The art deco chandelier gave off a dim light and it was not long before the dread disease nostalgia set in, taking me back to 1937 Shanghai which I had previously visited only in novels and motion pictures.
Was that Noel Coward in the white suit, just getting in the elevator? He's probably going up to his suite to do some more work on his play "Private Lives."
Who could forget leggy, enigmatic Marlene Dietrich, in the 1930 film "Shanghai Express," on the train of the same name, telling a British military officer "It took more than one man to change my name to 'Shanghai Lily'?"
Or the pouting Poppy played by Gene Tierney in "Shanghai Gesture," another film (1941) directed by Josef von Sternberg?
Many authors have rhapsodized about Shanghai, none captured the city's idiosyncrasies better than J.G. Ballard in 'Empire of the Sun':
"As they stepped from their limousines at the Cathay Theater, the world's largest cinema, the women steered their long skirts through the honor guard of 50 hunchbacks in medieval costume. Three months earlier, when his parents had taken Jim to the premiere of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', there had been 200 hunchbacks, recruited by the management of the theater from every back alley in Shanghai. As always, the spectacle outside the theatre far exceeded anything shown on its screen."
Dusk was setting over the city. I asked the doorman to have my Packard brought from the garage.
"Where to?" the driver, Hong Kong Harry, wanted to know.
"The Shanghai Club." I said. It would be exciting to have a drink at the reputed "longest bar" in the world. The club is where London-style gentlemen's rules were strictly enforced and indiscretions were not treated lightly. A member's worst fate, according to legend, "was to be horse-whipped on the front steps of one's own club."
"Sorry, sir," the driver apologized. "The Shanghai Club is now the Dongfeng Hotel."
Frustrated, I told the driver to take me to the grand old building of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, also on the Bund. Just for a look at the famous stone lions guarding the entrance.
Hong Kong Harry threw up his hands. "Sorry, sir. The building is there but it was taken over by the city government first and then a firm. The lions are said to be in storage somewhere."
"All right then, take me to that big building across Soochow Creek from the Russian Consulate."
