China: The Paramount, once a notorious ballroom during the decadent era before the People's Liberation Army established control over the city in 1949. Yuyuan Road, Shanghai

The Paramount, designed in Art Deco style by the architect S. J. Young (楊錫謬 Yáng Xīmiù, 1899-1978) was completed in 1933, by a group of Chinese bankers. It lay just off Bubbling Well Road (now Nanjing West Road), a major entertainment thoroughfare and was a meeting place for the wealthy elite of Shanghai society. The Ballroom lasted under its original owners before going bankrupt in 1936. In 1937, it was converted into a taxi dance hall featuring Chinese dance hostesses, which it remained until 1949.

Shanghai began life as a fishing village, and later as a port receiving goods carried down the Yangzi River. From 1842 onwards, in the aftermath of the first Opium War, the British opened a ‘concession’ in Shanghai where drug dealers and other traders could operate undisturbed. French, Italians, Germans, Americans and Japanese all followed. By the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was a boom town and an international byword for dissipation. When the Communists won power in 1949, they transformed Shanghai into a model of the Revolution.

Copyright:

CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

David Henley

Credit:

Pictures From Asia