In Feb. 2007, I took a trip to Shanghai with some of my classmates from my undergraduate, study exchange program in Beijing. It was our first time to China and we had been in Beijing about a month. We finished a four-week, intensive language program and were breaking for the Chinese new year festival before starting our full time spring semester back in Beijing. We had a week and decided to go somewhere.
I remember hopping the train, a slow, overnight train. 2007 was a consequence free China for young foreign students. We were free from the constraints of rules and laws and formalities as we were back in the US. It was a semester without phones, without internet, where foreigners didn’t apply to the social regulations of normal Chinese people. We existed in this strange world in between the law because policemen, security guards, train employees, most people didn’t have a grasp of the English language and had little contact with foreigners and assumed that there was no way to effectively communicate with us. So instead, they ignored us. China was therefore boundless, ours to explore.
We bought a couple crates of beers, Tsing Tao beers, the big bottles, 17 cents a pop, stashed our stuff on our hard sleeper beds and retreated to the space in between cars to drink and smoke cigars and joke the night away. 很自由. Hen ziyou. In our minds, absolute freedom. And freedom in a not so free place.
This awareness of freedom begged us to travel and this was our first chance. We pulled into the station in Shanghai the following morning. As students, upon arrival to Beijing, we were each given a gift of a large Lonely Planet guidebook for China. I still use mine. It’s torn and warped from spills and rain exposure, full of train tickets used as place holders. With it, we planned our trip to Shanghai. The cheapest place we could find closest to downtown was listed in our guidebook as the Pujiang Hotel, known more famously in English as the Astor House where a spot in the dorm rooms was 55 kuai per night (I’m looking at the guidebook now for verification). At the time, with that exchange rate, the room cost us each about seven dollars per night. A pretty good deal. And we had a large group so we were all put in the same dorm room, occupying it ourselves. The room was actually a large stateroom, dark wooden panelling, grand windows looking out to the river, but badly in need of attention and in severe disrepair. They had removed all the original furniture and put in awkward rows of cheap bunk beds to accommodate the unique angles and architecture of the room. We of course didn’t care, we were looking for a cheap, central place to sleep. I remember the majestic lobby and its dusty chandeliers and faded murals on the walls. There were some beautiful, wide staircases to the second floor where the rooms began. You could still get a private room there but this place had clearly reverted to shambles and catered now to budget travelers. We had no idea of the place’s history or significance, simply that it was a place we could afford.
We slowly learned throughout our stay however that this wasn’t just an old building. This place had some history. We heard things like Albert Einstein had stayed there during his visit to Shanghai, that the first light bulb in the city was lit in this hotel. We learned that the hotel had been at one time one of the most famous and grandest when Shanghai had opened its ports to foreign traders. It had, at the time, a mix of Western and Chinese employees. And it was still a popular place for film sets. The day we left, the lobby had been closed to film a scene for a British film, The Children of Huangshi. As we were exiting, the lobby entranceway was packed full of 20th century Chinese refugees, dirty, wearing tattered clothing, and some fancy Englishmen and women in Victorian attire. We talked to them a bit in between shoots. The film was apparently a historical adaptation of the Japanese occupation and the throngs of displaced Chinese and the chaos of living in the city as a foreign businessman during the Japanese invasion, amidst a China in revolution.
A few years ago a friend of mine was going to Shanghai for a visit and asked me for some recommendations. I told her she had to stay at the Astor House because it was such a cool building, so central, and so cheap. She later told me that was no longer an option. It’s not a hostel. It’s again a pricey hotel. Puzzled, I wanted to go back.
“你好。你会说英语吗？” Ni hao. Ni hui shuo yingyu ma? Hello. Do you speak English?
“一点点” Yi diandian. Just a little.
“Is it okay for me to take a look around? Maybe to book in the future for a friend? 可不可以看一下你的酒店？我有朋友来上海，要来这儿” Ke bu keyi kan yixia nide bingguan. Wo you pengyou lai shanghai, yao lai zher.
“好. 好. Okay,” Hao. Hao. Okay. No problem.
I found the hotel pretty easily, finding the neighborhood along the creek familiar, and the hotel facade unmistakable. I went on Friday. The smog was so thick that it was difficult to make out some of the largest buildings in the world just on the other side of the river. Walking along the creek towards the hotel, towards the river, I could feel the smog on my skin within the bone chilling moisture that clung to the air, as if walking through a screen of condensation. Unlike the colder air in Boston, where the winter air is so cold and crisp it burns exposed skin, this air has a more subtle effect, mild to the skin but the chill sort of gets inside you, very uncomfortable.
Where the creek meets the river is where I found the hotel, just in the same way as when I stayed at the hotel years ago. Still wedged between the more luxurious Broadway Mansions and Russian consulate. The same steel suspension bridge I crossed over the creek to get to the Bund was there, built in 1907, I learned today. And flowers hung from the eaves of the third balcony windows.
Walking through the lobby doors is indeed like stepping back a bit in history. The lobby was clearly recently restored. What I remembered as a dimly lit, dirty entrance way was now polished and shiny. A doorman opened the large doors for me. One of the doors had a sign that read in English, “Proper Attire Only”. The lobby was bustling with activity. The large doors straight ahead that led into the famous Peacock Ballroom were open wide where Chinese workers were setting up tables and flower arrangements and signs, preparing for the evening’s activities. To the right, further in the lobby was the main desk where several professional looking Chinese hosts were checking in some French patrons. Adjacent the front deck was an old fashioned and very classy cafe. Upholstered seats and delicate place settings on small coffee tables adorned the floors. An English menu boasted all sorts of coffees and teas. The large lobby was made to appear much smaller, as the weight of the building seemed to squeeze in on the space from above. The lobby was riddled with old wooden pillars from which elegantly framed pictures of the hotel from the 20th century were hung. One photo was of Albert Einstein, probably the same photo I saw in 2007. Further in from the lobby was the entrance to the rest of the building, through some small steps leading up and into the maze of the interior. I was struck immediately by the change in feel of this place. Clearly no longer a place for backpackers and budget travelers. It was apparent some effort was made in the hotel’s revival.
I walked up those steps, into the heart of the first floor of the hotel. Within the narrow space of the purposely darkened corridor, straight ahead lay some marble steps, wrapping around to higher floors. To the left was a longer hallway full of shops and amenities, a bar, lounge, barber shop, jade store. Along these dark wooden walls were hung more photos of the hotel, more plaques with historical information, and some showcases of artifacts. I wandered further down this hall, around a a few corners, following the photographs. I was reading a framed menu from the 1910s when from nowhere I heard, “This hotel has a very long history, you know,” in a very mysterious, wispy voice. Slightly startled, I turned and looked down and saw a young, short Chinese man looking up at the picture from behind me. I started to engage.
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“This is one of the original menus from the hotel’s past. Are you staying at the hotel?”
“No. Just wandering around, reading about the history.”
“This hotel is very old. Originally called Richard’s Hotel.”
“Do you work here?”
“I’m a waiter. I have to work tonight. And I’m a student but I’m very poor. This job doesn’t pay well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“If you like I can show you around the hotel.”
“Yes, I would like that very much.”
“Follow me.”
His name was Fang Hong. He was a 22 year old Chinese student, studying part time in the city, working part time on the wait staff. He was relatively plain looking, pretty short, and a bit chubby. He wore a loose over shirt, reminiscent of a waiter’s uniform, that hung over his baggy jeans and he was wearing flip flops, “我随便穿的” Wo suibian chuan de. Sorry, just wearing whatever for now… He had a pack of cheap cigarettes stuffed in his front pocket. Hong is from a city called Hefei in Anhui Province, just west of Shanghai, and is trying to make some money in the city. His English was decent but it was clearly challenging for him to speak, to force out the words. He told me he got little chance to practice but did sometimes with the foreign guests. We proceeded to chat in both English and Chinese. I asked him what the ratio was these days for guests at the hotel, between foreigners and Chinese. He said about half were foreigners. He also told me that the they were dressing up the Peacock room for a wedding party they were hosting that night and that he could take me into the hall and then up into the second floor balcony. I said yeah, let’s do it.
He led me back into the main lobby and towards the entrance of the famous Peacock ballroom. We hopped over a few boards and bags of tools, dodging around employees and into the large space. Dinner tables were scattered around the floor, made up for a formal evening. A banner hung above a makeshift terrace that read, “Happy Wedding Day” and flowers were being prepared and spread around everywhere. The ballroom was grand, indeed, but small. The ceiling extended up through the second floor and a walking balcony wrapped around the upper edges. He took me up into the rafters to get a bird’s eye view. We continued to chat and walked around the first floor a bit. He waved and greeted to the other staff members as we walked. We entered another smaller ballroom, the Richards Room, where maids were sleeping at vacant tables. This room wouldn’t be occupied until the evening, apparently. We made our way back towards the hall where I first met him, when he suddenly said, “I will use the restroom now. Bye bye.” And as quickly and mysteriously as we met, so too was he gone.
But I kept wandering. The long halls were dark and resembled the interior of an old fashioned smoke room. The wooden sides were old, clearly and the floor creaked underfoot. It felt old, musty, and stale. But at the same time meticulously scrubbed and dusted, as I kept dodging maids. Some of the corridors also smelled strongly of incense. From time to time I would pass a door with a plaque that read the name of some famous guest that had stayed there. Zhou Enlai, US President Ulysses S. Grant, Albert Einstein (of course) and Charlie Chaplin. I wandered up floors and into hidden passageways, a floor plan would have made little sense here. I walked past the door to the room I stayed in when it was a hostel. It was closed but I imagine it’s far nicer now and with far fewer beds.
It was easy for me to walk around, picturing how it was back when it was something. Back when foreign dignitaries had to stay here because it was the place to be. The hallways felt old, as if it was a hundred years ago. I later did some research.
The Astor House, in its current location where the Suzhou creek meets the Huangpu River on the northern end of the Bund, opened its doors for the first time in 1858, having relocated from its former location as Richard’s Hotel and Restaurant (est. 1846) nearby. In the mid-19th century, after the Treaty of Nanjing admitted Chinese defeat to the British during the Opium Wars, several coastal cities had been forced open for private trade enterprise and Shanghai was one of these ports. As concessions were created (the French concession still remains one of the premier neighborhoods in the city) and foreigner presence increased, the need for foreign amenities and accommodations became a business in its own right. Peter Felix Richards, a Scotsman, opened the hotel, catering to foreigners and dignitaries. After relocating to the Bund, the hotel became a central location for elegant, Western culture, and a hub for both Western and Chinese socialites. It became a symbol for the exposure of Western culture. The first electricity in China was lit in in the Astor House (more significant, I suppose, than simply the first light bulb in the city, as I had heard), the first telephones in Shanghai were installed and used, and pipes for the first running water tap were installed here. The first film in Shanghai was shown in the main hall and China’s first prom, a banquet to celebrate the 60th birthday of Cixi, the Empress dowager, was hosted in the Peacock Room.
The hotel had been managed since inception at the hands of foreign entrepreneurs. In the early 20th century, the hotel had become famous, like the Raffles Hotel of Singapore or the Peninsula of Hong Kong, and was described as the Waldorf Astoria of the Orient. An ad for the hotel listed the Astor House as the “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.” Strangely, a room in the 1920s cost nearly the same price that I paid in 2007. The wait staff at the time were local Chinese and could be seen in long uniform gowns in the “Oriental” style with traditional braided hair in pony tails draped down the center of their backs.
But the hotel was a battleground as well as a site for foreign attraction. In 1932, the Japanese fought to take control of the city. The streets around the hotel were grounds for the new, Western, Japanese machine guns and later, the site where thousands of homeless Chinese refugees camped out on top of their belongings. The Japanese later seized the hotel from its foreign owners in the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, and they had used the hotel to house Chinese political prisoners, traitors of imperial Japan. The Japanese maintained control of the hotel until their surrender in 1945, but the hotel had been the site of other historic meetings. Russian Imperial White Army Troops, scattered from the Russian revolution, met at the Astor House to convince the West to help them fight against the Soviets. And apparently, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had his last meal in mainland China at the Astor House before fleeing to Taiwan after his KMT forces were kicked out by Mao’s communists.
By this point however, with the Japanese occupation and its events afterward, the hotel fell into severe disrepair. The elegance of foreign hospitality shifted to newer, more modern hotels across the city. The Cultural Revolution in the 1960s sealed the hotel’s fate as furniture and supplies were looted and destroyed and the property was eventually acquired by the International Youth Hostel Federation in the 1990s and became, essentially, a cheap backpacker’s hangout. This was the state of affairs when I arrived in 2007.
Today, however, the cheapest room I could find in the hotel cost about $100 and prices range up to about $200. Not the price of luxury but not a backpacker’s refuge either. The hotel is now owned by Chinese investors and apparently significant renovations are in the works to try and revive some of the hotel’s original grandeur.
I walked back out of the hotel, to the smoggy haze of the streets. A private car pulled up and the doorman let out some classy middle aged Chinese ladies, smiling and laughing, enjoying themselves. I kept walking, back to the metro.
I remember hopping the train, a slow, overnight train. 2007 was a consequence free China for young foreign students. We were free from the constraints of rules and laws and formalities as we were back in the US. It was a semester without phones, without internet, where foreigners didn’t apply to the social regulations of normal Chinese people. We existed in this strange world in between the law because policemen, security guards, train employees, most people didn’t have a grasp of the English language and had little contact with foreigners and assumed that there was no way to effectively communicate with us. So instead, they ignored us. China was therefore boundless, ours to explore.
We bought a couple crates of beers, Tsing Tao beers, the big bottles, 17 cents a pop, stashed our stuff on our hard sleeper beds and retreated to the space in between cars to drink and smoke cigars and joke the night away. 很自由. Hen ziyou. In our minds, absolute freedom. And freedom in a not so free place.
This awareness of freedom begged us to travel and this was our first chance. We pulled into the station in Shanghai the following morning. As students, upon arrival to Beijing, we were each given a gift of a large Lonely Planet guidebook for China. I still use mine. It’s torn and warped from spills and rain exposure, full of train tickets used as place holders. With it, we planned our trip to Shanghai. The cheapest place we could find closest to downtown was listed in our guidebook as the Pujiang Hotel, known more famously in English as the Astor House where a spot in the dorm rooms was 55 kuai per night (I’m looking at the guidebook now for verification). At the time, with that exchange rate, the room cost us each about seven dollars per night. A pretty good deal. And we had a large group so we were all put in the same dorm room, occupying it ourselves. The room was actually a large stateroom, dark wooden panelling, grand windows looking out to the river, but badly in need of attention and in severe disrepair. They had removed all the original furniture and put in awkward rows of cheap bunk beds to accommodate the unique angles and architecture of the room. We of course didn’t care, we were looking for a cheap, central place to sleep. I remember the majestic lobby and its dusty chandeliers and faded murals on the walls. There were some beautiful, wide staircases to the second floor where the rooms began. You could still get a private room there but this place had clearly reverted to shambles and catered now to budget travelers. We had no idea of the place’s history or significance, simply that it was a place we could afford.
We slowly learned throughout our stay however that this wasn’t just an old building. This place had some history. We heard things like Albert Einstein had stayed there during his visit to Shanghai, that the first light bulb in the city was lit in this hotel. We learned that the hotel had been at one time one of the most famous and grandest when Shanghai had opened its ports to foreign traders. It had, at the time, a mix of Western and Chinese employees. And it was still a popular place for film sets. The day we left, the lobby had been closed to film a scene for a British film, The Children of Huangshi. As we were exiting, the lobby entranceway was packed full of 20th century Chinese refugees, dirty, wearing tattered clothing, and some fancy Englishmen and women in Victorian attire. We talked to them a bit in between shoots. The film was apparently a historical adaptation of the Japanese occupation and the throngs of displaced Chinese and the chaos of living in the city as a foreign businessman during the Japanese invasion, amidst a China in revolution.
A few years ago a friend of mine was going to Shanghai for a visit and asked me for some recommendations. I told her she had to stay at the Astor House because it was such a cool building, so central, and so cheap. She later told me that was no longer an option. It’s not a hostel. It’s again a pricey hotel. Puzzled, I wanted to go back.
“你好。你会说英语吗？” Ni hao. Ni hui shuo yingyu ma? Hello. Do you speak English?
“一点点” Yi diandian. Just a little.
“Is it okay for me to take a look around? Maybe to book in the future for a friend? 可不可以看一下你的酒店？我有朋友来上海，要来这儿” Ke bu keyi kan yixia nide bingguan. Wo you pengyou lai shanghai, yao lai zher.
“好. 好. Okay,” Hao. Hao. Okay. No problem.
I found the hotel pretty easily, finding the neighborhood along the creek familiar, and the hotel facade unmistakable. I went on Friday. The smog was so thick that it was difficult to make out some of the largest buildings in the world just on the other side of the river. Walking along the creek towards the hotel, towards the river, I could feel the smog on my skin within the bone chilling moisture that clung to the air, as if walking through a screen of condensation. Unlike the colder air in Boston, where the winter air is so cold and crisp it burns exposed skin, this air has a more subtle effect, mild to the skin but the chill sort of gets inside you, very uncomfortable.
Where the creek meets the river is where I found the hotel, just in the same way as when I stayed at the hotel years ago. Still wedged between the more luxurious Broadway Mansions and Russian consulate. The same steel suspension bridge I crossed over the creek to get to the Bund was there, built in 1907, I learned today. And flowers hung from the eaves of the third balcony windows.
 |
| The Astor House |
 |
| The Russian consulate, to the left is the Astor House and just behind, the Pudong cityscape lost in smog |
 |
| The entrance to the hotel |
 |
| The lobby, a bit shinier than I remember it |
 |
| The cafe adjacent to the front the desk |
I walked up those steps, into the heart of the first floor of the hotel. Within the narrow space of the purposely darkened corridor, straight ahead lay some marble steps, wrapping around to higher floors. To the left was a longer hallway full of shops and amenities, a bar, lounge, barber shop, jade store. Along these dark wooden walls were hung more photos of the hotel, more plaques with historical information, and some showcases of artifacts. I wandered further down this hall, around a a few corners, following the photographs. I was reading a framed menu from the 1910s when from nowhere I heard, “This hotel has a very long history, you know,” in a very mysterious, wispy voice. Slightly startled, I turned and looked down and saw a young, short Chinese man looking up at the picture from behind me. I started to engage.
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“This is one of the original menus from the hotel’s past. Are you staying at the hotel?”
“No. Just wandering around, reading about the history.”
“This hotel is very old. Originally called Richard’s Hotel.”
“Do you work here?”
“I’m a waiter. I have to work tonight. And I’m a student but I’m very poor. This job doesn’t pay well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“If you like I can show you around the hotel.”
“Yes, I would like that very much.”
“Follow me.”
His name was Fang Hong. He was a 22 year old Chinese student, studying part time in the city, working part time on the wait staff. He was relatively plain looking, pretty short, and a bit chubby. He wore a loose over shirt, reminiscent of a waiter’s uniform, that hung over his baggy jeans and he was wearing flip flops, “我随便穿的” Wo suibian chuan de. Sorry, just wearing whatever for now… He had a pack of cheap cigarettes stuffed in his front pocket. Hong is from a city called Hefei in Anhui Province, just west of Shanghai, and is trying to make some money in the city. His English was decent but it was clearly challenging for him to speak, to force out the words. He told me he got little chance to practice but did sometimes with the foreign guests. We proceeded to chat in both English and Chinese. I asked him what the ratio was these days for guests at the hotel, between foreigners and Chinese. He said about half were foreigners. He also told me that the they were dressing up the Peacock room for a wedding party they were hosting that night and that he could take me into the hall and then up into the second floor balcony. I said yeah, let’s do it.
 |
| Fang Hong, a member of the wait staff from the rafters of the Peacock Room |
 |
| Testing the lights for a wedding ceremony being held later that evening |
But I kept wandering. The long halls were dark and resembled the interior of an old fashioned smoke room. The wooden sides were old, clearly and the floor creaked underfoot. It felt old, musty, and stale. But at the same time meticulously scrubbed and dusted, as I kept dodging maids. Some of the corridors also smelled strongly of incense. From time to time I would pass a door with a plaque that read the name of some famous guest that had stayed there. Zhou Enlai, US President Ulysses S. Grant, Albert Einstein (of course) and Charlie Chaplin. I wandered up floors and into hidden passageways, a floor plan would have made little sense here. I walked past the door to the room I stayed in when it was a hostel. It was closed but I imagine it’s far nicer now and with far fewer beds.
It was easy for me to walk around, picturing how it was back when it was something. Back when foreign dignitaries had to stay here because it was the place to be. The hallways felt old, as if it was a hundred years ago. I later did some research.
 |
| An old ad |
 |
| Back when hotels had dining saloons |
 |
| If only Shanghai still looked like this, a shot of Nanjing East Road, early 20th century |
 |
| An illustration of the first time electricity was connected in the city, in front of the Astor House |
The hotel had been managed since inception at the hands of foreign entrepreneurs. In the early 20th century, the hotel had become famous, like the Raffles Hotel of Singapore or the Peninsula of Hong Kong, and was described as the Waldorf Astoria of the Orient. An ad for the hotel listed the Astor House as the “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.” Strangely, a room in the 1920s cost nearly the same price that I paid in 2007. The wait staff at the time were local Chinese and could be seen in long uniform gowns in the “Oriental” style with traditional braided hair in pony tails draped down the center of their backs.
But the hotel was a battleground as well as a site for foreign attraction. In 1932, the Japanese fought to take control of the city. The streets around the hotel were grounds for the new, Western, Japanese machine guns and later, the site where thousands of homeless Chinese refugees camped out on top of their belongings. The Japanese later seized the hotel from its foreign owners in the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, and they had used the hotel to house Chinese political prisoners, traitors of imperial Japan. The Japanese maintained control of the hotel until their surrender in 1945, but the hotel had been the site of other historic meetings. Russian Imperial White Army Troops, scattered from the Russian revolution, met at the Astor House to convince the West to help them fight against the Soviets. And apparently, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had his last meal in mainland China at the Astor House before fleeing to Taiwan after his KMT forces were kicked out by Mao’s communists.
By this point however, with the Japanese occupation and its events afterward, the hotel fell into severe disrepair. The elegance of foreign hospitality shifted to newer, more modern hotels across the city. The Cultural Revolution in the 1960s sealed the hotel’s fate as furniture and supplies were looted and destroyed and the property was eventually acquired by the International Youth Hostel Federation in the 1990s and became, essentially, a cheap backpacker’s hangout. This was the state of affairs when I arrived in 2007.
Today, however, the cheapest room I could find in the hotel cost about $100 and prices range up to about $200. Not the price of luxury but not a backpacker’s refuge either. The hotel is now owned by Chinese investors and apparently significant renovations are in the works to try and revive some of the hotel’s original grandeur.
I walked back out of the hotel, to the smoggy haze of the streets. A private car pulled up and the doorman let out some classy middle aged Chinese ladies, smiling and laughing, enjoying themselves. I kept walking, back to the metro.
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