Shanghai Daily news

Two photographs from the book,“A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai,”show a rarely seen view of an old residential area under snow and part of the Morris Estate in the former French Concession.(Photo:Deke Erh)

Shanghai photojournalist Deke Erh and American author Tess Johnston first told the history of Shanghai through her architecture with their 1993 classic `A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai.' Since then, the skyline has changed, the archives have opened, and in response, an updated edition of the book was launched. Tina Kanagaratnam talks to the preservationist pioneers.

The cult of old Shanghai is booming. The December 2004 issue of Architectural Digest tosses off a reference to Shanghai Art Deco furniture as if it were as well known as Heppelwhite. Michelin chefs are bypassing Hong Kong and opening restaurants in historic Shanghai buildings (whose prices are skyrocketing). Around the city, bars, restaurants and fashion designers evoke the romance of old Shanghai.
The credit for jump-starting this revival, at least in some measure, must go to Shanghai photojournalist Deke Erh and American author and longtime Shanghai resident Tess Johnston. Their book, ``A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai,'' published in 1993, was the first to document Shanghai's pre-1949 architecture -- and the glamour and style of that legendary era. The book sold out three times and has been out of print for four years. With interest historic Shanghai growing and the skyline undergoing dramatic changes, the pair decided to reissue a revised edition of the book, which was launched at M on the Bund earlier this month.
``I actually didn't want to reprint the book,'' says Erh, a soft-spoken ponytailed artist who speaks with the earnestness of a man with a mission. ``I wanted to redo it, re-photograph some of the pictures, because I thought they could have been better. But what I found in trying to re-create the photographs was that so many of the buildings had disappeared forever, or had been changed beyond recognition.''
Erh first picked up a camera as a teenager during the ``cultural revolution'' (1966-76) because ``we had plenty of time then, and I needed something to do.'' Saddled with a ``bad family background'' -- his grandfather, Y.H. Erh, was recruited into the US Navy, awarded a medal for acts of heroism during World War II, and became an American citizen; his father worked for Texaco -- Erh says that he just wanted to get away from the city, where all his associations were negative.
He traveled the countryside, photographing what he calls ``feudal society,'' which was completely new to him, fresh and interesting. By the 1980s, however, the countryside had started to change, and when he turned his attention back to the city, he realized that Shanghai had a treasure trove of historic architecture. ``Nobody was interested back then,'' he says, with the barest hint of irony. ``Not even the professors at Tongji University (noted for its preservationist architectural faculty).''
It was around then that Shanghai-born author Lynn Pan saw some of Erh's work, and introduced him to a friend of hers, who was also fascinated with old Shanghai architecture: Tess Johnston.
Divided into four broad areas -- Commerce, Public Buildings, Residences, Entertainment and Religion, the revised edition contains many of the original photographs, but Erh and Johnston have added newly discovered information and images.
``When we first published the book, there was so little information available,'' says Johnston. ``The destruction of old Shanghai was one reason to do a new book; new information was the other.''
``A Last Look'' is like a grandmother's well-documented photograph album -- you never realized what a beauty she was in her youth, you never had any idea how much fun she had. You recognize the lines of her face, and you learn something new. A photograph of architect Ladislau Hudec's stunning Byzantine-roofed church, beautifully landscaped and set in the countryside, is juxtaposed with a contemporary shot of the buildings, coated with the patina of age, abandoned and barely visible above the trees. There are old photographs of the staff of the Shanghai Waterworks having a party; new sections on the factories and the Japanese in wartime Shanghai. Contemporary photographs are interspersed with vintage images and tantalizing bits of old Shanghai from the authors' extensive collection -- silverware from the Cercle Sportif Francais, a pass for admission into the Customs House; ashtrays bearing the name ``Ewo,'' as the British hong Jardine Matheson was known.
This is possibly the finest architectural reference book for pre-1949 Western architecture in Shanghai, but it is not, by any means, a dry tome. Johnston has a wonderfully chatty writing style, bringing old Shanghai to life with juicy tidbits as well as good information. We learn the names of architects, of important Shanghai families like the Kwoks, and of important citizens, like Victor Sassoon, but we also learn that ``the secretary general (of the Shanghai Municipal Council)'s office was headed up by a short rotund American lawyer named Sterling Fessenden. A lifelong bachelor, he could be seen at weekend tea dances tangoing across the floor with Olga, his tall and striking Russian mistress.''
Two decades ago, when Erh and Johnston began documenting the city's architectural history, Shanghai was a very different place.
``I had never seen anything like it,'' says Johnston, who arrived in Shanghai in 1981 on a tour of duty with the US Foreign Service. The Virginia native -- who retains a charming Southern drawl, in English and Chinese -- had lived all over the world with the Foreign Service, but ``I had never been to a foreign country that looked so utterly and completely Western. It was perfectly preserved, a cross between Warsaw in 1938 and Calcutta, a totally Western city with an Asian population.''
But in 1981, the city's pre-1949 Western architecture was considered little more than an embarrassing reminder of forced foreign domination, and the history of many of these buildings was unknown and presumed lost. In addition, many of the buildings were inaccessible. It added to the challenge, but the pair doggedly soldiered on, photographing and documenting what they could. Johnston augmented her knowledge with trips to the markets and bookstores, where books on old Shanghai were still plentiful.
Erh and Johnston quickly realized that this museum of pre-1949 architecture could not last. That first book, and this one, is nothing less than a crusade, as the introduction to the revised edition says, ``to preserve these Western monuments for future generations through our photographs, our research, and the collective memories of the buildings' former architects, builders and tenants.''
It is a crusade made all the more urgent by Shanghai's rapid development. Both Erh and Johnston have felt the effects personally: Erh's home and adjoining Erh Folk Art Museum are to be leveled to make way for new and expensive housing -- ``my fourth relocation in 10 years,'' he sighs. Development plans for the Huaihai Apartments (formerly the Gascogne) also forced Johnston had to move out of the building, where she had lived in five different flats over 12 years.
Both lament the resulting ``thinning of old buildings,'' and unthinking renovations that strip interiors of their original details. Says Erh, ``development does not mean that we must destroy the old city and rebuild a new one on its former site.''
It is unlikely that Shanghai will suffer that fate, and for that we have Erh and Johnston to thank. Their book is at once a record of history and a compelling argument as to why it needs to be preserved.

``A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai'' by Tess Johnston and Deke Erh, Old China Hand Press (Hong Kong), 2004, 500 yuan.
Available at The Old China Hand Reading Room (27 Shaoxing Rd).
Tel: 6473-2526