Peace Hotel

SIMON FIELDHOUSE

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No 20 THE PEACE HOTEL - SHANGHAI

No 20 The Peace Hotel

Like an Art Deco rocket ship arising from the impassioned waters of the Huangpu River, the Cathay Hote’ of the lQ3Os was a powerful symbol of thrusting Shanghai society. Sleek and elegant, modest in outward adornment, rich and extravagant in its heart, the mood of Shanghai exuded from its walls. The Cathay was much more than a socia’ institution. It was the body of Shanghai an anchor of stability and familiarity and a Ferris wheel of novelty and surprise. Embodying a vision of the future, it housed the best of the past in a sublime mélange of reality and fantasy. Though distinct in physical form, the Cathay Hotel was a chameleon being conjured from the minds of a variegated Shanghai society. Construction of the revolutionary five-million dollar Sassoon House began in the spring of 1926. Tug Wilson had originally designed the building as a 150-foot high office and shopping complex with just 20 luxury residential apartments above. The building work, which was underpinned by no less than 1,600 wood and concrete piles, proceeded on schedule until four floors had been completed, when a halt to the operation was called in mid 1928. Victor Sassoon had just established Cathay Hotels, Ltd. in Hong Kong and delivered a new edict to convert the upper part of his building into a luxury hotel. He came up to Shanghai and oversaw Wilson’s altered designs, which included the addition of two extra floors, as well as a rearrangement of the ground floor area.

Wilson modelled the hotel’s interior around an arsenal of fashionable Lalique lights. They were to be everywhere—even the illuminated bathroom shaving mirrors were of Lalique glass Wilson had more than a fanciful interest in the hotel as he was one of the directors of Cathay Hotels, Ltd. alongside others, including William McBain of No. 1 The Bund, Jack Macgregor of Caldbeck, Macgregor & Co., as well as H. E. Arnhold who had his offices in Sassoon House and was chairman of the SMC. Sassoon’s right hand man from India, Commander F. R. Davey, previously head of E. D. Sassoon & Co. in Calcutta, followed Sassoon to Shanghai, as a director, as did Mr. E. Carrard, the new hotel’s manager. Carrard was formerly manager of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. The Cathay Hotel formally opened on 1” August 1929. Many critics and sceptics foretold of failure, arguing that Shanghai already had far too many hotel rooms. Others suggested that it was too large, too lavish and too expensive. They were all proved wrong as the hotel lived up to its epithet as the ‘Claridges of the Far East.’ The opening of the Cathay heralded a new era for Shanghai and indeed Far Eastern hotels a pace-setter brimming with the latest amenities and luxuries and a monument to the marriage of art and technology. The advent of the Cathay Hotel also cast a note of optimism for the future of Shanghai in that Victor Sassoon had so wholeheartedly committed himself to such a grandiose and futuristic venture. The first guest to inscribe her name in the register at the Cathay was a rising playwright, Mrs. ‘Buddy’ Hazel of New Jersey.

The Cathay provided the ultimate venue for life’s pleasures. On the culinary front M. Victor Boudard, the rotund head chef, presided over the most modern kitchen in China. His 70 Chinese cooks, and one French and one English chef drew upon the best- stocked foreign larder in the city brimming with Californian peaches, Persian figs, Russian caviar, German hams, Italian cheeses, Parisian foie gras and Australian butter. And whilst the cuisine was legendary, the Cathay was best known for catering to the Shanghailanders in their exhaustive search for amusement. The Cathay thrived on entertainment— from musical folly to classical concerts, from fanciful tea dances and impromptu cocktail parties to pompous balls. There were events for the social elite, the favoured, the opportune, and for the passing world tourist apt to dispense with a stock of dollars in excess of the number of minutes spoiled in Shanghai. Sassoon was renowned for his fancy dress parties, often bordering on the bizarre and perverse, in the Cathay ballroom. At his shipwreck party in 1933 he donned blue trousers, beret and scarlet shirt, and dangled a hot water bottle from his waist. Shanghai’s most respected citizens, wearing nightgowns and pyjamas, ambled round the hotel half clad finding courage in a cocktail glass as well as in the absurdity of their dress.

The North China Daily News picked out Mary Hayley Bell, for her courage in wearing a flannel nightdress with her hair in curlers, looking ‘very much prettier than most girls could in that dress.’ Hayley Bell, the daughter of a colonel who worked as a Chinese Maritime Customs official, was to meet her future husband, the late Sir John Mills, whilst he was on tour with the Quaints theatre group in Shanghai. Despite rumours that Sir Victor was to cut back on his entertaining, the 1934 party season kicked off with a schoolroom frolic where guests were invited to dress for a school and supper party. The Cathay ballroom was transformed into a giant classroom complete with blackboards, maps and other instruments of learning. Old school songs were promenaded by the orchestra with children’s games, including musical chairs and Ring a Ring 0’ Roses adding an element of rough and tumble. Very much at the head, Sir Victor, frocked in a gown with mortar board, wielded a formidable birch cane at all those who came in range! Whilst the school party was strictly for grown-ups, Sassoon also arranged special ‘toy parties’ for Shanghai’s privileged progenies. A circus party was thrown soon after, with guests appearing as seals, donkeys and circus acts, including one as a tattooed lady. Sir Victor ruled over events in a scarlet ringmaster’s coat this time wielding a whip! It was often remarked that Sassoon would whimsically get his own back on the pillars of the British community at his parties. Whilst he was the most powerful and wealthy amongst them, his Jewish heritage excluded rum from full membership. He was even denied membership of the most exclusive British clubs. His frequent comings and goings to preside over his racing establishment in India, and elsewhere, called for an unceasing round of revelry.

The Cathay ballroom was also popular with Shanghai’s young Americans who threw private parties much in the same mould as Sir Victor’s affairs. Once a group, who appeared as scavengers, imported a complete roadside Chinese kitchen into the ballroom and set about a treasure hunt featuring live chickens, cockroaches and frogs. On a more regular basis the Cathay ballroom was Shanghai’s premier Saturday night venue. On such nights Sir Victor could usually be found at a long table as host to large groups of friends, being entertained by dancing troupes on their rounds of the world’s best hotels and cabarets. Opening nights were gala affairs giving the Shanghai elite a chance to parade their latest Paris fashions. Americans, Harris and Yvonne Ashburn, and the Di Gaetano dancers made a sensational debut, with their mix of classical, tap and acrobatics, in October 1935 when Sir Victor’s 100 or so guest list read like a Who’s Who of Shanghai. China’s most respected diplomat, Dr. Wellington Koo and his wife, the Countess de Courelles, together with representatives of Shanghai’s most established families including the Ezras, Hayims and the McBains, and his friend Emily Hahn were amongst those invited. Sassoon was rarely seen without his camera or cine-camera in hand at such events and Hahn later recounted how he liked to photograph her naked. She was also frequently to be seen with Sassoon at his private box at the race club. On most evenings Henry Nathan’s All American Dance Orchestra took the stage, apart from Monday nights when Mr. Federoff’s Cathay Concert Orchestra performed three hours of classical and operatic numbers.

The Cathay Hotel was no stranger to the rich and famous. Noel Coward is popularly credited with having written Private Lives whilst staying at the Cathay. Coward had dreamed up the idea for the play in Yokohama, although it took a four-day bout of flu in the final days of 1929 to confine him to his room at the Cathay where he drafted the script. He then went on to Hong Kong where he spent another week typing and revising it. On a return visit in 1936, Mr. Coward, a fan of Chinese talking pictures and personal friend of China’s most famous opera star, Mel Lanfang, was working on his autobiography. Coward’s last sojourn at the Cathay was totally unplanned when his ship, the Monterey, was diverted on its way from California to Australia to pick up foreign evacuees from the city in November 1940. After taking on board many Shanghailanders, including a large contingent of children from the Shanghai American School, Coward, who was on his way to Australia on a goodwill mission, confined himself to his cabin only venturing out for the late dinner call or for coffee and liqueurs in a quiet corner with his group of friends. Among other Hollywood stars, Ronald Coleman, one of Coward’s greatest friends, also stayed at the hotel. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who were frequent visitors to Shanghai, turned up two hours late for a reception at the Cathay in February 1931. Fairbanks, however, found some redemption when he informed his irritated audience that ‘to me there are only five prominent cities in the world and Shanghai in my opinion occupies the limelight as the most colourful and interesting and progressive.’

The management today are still eager to point out that Charlie Chaplin once stayed at the Cathay-as are the management of the Astor House Hotel! As Chaplin was a friend of Sir Philip Sassoon, Britain’s youngest Member of Parliament and Sir Victor’s cousin, there would be little doubt where he stayed in Shanghai. Accompanied by Paulette Goddard, amidst rumours of their engagement and a commotion surrounding his epochal picture Modern Times, they made an impromptu trip to the Far East in 1936. Even though they stayed just one March night at the Cathay, they weren’t able to avoid the publicity as 30 journalists besieged them with questions and a curio dealer even managed to sneak into Chaplin’s suite. George Vanderbilt and his wife, who were on a I’oaming honeymoon, stayed in the hotel at the same time. And when it came to the rich—there was no richer girl in the world than the former Miss Doris Duke, the American tobacco heiress, who stayed at the Cathay in 1935 on the sixth month of her honeymoon tour with her new husband, James H. R. Cromwell. The 22 year-old Mrs. Cromwell had inherited a fortune in excess of US$30,000,000. Their marriage lasted until 1943, and at the time of her death in 1993 her estate was valued well in excess of a billion dollars. IIowever, all the riches and all the sandbags in the world couldn’t ensure the future security of the International Settlement and its landmark hotel.

Even though foreign Shanghai society had been witness to scenes of Sine-Japanese hostilities to the north of the International Settlement in early 1932, they were ill-prepared for the upcoming events of 1937. In 1932, parties had rolled through the night in the Cathay ballroom when a six hour curfew from ten in the evening till four in the morning was imposed as fierce fighting took place in the Zhabei district. Hedonism had developed as an inevitable accessory to war and the battlefields were soon after a must on the hasty agenda of whirling round-the-world tourists. In early 1937 Shanghai was receiving record numbers of tourists and many were in town in July when Beijing fell to the Japanese, signalling the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Shanghai was placed under an unofficial state of emergency—but still wore its impervious social armour. A columnist of the North China Daily News surmised that the tourist was in some bizarre sense entertained by the new siege conditions—’the tourist who is not as used to wars as the old resident has proved a very good sport about accepting the annoyances inherent in the situation. She wishes that she might have seen Peking, not to mention Korea and Manchuria, but she is kind enough to say that she is glad to have had more time to spend in Shanghai.’ y the time that newspaper report was printed on 15’ August, no tourist in the city wished to be there. On 14,h August two bombs fell at the junction of Shanghai’s foremost thoroughfare (see page 86). One bomb curved through the air, penetrated the roof and top floor of the Palace Hotel and caused indescribable carnage. The other glanced off the side of the Cathay Hotel to continue through the canopy covering the entrance to Sassoon House and burst in the street. Shapeless heaps of sheltering refugees lay piled in the main entrances, doorways and arcades of the Palace and Cathay Hotels. The stricken were found far inside the Cathay Hotel arcade. On the street, a visiting cruise party leader, Mr. Robert Reischauer, who was staying at the Palace Hotel, lay lifeless amongst the twisted human fragments.

The casualties, both foreign and Chinese, numbered over 400 with around 150 fatalities. It was 4.27 p.m. The Cathay Hotel clock froze as the bombs hit. Sassoon heard the news in far away Bombay where he was tending his rcing establishment. The Cathay and Palace Hotels soon recovered from their superficial tears and wounds and they, like the majority of businesses in Shanghai, put on a brave face as they announced business as usual just five weeks later. However, the Cathay ballroom was still out of operation and the Palace Hotel’s gashing wounds on the uppermost floor were only partly sealed by matting. The Cathay acquired a new urgency and exuberance in safeguarding the social obligations of her guests but her halcyon days were over. Over the following winter season the ballroom was back in action with the al-American Sid’s Cathay Syncopators playing fox trots, blues and waltzes, whilst romantic jazz piano by Waldy was on offer at the Tower Night Club. But, come the summer of 1938, all the Cathay’s night spots remained unfamiliarly closed. The hotel played host to numerous unexpected guests and had become a main rendezvous for various military and diplomatic associations. Sir Victor displayed a great and solemn courtesy towards his Japanese guests, and their officers were treated with scrupulous politeness when they dined at the hotel. Such courtesy was not returned when the Japanese eventually seized control of the building in 1941. However, the neutrality did not extend as far as the Tower Night Club where all profits were donated to the British War Fund in 1940. The Cathay had taken the lead in bowing to a call for more responsibility and sense in a city where elaborate entertainment was viewed either as an unnecessary indulgence or as a drain on the British War effort. The Tower had closed down completely in June, but rhe management, doing its best to ‘infuse a ray of gloom into these gloomy days,’ managed to satisfy such opposing needs. The Tower proved that, despite demands for living quietly, lavish entertainment could still add around 4,000 Chinese dollars to the coffers of the British government each month. rE0 make matters worse, the Cathay Hotel was plagued by two major strikes in 1941. In April the entire Cathay staff walked out in sympathy with sister staff at Cathay Mansions (today’s Old Jie hang Hotel) where two lift operators had been dismissed. In total 1,000 Cathay Hotels, Ltd. employees left their duties.

The management were not unduly concerned as they saw it as an opportunity to solve overstaffing problems. The workers were demanding a 100% pay rise and taunted the management with claims that they were more concerned with their horse racing than settling their grievances. The management retorted with a threat that they would employ Russians and Jewish refugees if they didn’t see reason. The workers came back, earning little more than an additional 6cc allowance for their pains. A second, more severe strike hit in August with all 2,500 of Sassoon’s Chinese emolovees walking out. The management, once again, threatened to hire a complete staff of European workers and announced an end to the strike within two days when they took on 100 German Jewish refugees to work in the kitchen and the dining room. The management intended to keep on these foreign workers after the situation had been fully resolved since they were actually cheaper to employ than the local Chinese. Most of the room boys scurried back to work when they realised the management was in earnest, but most other staff stayed away. However, as most guests boycotted the hotel on account of the poor service standards of its European workers, the original Chinese staff were reinstated with improved conditions, including sick leave and a good service bonus. All the foreign refugees were then dismissed. Few staff benefited from the new system as the hotel was requisitioned by Japanese forces on 8’ December. Soon after, the Japanese forces confined all foreign diplomatic staff to the Cathay and Sassoon’s other hotels in the city. They continued to receive their salaries, enabling them to maintain their former standard of living and were free to move around the old Settlement area as they wished. Most were repatriated by August 1942. During the war the hotel was converted into spacious godowns and a large number of rooms were rearranged in Japanese style. When Cathay Hotels, Ltd. resumed control of its properties in late 1945, irs representatives returned to an alien city, a city of torment, a city of chaos and a city hanging on to life by a slender thread. Old Shanghailanders looked back on the pre-war days and reminisced that the city was never as bad as it was painted. The SMC and the lines of the International Settlement had vanished forever. The new Shanghai Council with its novice officials, presided over by the Chinese mayor of Shanghai, falteringly took over the running of the new Shanghai—an overworked city, now of some four and a half million residents. The British played little or no part in the city that, just a decade earlier, thoy considored rightfully theirs.

The management had reconverted and redecorated about half the rooms by the end of 1945 and the ninth floor grill-room was able to offer modest snack lunches. The cost of putting everything back in order came at a high price, and hotel rates were running at some 600 times their pre war levels! Sir Victor’s cousin, Lucien Ovadia, returned as chairman of the Sassoon interests just in time to add the finishing touches to the Christmas celebrations in 1945. The rooms were largely occupied by high-ranking American and British officers and embassy staff. General Wedemeyer, Commanding General of US Forces in China, had taken over Sir Victor’s personal suite. Claire Chennault, the former leader of the illustrious ‘Flying Tigers,’ also stayed in the hotel. Bookings were plentiful for the still requisitioned Cathay, but it was difficult to persuade the Americans to leave. nearly 1946 the newly reopened Tower Night Club tried to exclude the military rank and file by restricting entry on three nights each week to those wearing evening dress, but had to recapitulate and make it Friday nights only ‘by special request of our patrons who are not in possession of evening dress due to the abnormal circumstances.’ Evening suits were the last things on the minds of the hordes of American naval personnel on shore leave in what was seen as one of the best liberty ports in the Orient. But it wasn’t long before the uniformed officers of the Nationalist Party were knocking on the door and in April 1949 the Cathay’s few remaining guests were moved out as rooms were requisitioned and machine gun placements installed. In the space of a month the battle was over, although the triumphant Communists didnt alow the Cathays manager to leave for two long years afterwards. Cathay Hotels, Ltd. disappeared from the Hong Kong Companies Register on 3 August 1951. After 1949, the former Sassoon House reverted to its intended original function as an office building. Nevertheless, the ballroom, which was used as a dining hall by the Shanghai Municipal Finance and Economic Commission, still hosted Saturday night dances for local office employees.

However, faced with an increasing number of visiting delegations from tbe Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Shanghai government decided to convert the offices back into bedrooms and began re-equipping the building as a hotel in late 1954. The formal opening of the Peace Hotel, incorporating the old Palace Hotel as its south wing, took place on 8’ March 1956. Even though the eighth floor grill room had been converted into a lounge and recreation area, there were five restaurants in operation on the upper floors and the former Tower Night Club was rechristened as the Nine Heavens Restaurant. In the 1950s and 1960s the Peace Hotel received guests from the Soviet Block, and friendship groups from Japan and other Asian and European countries. They could hardly be described as tourists. They were a select band of invited writers and artists, sinologists, sports men and women, politicians and trade unionists. Although the billiard tables were back in action and the hotel shop was stocked with fine arts and crafts at ridiculously low prices, very little in the way of entertainment was offered. Obligatory receptions and meetings, alongside outings to acrobatic shows, operatic performances and kindergarten visits, were strictly supervised by the Chinese host organisations. China was proud to show off her achievements under Communism. The Peace Hotel was one of only two Shanghai hotels permitted to receive such foreign envoys.

There were around 80 employees when the hotel opened. Like his comrade colleagues, Mr. Kan. the head chef. viewed his work as political. offering his ‘best service so as to encourage the most favourable response from visitors and foreign friends.’ ‘First class’ cooks, attendants and hairdressers were carefully scrutinised by the Public Security Bureau before being offered employment and most were obliged to learn Russian. Rarely more than half full, profit was viewed in cultural terms as the hotel was operated on a model of friendship rather than business. Visitors were treated as honoured guests, heaped with official hospitality and shown every courtesy. The guest experience was carefully managed and local Chinese required a precious, special permit to gain entry to the hotel.

Whilst the number of visitors ftJ1 in th lato 1950s, due largoly to the hapless devastation of the Great Leap Forward, the number of Peace Hotel employees grew to around 250. In 1964 and 1965 there was a brief opening of China for Communist- sympathiser tourists and Sir Victor’s former suite was on offer for a mere 20 yuan, or seven pounds sterling, a night. With the advent of the Cultural Revolution (1966—1976) there were even fewer guests, although staff numbers further increased to around 300. Those employees who were not sent out to the countryside were put on short hours, rolled through political and technical education and endured endless hours cleaning and re cleaning the hotel. When the hotel became commercial again, under the aegis of the Jin Jiang Hotel Group following the opening of China to foreign tourists in 1978, it was a very pale shadow of its former self.