Bonus Episode: Emily Hahn’s Shanghai

If you enjoyed our deep dive into the life of the New Yorker correspondent, Emily Hahn wild times in China, you won’t want to miss this special bonus episode. Sarah sits down with Tina Kanagarathnam of Historic Shanghai to answer the burning question: What is actually left of Emily’s world?

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From the smell of the Huangpu River to the preserved Art Deco apartment where Emily lived (and kept her pet gibbons), Tina reveals the ghosts of the 1930s International Settlement. Whether you are planning a trip to China or just armchair traveling, tune in to discover the hidden ballrooms, surviving bookstores, and jazz haunts that defined an era of glamour and chaos.

Sarah and Tina map out a specific “Emily Hahn Loop” you can walk today, taking you from the grandeur of the Peace Hotel (formerly the Cathay) to the exact apartment building on the old “Red Light” line where Emily wrote her early dispatches. We discuss what has been demolished, what has been gentrified, and the surprising corners where the spirit of Old Shanghai is still very much alive.

A co-founder of Historic Shanghai, Tina is an award-winning writer and, in her almost 30 years in the magic city, has authored several books and numerous articles on Shanghai. These include the original Insight Guides Shanghai guidebook, the Zagat Guide to Shanghai, and two historic walking guides to the city. She also wrote a column on historic Shanghai architecture for the Shanghai Daily for several years.

Know a friend who loves 1930s jazz, Art Deco architecture, or just a good travel story? Forward this dispatch their way and help them plan their next mental escape.

Podcast Transcript: Emily Hahn’s Shanghai

Host: Sarah Keenlyside | Guest: Tina Kanagarathnam (Historic Shanghai)

Introduction: The Emily Hahn Bonus Episode

Sarah (00:08)

Hi everyone, it’s Sarah. And today we’re going to be doing an Emily Hahn episode companion podcast, a bonus podcast, if you like, about how you can follow in her footsteps today. We want to go in a bit more depth about Shanghai because it’s such a wonderful city that I’ve spent a lot of time in. And today the person who is still there and knows even more about it than I do—much more about it than I do in fact—is Tina Kanagarathnam from Historic Shanghai.

Tina and her team have led deeply researched walking tours that bring the city’s past to life. For those of you who don’t know, I have a travel company called Bespoke Travel Company and we’ve worked with Historic Shanghai for many years. And yes, I can tell you that our clients, our guests, always absolutely love their tours. And so, there’s really no one better to speak to about Emily Hahn and the places that she went and that still exist that were in her orbit back in the 30s than Tina. So welcome, Tina, to the podcast.

Tina (01:10)

Thank you, and thank you for that very wonderful and warm introduction.

Sarah (01:14)

So let’s start. Let’s jump straight in. Obviously, Emily, she’s a real character. If you haven’t already listened to the podcast that we did, the episode that we did on Emily to our listeners, please go back and have a listen. Jeremiah and I talk in depth about her journey from America to Shanghai and beyond.

And today, we really want to jump straight in and find out a little bit about what Emily would have seen in 1935. For a traveler arriving around that time, Tina, what do you think Shanghai would have felt like to her on day one when she first stepped foot in the city?

First Impressions: The Bund and the Skyline

Tina (01:53)

Well, one of the best things about Shanghai is that history is all around us in terms of the buildings. And in those days, people came by ship. And so what Emily would have seen as she came down the Huangpu River would have been pretty much what a traveler today standing on the Bund would see. That is, all the buildings of the Bund. There were a couple that weren’t yet built in 1935 when she arrived in the spring, but the vast majority of the buildings were there.

It would have been—and again, this is not alien to anybody who’s lived in China—it would have been a city under construction because this was the period between the wars and things were going crazy money-wise. People were building and building and building. So, Emily, her first sight would have been the Bund. And the nice thing is, if you want to walk in Emily’s footsteps, all you have to do is just, you know, go down to the Bund and turn around and you’ll see the Peace Hotel where she spent a lot of time with her buddy Victor Sassoon.

Sarah (03:03)

And Tina, if we were to explain to someone who doesn’t know what the Bund is, can you explain what that is? Because I think before I went to China, also, I kept hearing this word and I didn’t actually know what it was referring to. In fact, for a long time, I thought it was referring to the other side of the river where the tall flashy buildings are.

Tina (03:07)

No, where the new buildings are. So the “Bund” is actually an Anglo-Indian term that just means the embankment of a river. And there are bunds all over the British colonies. The word came from, obviously, their colonies in India. But the Shanghai Bund is the most famous.

And it was known as the Wall Street of Asia. So it was basically the strip—it’s about a mile long—where all the banks and financial companies, a couple of hotels, were all built between the 1880s and currently the last one was 1948. And it’s interesting because it also tells you a little bit about how Shanghai progressed because the first buildings to be built on the Bund were the 1860s. But Shanghai’s DNA has always been: What is the latest? What’s the newest? What’s the most modern? So they just kept knocking down and building up and knocking down and building up. And I always say that if not for the communist Revolution in 1949, the Bund would look very different. It was a gift that it was frozen for 50 years. So we can see Emily’s Shanghai.

Sarah (04:39)

And I think it’s quite surprising to some people because it’s very European looking, isn’t it? It’s not necessarily what you’d expect when you think of Chinese buildings. You think of sort of temples and peaked roofs. And of course, this really famous waterfront is very European looking, isn’t it? Can you explain why briefly?

Tina (04:55)

It is very European because at that point, that part of the city was the International Settlement, which was governed by 14 different countries, but let’s say primarily Britain and America were sort of the leading forces. But on the Bund, you will find countries from all over the world. There’s Russian buildings, there’s Bank of China, there’s Japanese banks. There are hotels owned by Baghdadi Jewish businessmen. So it was a very international strip.

But yes, all the buildings did look very European. I’ve been told that it looks a lot like Liverpool. And that’s also because even if you were a Japanese bank or a French bank or a Russian bank, that was the status style of the era. You wanted to look Western. You weren’t going to be building a Russian building. You weren’t going to be building a fully Chinese building, although the Bank of China does have some Chinese elements.

The Sensory Experience of 1930s Shanghai

Sarah (05:58)

And if you had to choose one sound or one smell or one sight that sort of defines interwar Shanghai, what would they be? Bit of a tricky question, but...

Tina (06:09)

One sound. Well, you know, I think the sound... two things. People when they arrived in Shanghai, they always talk about the smell, the smell of the river. You know, there was a stench. People lived on the rivers. They lived on the Sampans and they, you know, waste went into the water. And so these Europeans who’d gone through these month-long voyages, they’d arrive in Shanghai and the first thing they’d do would step out—and if it was the summer, it would be unbearable heat—and they would smell this pretty awful stench. So that was your arrival smell.

But if there was a sound, I think it was also the sounds of the bells. There were all these vendors who would sell all kinds of—whether it was food or wares—and actually until very recently, they’d still go up and down the streets, you know, fixing your umbrella. And they all had different cries. You know, they’d have different sounds. So that is another part of the soundscape, I think.

The other thing that every single person who lived in old Shanghai talks about is the dead babies on the street. Because it was, you know, it was difficult times. Sometimes people couldn’t afford more children and they would wrap them up in rattan. And people talk about, you know, like kids, you know, they’d say that on their way to school, they know if they saw something wrapped up in rattan, what it was, and they just walk around and avoid it. And then trucks would come and carry them away. Every single person who lived in old Shanghai talks about the dead babies on the street. So that’s something that was there and was never forgotten.

Sarah (07:54)

So quite confronting actually for Emily. Probably wouldn’t have been... well, very much not like what it is today. But in terms of the buildings, they’re the sort of stalwarts that haven’t left, thankfully.

Emily Hahn’s Haunts: Where She Lived and Worked

Sarah (08:21)

So we know, obviously, Emily