Ballrooms

"WHOOPEE!

" What odds whether Shanghai is the Paris of the East or Paris is the Shanghai of the Occident?

"Shanghai has its own distinctive night life, and what a life!

" Dog races and cabarets, hai-alai and cabarets, formal tea and dinner dances and   cabarets, the sophisticated and cosmopolitan French Club and cabarets, the   dignified and formal Country Club and cabarets, prize fights and cabarets, amateur   dramatics and cabarets, theatres and cabarets, movies and cabarets, and cabarets   - everywhere in both extremities of French Town, uptown and downtown in the  International Settlement, in Hongkew, and out ot bounds in Chinese territory, are   cabarets.

" Hundreds of'em!

" High hats and low necks; long tails and short knickers; inebriates and slumming   puritans.

" Wine, women and song.

" Whoopee!"



-From All About Shanghai, A Standard Guidebook,1935
The one feature shared by all Shanghai's ballroom cabarets was dance hostesses. They received from a dime to a dollar a dance-plus all the "champagne" they could cadge. Originally all the hostesses were Chinese or other Asians, but after the Revolution, Russian beauties became the most sought after; this was the first time white women had been available in China in this role. They often became mistresses of wealthy Chinese.
Frequently both beautiful and cultured, many Russian girls also succeeded in marrying monied foreigners and moving into society. Once they became wives they could dance the nights away in more exclusive ballrooms, such as the Cercle Sportif Francais pictured here.