The history of the Astor House Hotel, Shanghai 1922-1959 traces the development of the western first hotel in China, which was the successor of the Richards Hotel and Restaurant in Shanghai, China, from its sale to the Hongkong Hotels Limited in May 1922 to its renaming as the Pujiang Hotel in 1959.
The story of the Hotel 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." [1]
Under the leadership of Edward Ezra, the Astor House Hotel made a handsome profit. Ezra, intended to build "the biggest and best hotel in the Far East, a 14-storey hotel with 650 huge luxury bedrooms, including a 1500-seat dining hall and two dining rooms," on Bubbling Well Road.[2] Tragically, Ezra died on Thursday, 15 December 1921.[3] In 1922 Sir Ellis Kadoorie, one of the prominent members of the board of the Hong Kong Hotel Company, died aged 57, thus curtailing their expansion plans.[4]
On 12 May 1922 Ezra's 80% controlling interest in The Shanghai Hotels Limited was purchased for 2.5 million Mexican dollars by Hongkong Hotels Limited,[5][6] "Asia's oldest hotel company",[7][8] which already owned the Hongkong Hotel, as well as the Peak, Repulse Bay, and Peninsular Hotels in Kowloon; Messrs. William Powells Ltd., a large department store in Hong Kong; the Hong Kong Steam Laundry; and three large parking garages in Hong Kong.[5][6] Shanghai Hotels Limited, which was managed by Mr. E. Burrows, owned the Astor House Hotel, Kalee Hotel, Palace and Majestic Hotels in Shanghai and approximately 60% of The Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits in Beijing; the China Press; and China Motors Ltd., which owned parking garages.[5][6] The architect of the acquisition was James Harper Taggart (born 1885 in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia)[9] managing director of Hongkong Hotels Limited, who was of "Lowland Scot heritage, of evidently very humble parentage",[10] who was married to "an American millionaire heiress",[6] was described as "dynamic",[2] and as "diminutive and sharp-minded".[6] and who had been the former manager of the Hong Kong Hotel. Initially both Burrows and Taggart were joint managing directors of the new entity.[5] In October 1923 Taggart helped engineer the merger of Shanghai Hotels Limited and the Hongkong Hotel Company, to create Hong Kong & Shanghai Hotels, Limited with himself as managing director.[11]
Despite indicating in May 1922 that Ezra and Kadoorie's planned new "super hotel" to be built at Bubbling Well Road would proceed,[5] later Taggart decided to cancel the project, instead decided to create "new rendezvous and entertainment centres of Shanghai's social and business circles."[6] 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."[12] 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.[13] 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, were offered for sale.[14] By the early 1920s, the Astor House Hotel had become "an international institution in fame and reputation."[15] 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.[16] The Shanghai Stock Exchange was housed at the Astor House Hotel from 1920 until 1949.[17] 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.[12]
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[18] 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."[19]
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.[20] 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."[21] Additionally, the large public spaces created in the previous renovations were not proving profitable.[22]
The owners began remodelling the hotel again in 1923 to "keep up with the Shanghai passion for nightly entertainment."[15] The ground floor was remodelled, and "its grill-room soon earned distinction."[23] They commissioned architect Mr. A. Lafuente to design the dining room and ballroom.[24] On Saturday, 22 December 1923, the new ballroom was opened formally with 350 invited guests.[24] The North-China Herald described the ballroom:
The light blue walls decorated with maidens and sylphs dancing in the open spaces, are surmounted by the plaster reliefs for the indirect lighting system suspended from the ceiling, while high on the marble pillars beautifully cast female figures appear to support the roof. Probably the most novel feature of the decorative scheme, excepting the incandescent mirrors was the peacock shell utilized by the orchestra.[24]
The initial Astor House orchestra had eight members under the direction of "Whitey" Smith.[24] Later the resident Astor Orchestra was directed by Alex Bershadsky, a White Russian emigré,[25] while the orchestra of Ben Williams, the first American orchestra to travel to Shanghai, also played at the Astor House.[26]
By April 1924 the manager was Jacques Kiass.[27] 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.[28] During the First Jiangsu-Zhejiang War, conflict between the armies of General Sun Chuanfang, warlord of Fukien, and rival warlord General Lu Yongxiang of Chekiang, an evening fire caused damage at the Astor House Hotel on 17 October, 1924, and forced the evacuation of guests and hundreds of Chinese servants.[29] As a result of the shooting of Chinese protesters on May 30, 1925 by Shanghai Municipal Police, an anti-foreign strike in Shanghai by Chinese domestic servants, students, and other workers, affected the Astor House Hotel by early June,,[30] resulting in their American jazz band players serving as waiters at the Hotel.[31]
Isabel Peake Duke recalled being at a tea dance at the Astor during an earthquake in 1926, during which "the walls of the hotel were visibly shaking and swaying".[32] At this time the tea dances were held daily (except Sundays) between 5pm and 7pm. Duke indicates that for the price of one Mexican dollar (about 35 US cents), the Paul Whiteman Orchestra played the romantic dance tunes of the period, and included sandwiches, cream and cakes. Her only complaint was the lack of air-conditioning, necessitating overhead ceiling fans and fountains of water to keep the dancers cool in the summer months.[32] 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."[33] At one time Chinese visitors were not allowed into the lobby or the elevator. However, by now, "smartly dressed Chinese youngsters, Shanghai's jeunesse dorée,[34] enjoyed the tea dance at the Astor House."[35] 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."[36] 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."[37]
During the Chinese Civil War the Astor House Hotel was struck by bullets on March 21, 1927.[38] Admiral General Pi shu-chen (Pi Shou-chen) leader of the anti-Communist Shantung forces who defended Shanghai against the Kuomintang forces from Canton,[39] and who negotiated the surrender of the city to Chiang Kai-shek on March 21,[40][41] stayed in the Astor House Hotel[42] until 25 March 1927.[43] Pi was executed in Suzhou on March 28, 1927 for his failure to defend Shanghai.[44][45]
In 1927 the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai was included in Robert Ludy's Historic Hotels of the World, where it was indicated that "the Astor House Hotel...has been the principal hostelry for more than fifty years."[46] Ludy further indicates that the Hotel was one of the three hotels in Shanghai where all the important foreign visitors to Shanghai stay, and that "it is not only possible to enjoy modern conveniences in these Chinese hotels, but they are quite as well equipped as those found in America or Europe."[46] In 1929 the officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps were impressed with the standard of accommodation: "The rooms at the Astor House Hotel are very comfortable, central heating, bathroom attached, hot and cold water ad lib. The hotel charges were $12 a day, about 25 s[hillings]., inclusive of food and everything, but you have to have your meals in the big dining room."[47]
By November 1928 the manager was H.O. "Henry" Wasser.[48] 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."[49] By 1930, Kammerling was one of the Hotel's managers.[50]
Despite the 1923 renovations, by 1930 the Astor House Hotel was no longer the pre-eminent hotel in Shanghai. The completion of the Cathay Hotel in 1929, "threw a painful shadow upon the old-fashioned Astor House."[51] 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."[52] 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."[53] 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.[54] While the Astor House was less expensive than the Cathay Hotel, it also lacked air-conditioning.[55] 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.[56]
James Lafayette Hutchison, on his return to the Astor House in the 1930s after several years absence in the United States, noticed no changes: "I walked across the bridge and registered at the old Astor House Hotel.... The same subdued, cavernous lobby with the same white-gowned boys leaning against the tall pillars, the same mystic maze of halls leading to a sparsely furnished bedroom." Further, he described the Astor House as "a faded green, cavern-like wooden structure, with tall rooms smelling of must and mildew"."[57] According to Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair, by 1931 the Shanghai Press Club used the Astor as their regular meeting place,[58] and overseas Chinese frequently stayed there.[59]
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.[60] 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."[61] 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.[62]
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."[63] The fighting and shelling in the vicinity of the Astor House Hotel "resulted in consternation among the guests",[64] but the arrival of four American naval vessels on 1 February 1932 partially alleviated their concerns.[65] 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.[66] However, despite "many Chinese shells" falling in the vicinity of the Astor House that night, the American guests refused initially to evacuate the Hotel,[67] but by 30 April "many guests moved out of the Astor House hotel",[53] along with most non-Japanese residents of the Hongkou district.
On 27 February 1932 Japanese sailors pursued Chinese Brigadier General Ken Wang (Wang Keng or Wang Kang) (born 1895),[68] then a recent a West Point graduate,[69] whom they believed to be a spy,[70] into the lobby of the Astor House Hotel and arrested him,[71] in violation of the international law that operated in the International Settlement,[72] without explanation or apologies, and refused to turn him over to the police of the International Settlement.[73] After a strike of Astor House employees,[74] and a scare caused by a "convivial guest" throwing an empty bottle out of one of the Hotel's windows at midnight,[75] eventually Wang was released but detained by the Nanjing government,[76] which was forced to deny three weeks later that Wang had been executed for treason.[77]
By 1934 "the Astor House Hotel's tea dances and classical concerts [were] popular...during the Winter season."[78] 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."[79] One of the more interesting frequent visitors to the Astor House Hotel was Mr. Mills, a gibbon, who accompanied American journalist Emily Hahn,[80] the sometime paramour of Sir Victor Sassoon, from 1935 until her departure for Hong Kong in 1941.[80] 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.[81] 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".[82] 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."[83]
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.[84] 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.[85] Subsequently Japanese troops seized the Astor House Hotel,[86] but by 18 August, the Hotel management recaptured the Astor House.[87] In the following days, some 18,000 to 20,000 Europeans, Americans and Japanese evacuated to Hong Kong, Manila, and Japan,[88] including Lawrence and Horace Kadoorie, who fled to Hong Kong.[89] The Hotel was damaged again on 14 October 1937 by bombs from planes of the Chinese government and shells from Japanese naval guns.[90] On 4 November 1937 a Chinese torpedo boat launched a torpedo in an attempt to sink the Japanese cruiser Izumo,[91] then "lying moored to the Nippon Yusen Kaisha wharf close to the Japanese Consulate General, just east of the mouth of Soochow Creek",[88] near to the Garden Bridge,[92] exploded outside the Astor House breaking several windows.[93] American foreign correspondent Irène Corbally Kuhn,[94] one of the writers of the 1932 film, The Mask of Fu Manchu, and then a reporter for The China Press,[95] described the hotel as "the most famous inn on the China coast, redundantly identified as the Astor House Hotel,"[96] and also the damage inflicted upon it during the 1937 Japanese invasion: "from the street the boards were up over the shop fronts."[97] On 23 November 1937, it was reported that "The Japanese at present have the Astor House Hotel filled with socalled Chinese traitors".[98]
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.[15] The Astor House Hotel was occupied by the Japanese YMCA for two years, until 1939.[99] The Japanese subsequently leased the hotel for a three-year term to another party, with "a reasonable return" remitted to the absent owners.[100] 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 anti-communist alliance with the Axis Powers: Japan, Italy and Germany against Soviet Union.[101]
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"[102] veteran American journalist Carroll Duard Alcott (1901–1965),[103] "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.[104] The jamming continued by the Japanese from the top floor of the Astor House.[105] 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,[106] refused to quit his broadcasts, but eventually departed Shanghai on 14 September 1941 on board the President Harrison,[107] after four years of broadcasts.[108]
During the Japanese occupation the Astor House was also used to house prominent British (and later American) nationals captured by the Japanese.,[109] Later the Astor House Hotel was used as the Japanese General headquarters,[110] before being leased as a hotel for the duration of the war. In late June 1944 the Japanese held "an elaborate ceremony at the Astor House Hotel in which the titles of six public utilities in Shanghai, including electricity, gas, waterworks, telephone, telegraph and tram service were transferred to the Nanjing Government."[111]
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."[112] Hibbard indicates "the hotel fared badly in the war and extensive refurbishment bills were deferred following its requisition by the US Army",[113] in September 1945. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd (HKSH) leased the hotel to the US Army until June 1946.[114] 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".[115]
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[116] from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd (HKSH) in 1947. Its address was listed as 2 Ta Ming Road, Shanghai.[117] 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. The hotel was "filled with members of organisations involved in the post-war reconstruction of China, including the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association".[113] 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.[118] 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.
On 19 April 1954 the Hotel was confiscated[119] 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. Prior to the Hotel's re-opening as the Pujiang Hotel in 1959, "the building had been used by a tea and textile trading company as offices and dormitories, as well as by the Chinese Navy."[120]