No_5_July_and_August__1950 — Page 20

SHANGHAI INFLUENCE IN NEW RESIDENCE

Telephoto view of the building.

Although there are many points of similarity between Shanghai and Hong Kong, their development has been along such entirely different lines as to make them historically and physiographically speaking as far apart as the two poles. The two cities are only 700 miles apart on the Pacific coast of China, they have been developed during practically the same period by foreign enterprise as advance trading posts with China, and outwardly appear to have the common characteristics one would expect from their parallel develop-

ment.

However, those who know Hong Kong and Shanghai well, will immediately reject any claim as to their similarity. We are, of course, referring to the Shanghai previous to 1937, as Shanghai to-day is but a mere shell of the city that at one time was the fourth largest in the world.

In the first place Hong Kong has always been, as a British Colony, directly and constantly influenced by British ideas and British example. It has been, through the 100 years of its history, a small branch of the British Isles in the Far East, the majority of its occidental residents being Britishers who have come directly to its shores from schools and homes, professions and businesses in Great Britain. The consequences

of this have been that in spite of its increasing size and rapid growth, it has never developed beyond the insular characteris- tics of the Britisher and British influence. Victorian commer- cial practices were followed in Hong Kong and Victorian architecture was copied in the Colony in all its glorious grotesqueness. During the twentieth century, as the Colony continued to flourish, foreign influence became more and more manifest. Representatives of all countries, European, American and Asiatic, came to establish branches in Hong Kong, and as time went on acquired considerable wealth and influence here, yet these divergent factors in no whit disturbed the predominating British tone.

Shanghai, on the other hand, started off as a British Settlement, which was soon flanked by a French Concession, The growth of Shanghai, however, was considerably more rapid than that of Hong Kong and the foreign influences there, from the United States particularly, and from all European nations, soon turned the British Settlement into an inter- national one. This soon manifested itself in a far more vigorous and far more cosmopolitan development, that con- tained a great many of the faults, but, at the same time, the vigour of the early stages of modern development.

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First floor plan of the building from the front.

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Ground floor plan from the rear, where entrances are located

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