| The Kwok
Mansion
|
 Daisy
Kwok (the Cantonese version of the Mandarin name Guo) is now 85 years old
and still living in Shanghai-although not in any of the many homes she
or her family once owned. Her father was from a Chinese family who had
emigrated to Australia and later returned to found Shanghai's Wing On
department store. He purchased this house in the early twenties for his
family of eight children, pictured here on the lawn (Daisy is on the far
left). |
|
|
 The house was built on Lucerne Road
by a Swiss architect, who named the road after his native city. He kept a Chinese mistress
hidden from the public in a suite of rooms under the house eaves. The broad sweep of lawn
in this 1930`s picture no longer exists; massive utilitarian apartment blocks now reach almost to the front door.
And where once a family of ten dwelled (with 24 servants), 24 families now make their
home. |
 Daisy Kwok was married out of this
house in 1934. Both these pictures were taken on the front steps of the mansion, the
earlier on the occasion of her engagement party, when over a hundred tables were set up on
the lawn. |
|
|
Daisy Kwok (the Cantonese version of the Mandarin name Guo) is now 85 years old
and still living in Shanghai-although not in any of the many homes she or her family once
owned. Her father was from a Chinese family who had emigrated to Australia and later
returned to found Shanghai's Wing On department store. He purchased this
house in the early twenties for his family of eight children, pictured
here on the lawn (Daisy is on the far left).
