For a time, Shanghai was the wickedest city in the world and a port of call for international adventurers.

In the Twentieth Century, a handful of cities became legendary- and for a time in the twenties and thirties, there was one place known as the wickedest city in the world- it was Shanghai.

For the Chinese, Shanghai meant openness and modernity - the Paris of Asia. For tourists, Shanghai was the whore of the East. The city became a standard port of call for adventurers from around the world and its star grew as a city of vice with everything for sale.

In this Sin City, perhaps the only elusive commodity for the Chinese was power. Shanghai had been carved up into foreign concessions after China's defeat in the Opium wars of the 1800s and the British, with their posh clubs and colonial attitude were by far the most powerful group in the city, followed closely by the French. The foreigners brought with them their own military, courts, police and even their own architecture. Insulated as they were, the Shanghailanders built up immunity to the poverty around them, ignoring all that they saw as ugly and squalid.

Gangsters ruled the streets where illegitimate business like prostitution, gambling and drug dealing thrived.

Enterprise ruled Shanghai, whether legitimate or not. In this city of 4 million, there were an estimated 100,000 prostitutes plying their trade from streetwalkers to courtesans. Gangs proliferated, mostly under the control of Big Ears Du and Pock Marked Huang who doubled as gang lords and police detectives. With their ties to the French officials, they supplied the concession with opium, ran the gambling houses and inflicted severe punishments on their enemies. One gruesome punishment involved cutting every tendon of the victim's body, including the Achilles and the tongue.

With abductions a daily occurrence, home security was a priority for both foreign and Chinese magnates. One nationality had cornered the market on protection- the White Russians. Once well-to-do pillars of Old Russia, they found themselves exiled after the revolution. The men worked as guards or chauffeurs but many of the women ended up in the entertainment industry or prostitution. For both the Europeans and the Chinese, a White Russian mistress became a common accessory.

Among the foreigners, few cut a more arresting figure than cigar-smoking journalist Emily Hahn. She traveled with her pet gibbon perched on her shoulder, lived in a renovated bordello and had affairs with Shanghai's most fascinating men - Chinese Poet Sinmay Zau and aristocrat Sir Victor Sassoon. An acknowledged playboy, Sir Victor had revitalized the family dynasty, which had its roots in the opium trade, by building the luxurious Cathay Hotel, where he hosted the city's most lavish costume parties.

There were many classes of prostitutes - at the top were the 'sing-song' girls.

The party, however, was over when in 1937, Japan invaded China. By the end of the summer, the Chinese sections of the city had turned into a lawless badlands where abductions, torture and death became commonplace. The international settlements dispersed, with women and children sent home first. As many Shanghailanders said their last goodbyes, however, another group of refugees flooded into the city - European Jews, escaping Hitler to one of the only places in the world still open to them.

The Shanghai that had flourished in this uneasy mix of Chinese and foreigners, of corruption and religious rectitude, of poets and revolutionaries was coming to an end. But it left an indelible mark: for the Chinese, Shanghai's creative energy and political ferment was a crucible of change; for the Shanghailanders, the city became the stuff of legend.

BACK TO CBC DOCUMENTARIES

Print this page

^TOP

Purchase Legendary Sin Cities on DVD at the CBC Shop.