Robert Hart and the Chinese Maritime Customs
The ledger at Ningbo in 1854 was a bad ledger. Robert Hart, who had come out to China the year before at nineteen with…
24 min read
Tag
Shanghai
Secret War in Shanghai
In July 1940 a young woman calling herself Princess Sumaire stepped off a boat from India and took a suite at the Cathay Hotel…
19 min read
Jewish Shanghai of Refugees and Tycoons
Between 1938 and 1941, as country after country closed its doors to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, a Chinese port city under Japanese military pressure…
14 min read
The Long History of Shanghai’s Bund
Stand on the riverside promenade in central Shanghai and you face two centuries at once. Behind you, along a curve of the Huangpu River…
14 min read
How Pudong Was Built on Mud
Every evening crowds gather on the Bund to photograph the towers across the Huangpu. The view is so familiar that it is easy to…
14 min read
Shanghai’s Maglev and the Future That Stalled
Step off Line 2 of the Shanghai Metro at Longyang Road and you reach the platform of one of the strangest railways in the…
14 min read