Shanghai Audio Guide

Chapter 1 · The Racecourse | A Ticket Stub

That morning, he put his small roll of newly paid wages in his pocket and left home. The smell of soy milk and fried dough sticks drifted from the entrance to his lane, but he did not stop. Trams rang their bells as they passed down Nanjing Road. He walked west, joining a crowd that grew thicker as he went. By the time he reached the Shanghai Race Club, people were packed together. The grounds seemed to stretch out of sight. A ring of stands enclosed the grass in the middle. He had heard old people say that this had once been farmland west of the city. Decades earlier, foreigners had taken the fields plot by plot and turned them into the largest racecourse in the Far East. He stood in the grandstand, with hard-packed earth under his feet and the smell of horse dung and dust in the wind. He bought a ticket for the Chinese stand. A railing divided the grandstand. Foreigners sat on the other side, under a roof. People like him sat beneath the open sky. He remembered the earlier years, when Chinese people could not even buy this ticket; they were not allowed through the gate. Now they could enter, but still had to watch from behind the railing. A bell rang. The horses burst out, their jockeys bent low over their backs in bright silks. The whole crowd shouted in waves, loud enough to seem as if it might lift the stand. He shouted too and gripped his ticket stub more tightly. When the race ended, some people laughed and slapped the railing; others tore up their stubs and dropped them at their feet. He looked down at his, folded it, and put it back in his pocket.

Chapter 1 · One Wall, Three Months

Before the Bund, Shanghai was a Chinese county town enclosed by a city wall. The stretch of wall at Dajing Pavilion is the last remaining piece of that wall. For centuries before that, the town had no wall. It made its living from the water and came and went by water. Then in 1553, pirates repeatedly attacked from the sea, stormed the county town, burned government offices, and seized grain. Even the county magistrate fled. The officer defending the city was killed, and houses along the streets were set on fire. For the first time, this wall-less town understood that without a wall it could not survive. So the whole town set to work building a wall. A retired official who had come home submitted a proposal, and the local prefect gave the go-ahead. Work began in the tenth month of the lunar calendar, went on day and night, and by the twelfth month the wall was complete. In three months, a wall eight meters high and nine li long enclosed the entire county town. Outside the wall they dug a moat; along the top they built more than 3,600 battlements; and in the wall they opened six gates and three water gates, so people and boats could pass in and out. Some donated stored grain, and some tore down their own houses to make way. Once the wall was up, when the pirates came again, they could no longer get in. That wall saved Shanghai. More than three hundred years later, it would also become the city's problem.

Chapter 1 · A Door That Stayed Open

One night in November 1938, broken glass covered the streets of Germany. Synagogues were set on fire, bookshops were smashed open, and thousands of people were dragged onto trucks. After that night, no one knew who would be next. Mothers packed through the night, forcing whatever they could carry into a single suitcase. That same year, representatives from thirty-two countries met in a small town in France and debated whether to take in these people. Nearly all gave the same answer: no. Ship tickets became useless pieces of paper. Even people who had tickets could not leave. Most doors were closed. The few that remained were only slightly open: they required visas, quotas, and waits of years. Shanghai was the exception. It had been an open port for decades. People came and went; no visa or passport was required, and arrivals could go ashore. In Vienna, a Chinese consul began issuing visas without pause. His superiors ordered him to stop, but he did not. A visa could get someone out of a concentration camp. In just six months, he issued nearly 2,000 of them. Many of the people who boarded those ships had never seen the sea. The journey lasted weeks. Some died of illness on the way; others gave birth on deck. When the ships reached Shanghai, people carrying only one suitcase stepped onto land they had never seen before, surrounded by languages they could not understand. For many, the visas led to No. 62 Changyang Road, a three-storey red-brick building. Ohel Moshe Synagogue was built in 1927 by Russian Jews living in Shanghai. Refugees arrived in group after group, and their first task was to find this place. It was where people who had lost their homes could speak a few words in their own language and pray.

Chapter 1 · One River, Two Shanghais

In late October 1937, standing by Suzhou Creek, you would see two completely different worlds. Suzhou Creek is a river that runs through Shanghai from west to east. Its north bank was the Chinese sector, controlled by the Chinese; its south bank was the International Settlement, controlled by foreign powers. A river, in effect, was a border. In ordinary times, people crossed back and forth without thinking much about it. But once war came, it suddenly became the dividing line between life and death. By then, the Battle of Shanghai had been going on for more than two months. Japanese troops pressed down from the north. Positions in Zhabei, Hongkou, and Jiangwan were lost, retaken, and lost again. On October 25, Dachang fell, and the defensive line north of the city collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers began withdrawing west. Trains, trucks, and marching columns all left the city. The north bank grew quieter and quieter, with only the sound of artillery, sometimes near, sometimes far. But right by the river, one building had not fallen. Standing on Xizang Road Bridge and looking left, you would see the warehouse on the north bank. That was the battlefield. The sound of gunfire went on all day and night, and fire flashed again and again. The roof tiles had been blown off, and the walls were pocked with holes. Now look right. The south bank was the International Settlement, and it seemed like another world. Electric lights were still on, shops were still open. The Settlement had a racecourse, cafes, and nightclubs. British and American soldiers set up a cordon along the riverbank, keeping people on the safe side. They just stood there and did not join the fighting. One river separated two Shanghais. One side was war, the other peace. The river was not wide. It was just wide enough to separate life from death, yet close enough that people could see each other's faces. During those days, the south bank was packed with people, both Chinese and foreign. They shouted encouragement across the river, their voices scattered in the gunfire. They passed food and supplies across. Whenever they spotted Japanese troop movements, they tried to get word into the warehouse. Foreign reporters stood there too, sending reports of the battle to the rest of the world. Through a screen of barbed wire, they could even count when the defenders on the other side fired back and when they fell silent. The battlefield had an audience. They stood only a few dozen meters away on the opposite bank, close enough to hear the gunfire, but bullets would not fall on their heads. This may have been one of the strangest scenes in modern warfare. The Japanese were not unable to take the building. What held them back was that the warehouse was too close to the Settlement. If heavy artillery shells strayed even slightly, they would land in the Settlement and cause an international incident. So they did not dare use heavy artillery or bomb it from the air. They could only send infantry forward a little at a time. So the building held on, half thanks to the defenders and half thanks to the river. Geography itself became part of the story.

Chapter 1 · The First Fortune Wasn't Pretty

Today, you are looking at the most expensive stretch of river view in Shanghai. But in the 1840s, this was nothing. The Huangpu riverbank was a stretch of mudflats with reeds, and only a few small boats moved on the water. Behind the mudflats stood a small Jiangnan county town enclosed by city walls. The first big money made on this street came partly from something that could never go in a pretty shop window: opium. Chests of opium shipped from India were unloaded at the riverside wharves and exchanged for silver. The silver went into the ledgers, and the boats sailed back out carrying tea and silk. In 1840, a war fought over opium forced open five ports on the Chinese coast. Three years later, Shanghai was opened to foreign trade. The Huangpu was deep enough for ships to dock, and goods could move inland along the Yangtze River and canals. Just two years after the port opened, the British marked out a concession along this riverbank and built wharves and warehouses. That land was the beginning of what later became the Bund. Foreign trading houses poured in. Jardine Matheson, founded in Guangzhou in 1832, was one of the earliest arrivals. As soon as Shanghai opened, it brought its business to this riverbank. The building at No. 27 on the Bund was not completed until 1922, but the company behind it has much deeper roots. Cambridge University Library holds the firm's old ledgers, and the pages are clear: opium was its most important early business. But to say opium alone made Shanghai would be to get it backwards. The war used opium to pry the door open, and once the door was open, far more than opium came through. Tea, silk, cotton, shipping, and insurance all entered along this river, one after another. Opium was this street's darkest beginning, not its whole story.

Chapter 1 · It Began at a Police Station

You might ask why the police didn’t arrest the gangs. But in old Shanghai, nobody would have dared ask that question, because the city’s most powerful gang boss wore a police uniform himself. The place where you’re standing was once the police station of the French Concession. Its roof held Shanghai’s first large chiming clock, and the whole area lived by its chimes. Foreigners ran the city but couldn’t grasp the ins and outs of the streets, so they relied on thousands of Chinese constables. The most important of these were Chinese detectives, who went into the streets to gather information for the foreigners. A young man in his twenties joined the force and started as a Chinese detective. He cracked cases quickly and rose all the way to superintendent, nearly the highest rank a Chinese officer could then reach. But his casework was not entirely honest. He bribed habitual thieves and burglars to act as informants, and he also fabricated cases himself and then solved them. Over time, the foreign bosses trusted him more and more. Beneath that police uniform, he built up another kind of fortune. His police post, his local gang network, and information that no one could trace: together, these three things were worth far more than a group of tough fighters. He was a gangster, but he wore a police uniform.

Chapter 1 · Writers in the Café

In the 1930s, a group of Shanghai writers kept going back to the same street. They had no meeting room, so they went to a café. On the corner of Duolun Road and North Sichuan Road there was a small café, said to have been opened by a Jewish man. The ground floor sold sweets and snacks, and upstairs had a few tables. On the second floor was a small room that could seat a dozen or so people, and the writers borrowed this room to discuss launching magazines and writing articles. Organizing meetings took place almost every week, sometimes every two or three days. But the café you see today is no longer the original building. The original was demolished in the 1990s, and the current one reopened later. They did not talk about business or romance. They talked about where the country should go and why the poor suffered so much. The oldest member of the group had come from Beijing and was already famous. While others drank coffee, he only wanted a cup of green tea. His name was Lu Xun. Lu Xun lived nearby and often invited young people here for long conversations that lasted half a day, so acquaintances called this café his second living room. Sometimes he would first meet people at a bookstore and then bring them here. In the autumn of 1929, they held their first meeting on the second floor to establish the group. At the time, no one imagined that the group would cost some of them their lives.

Chapter 1 · Oriental Pearl Tower

If you had stood on this bank of the Huangpu River in 1990 and looked up, there was nothing above you. Across the water, the Bund had already been busy for a hundred years. This side was farmland, docks, warehouses, and empty land that no one had yet decided what to do with. On April 18, 1990, China announced the development and opening up of Pudong. From that day, Shanghai's future was placed on this side of the river. The area already had a name: Lujiazui. It came from a Ming Dynasty official who retired here centuries ago, and from the bend the Huangpu River makes at this point. For hundreds of years it stayed quiet, with only ferries crossing back and forth. Building a new city here was not mainly about putting up buildings. The harder task was making people believe it would actually happen. First, there needed to be something visible from the opposite bank, something that showed this place was serious. So Shanghai put up a tower. The first pile was driven in 1991, and construction finished in 1994. At 468 meters, it was the tallest tower in Asia on the day it was completed. Eleven spheres were stacked one on top of another, like a stick of candied hawthorn raised into the air. From the Bund, the far bank had long been the part of Shanghai where the past was already settled. After that day, there was something new across the river, telling a story about a future that had not yet begun. But the tower was only the opening act. What really stayed in local conversation were the three even taller buildings behind it. Shanghainese nicknamed them the "Kitchen Three-Piece Set."

Chapter 1 · Two Men, One Math Book

More than four hundred years ago, two men met in Nanjing. One was a local scholar who had studied the Confucian classics since childhood and risen through the imperial examinations. The other was an Italian missionary named Matteo Ricci, who crossed oceans and traveled a long way to reach China. The missionary came to spread his faith. But he brought much more than religion: a world map, a chiming clock, and an entire European approach to understanding the world. What made the scholar stop and take notice was this method. He became the missionary's student and started from the beginning. The two men sat together at a table to do something no one had done before: translate into Chinese a mathematics book written by an ancient Greek more than two thousand years earlier. The book was Euclid's Elements. In 1607, the translation was printed. The Chinese terms still used today for point, line, straight line, plane, right angle, and parallel lines were all settled at that table. They weighed each word carefully, trying to make it clear without losing the original meaning. They translated only the first six books. For the scholar, discovering a completely different way of thinking mattered more than how much they translated. Later he became an official, eventually reaching a very high rank. He reformed the calendar, studied agriculture, and worked on water management. What he cared about most his whole life was knowledge itself. The Chinese man's name was Xu Guangqi. After his death, he was buried here. His descendants guarded the tomb and lived on for generations. Several rivers meet here, and over time the place became known as Xujiahui. Xu is his family name; hui means several rivers coming together.

Chapter 1 · A Bridge for His Mother

The bridge in front of you is Fangsheng Bridge, the largest surviving five-arch stone bridge in Shanghai. It is about 70 meters long and just over 5 meters wide, and after centuries it still stands firmly across the Caogang River. Yet when locals talk about it, they don't really talk about the bridge; they talk about a monk. Before the bridge was built, the only way across the river was by ferry. The boats were small, and when wind and waves rose, accidents happened. One year, a ferry capsized in a storm. A pregnant woman was thrown into the water. She refused to sink, fought her way to the shore, and gave birth to a child. She did not survive. The temple by the river took the child in. The monks said he had come with the tide, and that was how they named him. He grew up chanting sutras and sweeping floors, no different from the other young monks. Then one day he learned the truth about how he was born. He did not weep or throw a tantrum. He simply made a decision: he would build a bridge over the river where his mother had drowned, so that no one else would have to risk that deadly ferry. A penniless monk could only build a bridge through begging. He walked from one village to the next, knocking on door after door. That journey lasted fifteen years. The bridge was finally completed. More than four hundred years later, it stands in front of you. The story has been passed down through generations in Zhujiajiao. History can only confirm half of it. In the fifth year of the Longqing reign of the Ming dynasty, 1571, a monk did raise funds and build this bridge. After it was finished, he would regularly release captive fish and birds back into nature on the bridge, which is why it became known as Fangsheng Bridge, the Bridge of Setting Lives Free. The bridge and the monk who built it are documented, while the mother’s story cannot be proven. People in Zhujiajiao have kept both the historical record and the legend.