. But when the People's Liberation Army marched into Shanghai in 1949, the fortunes of the Astor House fell into a spiral of decline, and its liveried doormen, elegantly appointed rooms and French restaurant with palm garden were soon no more than a distant and almost unimaginable memory."^[272]

By 1998, "its 80 rooms cost $40 to $60" per night.^[273] Prior to its restoration, the Pujiang Hotel seemed to have reached its nadir, being described as "an inexpensive, somewhat grotty backpackers' favorite"^[274] and "a dive for young budget travelers. Only the ballroom still shows signs of life."^[275] A 1999 foreign guest elaborates: One guest described vividly the conditions before the much-needed renovation: "My room turned out to be located on a floor way up in the Gods that must have been the former servants' quarters. The lift and grand staircase ended at the fifth floor below it and from there you ascended a set of dark, steep stairs to the attic. I imagined the ghosts of weary maid-servants trudging up these stairs late at night....The polished wooden boards creaked and shook when anyone walked, or thundered, down the passage past my door....One drawback to living in the attic was that the bathroom I had to use was three flights of stairs down on the third floor. The bathroom, in an annexe off the side of the building, was a dingy old square room covered all over in white tiles and with drainage holes in the floor that made it look like a gas chamber. The floor sloped away a good four inches as though the annexe was sliding down the outer wall. It felt as though I was still on the ship. Ancient pipes ran down the walls to two antique taps that spouted a solid jet of water which, without the refinement of a shower rose, pelted you from an overhead pipe.^[276] A local reporter indicated: "Situated in an inconspicuous corner near the Bund, the Pujiang Hotel, formerly the Astor House Hotel, seems to have lost its bygone glory. The low-rise building has been eroded to be dated in colour, which was submerged among the eminent architecture of the Bund. Few members of the city's younger generation are even aware that the hotel exists, let alone that it is considered the father of the city's luxury hotels.^[277] Even after some initial renovation in 2002, it was apparent to a British reporter in 2004 that the Astor House required additional changes: "Now, a bit down on its luck, it had to make do with me and other budget travellers. Inside the atmosphere of faded decadence persisted. The "hairdressers" at the end of the corridor seemed a bit too keen to promote their "special room massage". The request for a haircut left them totally baffled, which could have explained Einstein's crazy hairdo in the portrait in the lobby."^[278]

[edit] Shanghai Stock Exchange (1990-1998)

After being closed on 10 June 1949, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHGSE), once the largest stock exchange in Asia,^[279] re-opened on 19 December 1990, and was housed "temporarily" (until its relocation to Pudong in 1998)^[280] in the former ballroom of the Astor House Hotel^{[281][282][283][284]} in the west wing of the hotel, while "the east wing of the building still functioned as a state-run hotel."^[285] The main aim of the Exchange was "to sell state securities, but a few other stocks (already being traded less formally) were also were also listed. The "transaction hall" was equipped with modern computers, several dozen small rooms for bargaining, and electronic transmission of prices "to 47 transaction centers around the city." Initially only eight stocks and 22 bonds were listed.^[286]

[edit] Astor House Hotel (2002 to today)

[edit] Renovations

In 1995 the Hengshan Group was considering the demolition of the Hotel, until its president Wu Huaixiang (吴怀祥) discovered its historical significance, and convinced the Group to retain the building and gradually restore it to its former glory. In 2002 the first phase of renovation was completed, and cost about 7 million renminbi to refurbish the 35 VIP rooms.^[287] About this time the Hotel was again renamed the Astor House Hotel in English, while continuing to be the Pujiang Hotel (浦江饭店) in the Chinese language.^[288]

In November 2003 Wu Huaixiang, president of the state-owned Hengshan Group, indicated the Hengshan Group was looking for an overseas investor to pay part of the 100 million yuan (HK$92.9 million) needed to "renovate and manage the property and turn it into the Raffles of Shanghai."^[289] Wu indicated: "Our aim is to turn it into a classic five-star hotel, like the Raffles in Singapore. We want the investor to pay a leasing fee and provide some of the money for renovation. That we can negotiate." The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Group, who had owned the Astor House until its confiscation in 1952, was disinterested in buying back Astor House. According to Mark O'Neill, in 1995 the Hotel faced destruction, as "Much of the furniture and interior decoration was destroyed or stolen during the Cultural Revolution, while insects had eaten a large part of the wood. Some parties have proposed demolishing it and putting a modern, five-star hotel on the site. Hengshan established a committee of scholars and experts which concluded that the hotel should be saved."^[290] Wu explained the reasoning behind renovation rather than demolition: "If the hotel is demolished during my watch, I would be judged as a criminal in history. We could build a modern hotel anywhere but the Astor House is only in one place."^[291]

Jasper Becker reported in 2004, soon after the most recent renovation: "The oak-panelled walls and Ionic marble columns of the Astor Hotel's reception hall lend it a grandeur that war and revolution have not altered since Bertrand Russell and Bernard Shaw succumbed to Shanghai's splendid decadence.^[292] In May 2006 the Hotel was described: "From the outside, the hotel looks like Harrods; inside is a marble-floored reception dimly lit by a huge chandelier. The air of faded grandeur is enhanced by the fact that previous guests have included Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. Those boys may or may not have received friendlier service than we did, but the room size and decor more than made up for it."^[293] Frommer's travel guide described the refurbished Astor House Hotel: "The brick-enclosed inner courtyard on the third floor now leads to rooms that have been refurbished and stripped down to accentuate the building's original highlights (high ceilings, carved moldings, and wooden floors). Beds are firm and comfortable, bathrooms large and clean, and there are even little flourishes like old-fashioned dial telephones.^[294] In 2006 the Morning Shanghai restaurant opened at the Astor House: "On entering the building there is the vaulting red-brick ceiling, a European-style dome and impressive chandelier. The pillars in the lobby are replicas of the originals, and the antiques by the stairs recall times long past. Morning Shanghai's attention to the authenticity of its dishes and the general ambiance makes it suitable for those more advanced in years to enjoy the dining experience and reminisce."^[295]

According to Tourism Review magazine: "In recent years through intensive restoration the hotel got a completely new look. Today, it is a unique combination of old Victorian-style design and modern facilities. It contains 116 various types of rooms, including deluxe, standard, and executive and some 4-bed rooms. Each room is well decorated while some of them in which celebrities once stayed, are taken as historic spots with photos hanging on the wall to show guests.^[296] Today there is "an eccentric style to the place. And how can you not love a hotel that makes its male staff dress in spats, kilts and black tailcoats?...With its thick lacquered walls, high ceilings, wooden floorboards and winding corridors, it has a feel that's somewhere between a Victorian asylum and an English boarding school".^[297]

[edit] Future plans

As part of the extensive renovations in the vicinity of the Astor House Hotel in preparation for the 2010 World Expo to be held in Shanghai from May 2010, The China Economic Review predicted in February 2008: "Thirty of the buildings have protected status, while the renovation of the [Waibaidu] bridge will turn attention to the Astor House Hotel and Shanghai Mansions, Art Deco haunts of the city's pre-war glitterati....The Astor House Hotel is one of the city's neglected treasures and a fair bet will be that it will be restored to it former glory and, sadly, the prices will zoom up to reflect this. A price worth paying for the Astor is part of the history of Shanghai."^[298]

[edit] Notable guests

Famous people who have stayed at the Astor House Hotel over the years have included:

[edit] 1860-1894

• Pioneering Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier stayed at the Astor House from June 1860 for several weeks;^[299]
• British military engineer Lt. Thomas Lyster (born 5 July 1840; died 17 August 1865), of the Royal Engineers,^[300] aide to Charles George Gordon (then commander of the Ever Victorious Army), stayed at the Astor House Hotel from 24 August 1862;^[301]
• Representatives of the Embassy of Japan stayed at the Astor House in February 1864 while negotiating with other foreign powers in Shanghai regarding the practical implications of extra-territorialty;^[302]
• Prince Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the Duke of Edinburgh, and second son of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, chose to stay at the Astor House Hotel when he visited Shanghai in 1869;^[303]
• Scotsman John Francis Campbell (1821-1885), authority on Celtic folklore, publisher of Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and inventor of the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, was a guest at the Astor House in January 1875;^[304]
• Scottish American industrialist Andrew Carnegie stayed at the Astor House Hotel for almost a week from 5 December 1878;^[305][306]
• American adventurer Thomas Wallace Knox (1835-1896), "one of the preeminent travel writers in the second half of the Nineteenth Century"^[307] and the author of 46 books, who had been court martialed by Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War,^[308] stayed at the Astor House in 1879;^[309]
• former United States president Ulysses S. Grant stayed in Room 410 in May 1879;^[310][311]
• King David Kalākaua I of Hawaii, the last reigning king of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, the first monarch to travel around the world,^[312] stayed at the Astor House Hotel^[313] in April 1881, where he occupied a suite of rooms on the first floor;^[314]
• In May 1894, American mezzo-soprano opera singer Minnie Hauk (1851-1929), who was rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of American financier Leonard Jerome, and was the first American to sing the title role in Carmen,^[315] and her husband, Austrian journalist Baron Ernst von Hesse-Waltegg, were guests during Hauk's performances in Shanghai;^[316][317]
• American theatre manager Miss Grace Hawthorne (born ca.1847 in Maine; died 23 May 1922, London, England),^[318] "a tall, handsome American actress",^[319] who had starred as Zoe in The Octoroon in the 1880s,^[320] and former lessee of the Princess's Theatre, London and the Olympic Theatre, London, who "must have had abundant means of her own or else was backed by others who had, for she met failure after failure with a grim determination to go on at all costs",^[321] stayed in the Astor House during her round the world trip in 1895, because of its name;^[322][323]

[edit] 1895-1915

• Prussian born Christian evangelist George Müller, philanthropist and founder of orphanages in Bristol,^[324] stayed at the Astor House during his two weeks in Shanghai from 4 October 1886, in which he preached 17 times;^[325]
• Simon Adler Stern (born in Philadelphia 1838; died May 2, 1904), American Jewish author, and editor of Penn Monthly and Industrial Review,^[326] was a guest in the Hotel in 1887;^[327]
• John James Aubertin (1818-1900), British railway engineer and translator of Portuguese poet Luís de Camões' magnus opus Os Lusíadas^[328] and also seventy of his sonnets,^[329], stayed on five separate occasions between Palm Sunday and November 1890;^[330]
• Annie “Londonderry” Cohen Kopchovsky, the first woman to bicycle around the world, stayed at the Astor Hotel on her pioneering journey in 1895;^[331]
• English travel writer Isabella Lucy Bird (15 October 1831 to 7 October 1904), the most famous and influential of the Victorian "lady travelers,"^[332], and the first woman admitted into the Royal Geographical Society in 1892, stayed at the Astor House in 1896;^[333]
• American Congregational clergyman John Henry Barrows (1847-1902), president of the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago in September 1893 in connection with the World Columbian Exposition, and later president of Oberlin College,^[334] stayed at the Astor House in April 1897;^[335]
• British travel writer John Foster Fraser, arrived at the Astor House Hotel on 23 December 1897 during his bicycle trip around the world;^[336]
• American mariner Lt. Bradley Allen Fiske (13 June 1854 - 6 April 1942), later a Rear Admiral and Aide for Operations for the United States Navy (a post that later became that of Chief of Naval Operations), stayed at the Astor House Hotel in December 1898, while on furlough after the Battle of Manila Bay;^[337]
• English magician Charles Bertram (1853-1907), who was a favourite of the future King Edward VII, performing for him more than twenty times,^[338][339], performed at the Astor House in March 1900, and stayed there;^[340]
• future American president Herbert Hoover, then the leading mining engineer in China, stayed at the Astor House in August 1900 just after the Boxer Uprising, registered under the pseudonym of Mr. Clark to allow the registering of a mining lease without detection;^[341]
• American journalist Wilbur J. Chamberlin, who stayed at the Hotel in September 1900 and again in March 1901, to cover the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising, whose reporting for the New York Sun fueled the Twain-Ament Indemnities Controversy by criticising missionary William Scott Ament;^[342]

• Future First Lady of the United States Helen Herron Taft was staying at the Astor House Hotel in October 1901, when she received news that her husband, William Howard Taft, then Governor-General of the Philippines, was severely ill in Manila;^[343]
• American mariner Captain Ransford D. Bucknam (born 1869; died 27 May 1915), later pasha of the Ottoman Empire and rear admiral of the navy of Turkey stayed at the Astor House prior to 1902;^[344][345]
• Controversial American medical practitioner and radio pioneer John R. Brinkley, who paid $65 a day for his suite at the Astor House in 1903;^[346]
• Jagatjit Singh Bahadur (1872-1949), the ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Kapurthala in the British Empire of India from 1877, stayed at the Astor House in 1903;^[347]
• English feminist and travel writer Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, later associated with T.E. Lawrence, stayed at the Astor House Hotel in April 1903;^[348]
• American humorist Marshall Pinckney Wilder (born 19 September 1859 in Geneva, New York; died 10 January 1915),^[349][350], born with congenital kyphosis, who was editor of the 10 volume The Wit and Humor of America, made 16 command performances for the future King Edward VII,^[351] was a guest in 1905;^{[352][353][354]}
• American poet and essayist Joaquin Miller, "the Poet of the Sierras", was a guest in 1905;^[355][356]
• After the beating of the British Vice Consul George D. Pitzipios and the torching of his car, American Consul General to Shanghai,^[357] James Linn Rodgers (born 10 September 1861; died 2 September 1930), and his family stayed in the Astor House Hotel from 18 December 1905 during Anti-American riots^[358] during the boycott of American goods by Chinese in response to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, because of the isolation of their official residence on Bubbling Well Road;^[359]
• American herpetologist Thomas Barbour (1884 - 1946), later director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, stayed at the Astor House Hotel during his honeymoon trip in May 1907;^[360]
• Frits Holm, leader of an expedition to copy and purchase the Nestorian Stele in Xian, stayed there in February 1908;^[361]
• American Presbyterian evangelist John Wilbur Chapman stayed at the Astor House from 7 September 1909, during the first Chapman-Alexander worldwide campaign, which was held in Shanghai from 8-16 September;^[362]
• American gospel singer Charles McCallon Alexander and his wife, Helen Cadbury, stayed at the Astor House from 7 September 1909, during the first Chapman-Alexander worldwide campaign, which was held in Shanghai;^[363]
• Malayan-born Chinese medical practitioner Dr. Wu Lien-teh (伍连德) (1879-1960), the first person of Chinese ancestry to study medicine at the University of Cambridge, and later first president of the China Medical Association (1916-1920), stayed at the Astor House Hotel about 1910;^{[364][365][366]}
• Commander of the US Marine detachment at the American Legation in Peking Major John H. Russell, Jr., and later the Commandant of the Marine Corps,^[367] stayed at the Astor House in 1911, with his family, including the seven-year old Brooke Astor, future socialite and philanthropist;^[368]

[edit] 1915-1929

• Canadian railway engineer Donald Mann, who dueled with a Russian count with an axe;^[369]
• Randolph Ortman, owner of Blue Ridge Farm in Greenwood, Virginia,^[370] and his wife, Blanche Sellers Ortman, stayed in late December 1919;^[371]
• English novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham, stayed at the Astor House Hotel from 3 January 1920, and this visit to China influenced his On a Chinese Screen (1922);^[372]
• The Astor House Hotel claims that Welsh philosopher, mathematician and logician Bertrand Russell stayed in Room 310 in 1920.^[373][374] Russell's time in China influenced his 1922 book, The Problem of China;^[375]
• British newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe stayed for one night on 20 November 1921;^[376]
• German physicist Albert Einstein, arrived in Shanghai on 13 November 1922 en route to Japan on the Kitanu Maru,^[377] four days after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize for physics,^[378] and stayed for one night. ^[379] Einstein returned to Shanghai on 31 December 1922 after a visit to Japan, and departed on 2 January 1923.^[380][381] It is claimed that Einstein stayed in Room 304 in the Astor House Hotel;^[382]
• American artist Bertha Boynton Lum (1869-1954), influenced by Japonism and the stories of Lafcadio Hearn,^[383][384] stayed at the Astor House during her frequent visits to China from 1922 onwards;^[385][386]
• The aviators from the American Army Air Service, including Lt. Lowell Smith, who were in the process of making the First aerial circumnavigation of the world by air stayed at the Astor House for three nights from 4 June 1924;^[387][388]
• Mrs Wallis Simpson, the future wife of the Duke of Windsor, and her friend Mary Sadler stayed at the Astor House for ten days in 1925, while Shanghai was in the grip of civil war;^[389]
• George Bernard Shaw (1856-1959), British playwright, politician and winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925, visited the Astor House Hotel with Soong Ching-ling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, on 17 February 1933;^[390]
• Stephen P. Duggan, the American co-founder and first president of The Institute of International Education, and later professor of diplomatic history at the College of the City of New York, stayed at the Astor House in the late spring of 1925;^[391]
• The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts troupe, including creators Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, stayed at the Astor House Hotel from 16 November 1925 and again about 4 October 1926 during their eighteen-month tour of the Far East;^[392][393]
• Manchurian Major General Zhang Xueliang (Chang Hsüeh-liang), later Warlord of Manchuria, stayed at the Astor House Hotel in late November 1925, "disguised as an American man's servant", to avoid detection;^[394]
• American naturalist and explorer W. Douglas Burden (1898-1978), stayed in May 1926 en route to capture komodo dragons for the American Museum of Natural History.^[395] His account of his expedition to Komodo Island inspired the movie King Kong;^[396]
• American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature Eugene O'Neill, stayed for a month from mid-November until 12 December 1928, sometimes with his future third wife, Carlotta Monterrey,^[397] excepting for a period he was in hospital after a binge and when Carlotta moved into a separate hotel after an argument.^[398] While in Shanghai, he was called a faker posing as Eugene O'Neill,^[399] and was treated for alcoholism in his room at the Astor House.^{[400][401][402]}

[edit] 1930-1939

• French author and anti-imperialist politician André Malraux,^[403] stayed at the Astor House in 1931,^[404] while researching material for his Prix Goncourt award winning 1933 novel,^[405] Man's Fate (French: La Condition humaine), about the Shanghai massacre of 1927;
• American journalist and author Helen Foster,who married Edgar Snow in 1932, stayed in Room 303 at the Astor House upon her arrival in Shanghai in 1931;^[406][407]
• American humorist and actor Will Rogers spent his only Christmas away from his family at the Astor House Hotel in 1931;^[408]
• Otto Braun, a German Comintern secret agent, stayed in the Astor House for several weeks in the autumn of 1932;^[409]
• Italian scientist Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, the inventor of the wireless, stayed in Room 8103 at the Astor House Hotel in 1933;^[410]
• Noted Harvard University historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., his wife, and two sons, including future Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. stayed at the Astor House Hotel in October 1933.^[411]
• On 25 March 1934 Courtney Chauncey "C.C." Julian, former president of the failed Julian Petroleum Company of Los Angeles, who had skipped bail of US$25,000 for mail fraud charges and fled to China,^[412] "staged a banquet for friends at the Shanghai Astor House, during which he excused himself, went to his room, and committed suicide"^[413] "by taking poison, 'during a glittering dinner party with a woman'",^[414] and was subsequently buried in a pauper's grave;^[415][416]
• British comedian Charlie Chaplin,^[417] came to Shanghai with his future wife, Paulette Goddard, where they stayed in Room 404 at the Astor House Hotel from 5 February 1936;^[418][419]
• On 20 July 1936, Marshall Smith Hairston (c.1896-1936), American factory manager of the Pudong branch of the Yee Tsoong branch of the British American Tobacco was found dead in room 302 of the Astor House;^{[420][421][422]}
• Dr. Robert K. Reischauer, professor of international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University on a study tour of China, had stayed at the Astor House Hotel for a few days in August 1937, before deciding on 14 August to evacuate to the Palace Hotel "believing the latter, farther from the Japanese center of operations, would be safer,"^[423] only to be killed in the lobby of the Cathay Hotel later that day by a bomb dropped from a Chinese plane during the Battle of Shanghai,^[424] making him one of the "first U.S. WWII casualties";^[425]
• On 17 March 1939 Japanese gangster Yoshio Kodama, later prominent Yakuza figure, began his stay at the Astor House. "At ¥12 a day, meals not included, he found the hotel expensive, yet comfortable."^[426]

[edit] Unconfirmed guests

The following are people that some have claimed have stayed at the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai, but for whom there is no supporting evidence:

• African American composer and pianist Scott Joplin (b. 24 November 1868; d. 1 April 1917) is alleged to have stayed at the Astor House both in 1931 and 1936 in Room 404, and has one of the four celebrity rooms named in his honour^[427] but his death in 1917 invalidates this assertion.
• Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, has a room named after him at the Astor House Hotel, where according to an urban legend "he hid in the Astor House when he was a Communist agitator in the 1920s";^[428]

[edit] Notable residents

Among those who resided at the hotel for a significant period are:

• Johannes von Gumpach (died at Shanghai, 31 July 1875), a German-born, British-naturalized professor of mathematics and astronomy, fired from the Imperial Tung Wen College (or Interpreters College), and litigant against Robert Hart, which was appealed to the Privy Council in Britain, was residing at the Astor in 1871 while he wrote the controversial The Burlinghame Mission: a Political Disclosure;^[429][430]
• Lithuanian Jewish convert to Christianity Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, former Anglican Bishop of Shanghai, and founder of Saint John's University, Shanghai, who completed a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Mandarin Chinese in 1875, resided at the Astor House Hotel from 1895;^[431]
• British chemist Henry Glendinning (born 9 October 1863 at Hartlepool; died 4 June 1938 at St. Albans, Herts.) of Brunner Mond,^[432] resided at the Astor House for two years from 1899;^[433]
• American conman Frederick W. Sutterlee, who defrauded customers of Kern Sutterlee & Co in Philadelphia in 1896, and fled to China, smuggled guns to the Philippine insurgents in the Philippine-American War, and used the name W.F. Sylvester, and became a correspondent for London's The Daily Mail, resided at the Astor House Hotel by 1900.^[434][435]
• Australian journalist William Henry Donald (1875-1946), editor of the Far Eastern Review (1911-1920), adviser to Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, resided at the Astor House for the two years he lived in Shanghai from 1911;^[436][437]
• American journalist Thomas Franklin Fairfax Millard lived at the hotel from 1911 during his years in Shanghai as founder and editor of The China News and later The China Weekly Review.^[438]
• Chen Chin-tao, the Vice Minister of Finance for the Qing government, and later Finance Minister under Yuan Shikai, first elected president of the Republic of China.^[439]
• Polish-born Jewish Cockney adventurer Morris Cohen, known as "Two-Gun Cohen", bodyguard and aide-de-camp to Sun Yat-sen, resided in Room 305 at the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai after 1922;^[440]
• Italian Maestro Mario Paci, pianist and conductor for the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra from 1919 to 1942, and his family resided at the Astor House from at least 1925;^[441]
• In 1927, an eight-year-old girl named Margaret "Peggy" Hookham came to live at the Astor House with her family. Hookham's father was the chief engineer for British American Tobacco, which was located just over the Garden bridge on then Museum Road. While at the Astor House Hotel, Peggy continued her ballet lessons, studying with the Russian teachers George Goncharev, and eventually took as her stage name, Margot Fonteyn, "perhaps the world's greatest ballerina."^[442]
• American journalist Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, from 1928;
• Future American journalist and spy for Soviet Russia^[443] Mark Gayn and his parents, Russian Jews, lived at the Astor House in the late 1920s until his "Father deduced that the hotels were being constantly watched by foreign and Chinese police;^[444]

[edit] References in popular culture

The Astor House Hotel has appeared in the following films:

• 2005 Everlasting Regret (Chinese: Changhen ge), produced by Jackie Chan, based on a novel by Wang Anyi,^[445] featured the Astor House's Restaurant;^[446]
• 2007 Lust, Caution (Chinese: Se, jie), a Chinese espionage thriller directed by Taiwanese American director Ang Lee, based on the 1979 short story by Chinese author Eileen Chang, had some scenes shot around the Astor House Hotel.^[447]
• 2008 Forever Enthralled (traditional Chinese: 梅蘭芳; simplified Chinese: 梅兰芳; pinyin: Méi Lánfāng), a biographical account of Mei Lanfang, China's greatest opera star,^[448] directed by Chen Kaige, filmed some of its scenes at the Astor House Hotel.^[449]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• The Astor House Guide to Shanghai. Shanghai: North-China Daily News and Herald, 1911. 41 pages.
• Browne, G. Waldo. China: The Country and Its People. Boston: Dana Estes & Company, 1901.
• Clifford, Nicholas Rowland. Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s. Middlebury College Press, 1991.
• Conant, Harold Abbott Rand. "A Far East Journal (1915 - 1941)", ed. Edmund Conant Perry (published 1994); http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/5814/cathay.htm
• Cranley, William Patrick. "Old Shanghai's 'Others': Sailor, Whores, Half-breeds and Other Interlopers". [1]
• Dorn, Frank. The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-41: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor. Macmillan, 1974.
• Dupée, Jeffrey N. British Travel Writers in China: Writing Home to a British Public, 1890-1914. E. Mellen Press, 2004.
• French, Paul. Through the Looking Glass: Foreign Journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao. Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
• Gamewell, Mary Louise Ninde. The Gateway to China: Pictures of Shanghai. Fleming H. Revell, 1916.
• Harpuder, Richard. Shanghai: The Way We Remember It. http://www.rickshaw.org/way_we_remember_it.htm
• Johnston, Tess and Deke Erh. A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai. Hong Kong: Old China Hand Press, 2004.
• Jordon, Donald A. China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
• Kuo chia t'ung chi chü, China. Changes and Development in China (1949-1989). Beijing Review Press, 1990.
• Lunt, Carroll Prescott. Some Builders of Treaty Port China, 1965.
• Lunt, Carroll Prescott. Treaty Port: An Intimate History of Shanghai in Metrical Form. Shanghai: The China Digest 1934.
• Macmillan, Allister. Seaports of the Far East: Historical and Descriptive, Commercial and Industrial, Facts, Figures, & Resources. 2nd ed. W.H. & L. Collingridge, 1925.
• Shanghai lishi bowuguan (ed.) 上海历史博物馆, Survey of Shanghai 1840's-1940's. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meisha chubanshe, 1992. http://virtualshanghai.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Image.php?ID=1643
• Shanghai of To-day: A Souvenir Album of Fifty Vandyke Gravure Prints of the 'Model Settlement'. 3rd ed. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1930. http://virtualshanghai.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Bibliography.php?ID=408
• Shaw [Charles Frederick] Ralph. Sin City. Everst Books, 1976; New ed. Time Warner Paperbacks, 1992.
• Tang, Zhenchang, Yunzhong Lu, and Siyuan Lu. Shanghai's Journey to Prosperity, 1842-1949. Commercial Press, 1996.
• Tobias, Sigmund. Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
• Wakeman, Frederic E. The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. Global Shanghai 1850-2010. Routledge, 2009. Figure 3,2, page 58: photo of Astor House Hotel 1901.
• Wei, Betty Peh-Ti. Old Shanghai. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Wei, Betty Peh-Ti. Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Yeh, Wen-Hsin., ed. Wartime Shanghai. Taylor & Francis, 1998.
• Zhai, Qiang. The Dragon, the Lion & the Eagle: Chinese-British-American Relations, 1949-1958. Kent State University Press, 1994.

[edit] External links

• Astor House Hotel official website
• Picture of Richards' Hotel
• Pictures of Astor House Hotel, Shanghai 1880
• Picture of Astor House Hotel 1890s
• Photo Astor House 1904
• Astor House Hotel Photo ca. 1908
• Photos and detailed description of the Astor House Hotel 1908
• Photo Astor House Dining Room 1908
• Photo Astor House Hotel 1917
• Picture of Astor House Hotel 1927
• Photo Astor House Lounge 1928
• Picture of Astor House Hotel 1928
• Recent photos of the Astor House Hotel - exterior and interior
• The Bund