Who better could describe what the Great World amusement center had to offer than the Hollywood film producer Josef von Sternberg, who visited Shanghai in the 1930's and wrote in his book "Fun in a Chinese Laundry”:

“ The establishment had six floors to provide distraction for the milling crowd, six floors that seethed with life and all the commotion and noise that goes with it, studded with every variety of entertainment Chinese ingenuity has contrived:

"On the first floor were gambling tables, singsong girls, magicians, pickpockets, slot machines, fireworks, bird cages, fans, stick incense, acrobats and ginger. One flight up were the restaurants, a dozen different groups of actors, crickets in cages, pimps, midwives, barbers and earwax extractors.

"The third floor had jugglers, herb medicines, ice-cream parlors, photographers, a new bevy of girls-their collared gowns slit to reveal their hips, in case one had passed up the more modest ones below who merely flashed their thighs –and under the heading of novelty, several rows of exposed toilets, their impresarios instructing the amused patrons not to squat but to assume a position more in keeping with the imported plumbing.

"The fourth floor was crowded with shooting galleries, fan-tan tables, roulette wheels, massage benches, acupuncture and moxabustion cabinets, hot-towel counters, dried fish and intestines, and dance platforms serviced by a horde of music makers competing with each other to see who could drown out the others.

" The fifth floor featured girls whose dresses were slit to the armpits, a stuffed whale, story tellers, peep shows, balloons, masks, a mirror maze, two love-letter booths with scribes who guaranteed results, 'rubber goods' and a temple filled with ferocious gods and joss sticks.

"On the top floor and roof of that house of multiple joys a jumble of tightrope walkers slithered back and forth, and there were seesaws, lottery tickets and marriage brokers. And as I tried to find my way down again an open space was pointed out to me where hundreds of Chinese, so I was told, after spending their last coppers, had speeded the return to the street below by jumping from the roof..."

Belying its western "wedding cake" style, we suspect that Shanghai's Great World was not a place visited by many foreigners, save for the observant Mr.Sternberg. Indeed the author cannot find one single old Shanghailander who will admit to ever having been there, except perhaps once-as a child” taken there by my Amah". This may even have been true, as amahs were notorious for taking their charges to all sorts of questionable but exciting places.