Meet Point: outside the Paramount Ballroom entrance on the corner of Yuyuan and Huashan Roads, Shanghai
From the Badlands to the West End - a walk on Yuyuan Road, from the Paramount Ballroom to Zhongshan (JessfieldPark) with Duncan Hewitt.Yuyuan Road extends through what was, in the 1920s and 30s, one of Shanghai's most upwardly mobile areas, known as the "West End."Attempts to incorporate into the International Settlement never quite succeeded. But that didn't stop some of Nationalist China's wealthiest business people from building their mansions there; and Yuyuan Road's smart 'garden longtangs' became home to many foreign residents and members of the local middleclass. The proximity of the prestigious McTyeire School and St John'sUniversity, as well as Jessfield (Zhongshan) Park, were part of the attraction. But the area was also home to spies, torturers and revolutionaries - and following the Japanese takeover of Shanghai became known as the Badlands, due to its many casinos and houses of ill repute. (Eileen Chang, who briefly lived round the corner, mentioned the area in Lust, Caution.)
Duncan Hewitt currently writesfor Newsweek and other publications from Shanghai.He moved to the city in 2000, having previously been a BBC correspondent in Beijing. His interest in Shanghai’s history was first stirred by an accidentalstint as an extra during the filming of Empireof the Sun in the city in 1987, while he was studying a degree in Chinese Studies at EdinburghUniversity. His book on social change in China, Getting Rich First – Life in a changing China (Vintage, 2008) contains a chapter on Shanghai’s upheavals overthe past two decades.
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