Meanwhile in Shanghai…

Thanksgiving is one of America’s quintessential holidays, I was curious to know how my father and his fellow China Marines celebrated. Though I’ve not found anything yet this article by Henry Lieberman from the November 21, 1945 edition of the New York Times presents how things were in Shanghai. I am not sure whether my father ever visited the city. The nightlife is described as “feverish,” and foreign business men were not operating because of “exchange difficulties.”


Although the effervescent nightlife of Shanghai goes on at a fast, almost frenetic pace, China’s leading metropolis has not even come close to regaining its economic feet after three months of peace. The feeling prevails that the first peacetime winter will be hard for this city of more than 4,000,000, which is now experiencing a coal shortage and the dizzy processes of inflation.

The tinkle of ricksha bells combines with the roar of trolley and Army vehicular traffic to create a din of activity. Junks and Allied men of war glide down the Whangpoo River. Curio shops and street hawkers do a thriving business in exotic bric-a-brac, and American service men spend their money freely in the Avenue Joffre bistros.

But the basic commerce of this great port, which is said to have handled 10,000,000 tons of incoming and outgoing cargo annually before the war, has not yet been restored.

Foreign Representatives Back

The representatives of most of the American and British companies seem to be back on their old premises. They have been unable to resume their operations, however, because, the explain, the Chinese have not yet established a “realistic” exchange rate or promulgated a definite set of rules for doing business now that extraterritoriality has been abolished.

Aside from the matter of exchange, which is still operated under the wartime control machinery, the foreign business men are moving cautiously pending the official publication of China’s new company law. This is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 1946.

There are a number of indications that the economic situation has grown worse since the Japanese surrender even though Mayor Chien Ta-chun and the new Chinese municipal government have kept food supplies coming in and have maintained the public utility services without interruption. Prices have gone up 300 to 400 percent since the surrender, and while inflation is most noticeable in the restaurants and hotels frequented by foreigners, it has also affected the coolie.

The poor are paying more for rice and complaining that its quality has deteriorated. Rents have gone up, too, in the form of higher “key money,” the flat down payment required in Shanghai for taking possession of rented property. This “key money” payment is never returned. An office that could be obtained for two gold bars after the surrender, one business man asserts, now requires six gold bars for possession.

Employment Is Reduced

About 100,000 workers are now employed in Shanghai, as compared with 500,000 before the war in the city’s consumer goods factories, according to an official estimate. Cotton mills are the most important of these.

But these mills are cut off from their sources of raw cotton and coal in the southern provinces of Hopei and Shantung, where clashes are going on between the Communists and Government troops. So the cotton mills are operating with 159,000 spindles, as compared with 200,000 under the Japanese at the time of the surrender.

Five American Liberty ships and five British transports have brought 62,000 tons of coal to Shanghai from Chinwangtao during the past month, but this has been used mainly for the public utilities.

Night Life Is Flourishing

This side of Shanghai offers a pronounced contrast to the nightly gayety one finds in bistros like “D.D.’s,” the “Kavkaz,” the “Atomic Bar,’ and the “Arcadia” in the vicinity of Avenue Joffre and Avenue Albert in the old French Concession. Many of the 15,000 American soldiers still here and the 5,000 sailors are at liberty nightly and they flock to this oriental Times Square in pedicabs, a means of locomotion that is half ricksha and half bicycle.

A drink of Canadian Club along Frenchtown’s Gay White way costs $2.50, American money. White Russian and Eurasian girls, acting as hostesses, help run up the bills. These hostesses are free to leave the bistros to explore the night life with guests, but the price, according to the sailors, is $10, divided equally between the management and the hostesses.

There is a noticeable change in the attitude of service men since the first wave entered the city following the Japanese surrender. After long months in the interior of China they plunged like starved men into Shanghai’s metropolitan whirl. Now that the shine has worn off the men are looking homeward.