By Tess

After Shanghai was forced open to foreign trade by the British in the first Opium War in 1842, the foreigners all settled in the area near the Whangpoo (now HuangPu) River where they had established their trading companies. Among them were a small number of French who had settled along the southern stretch of waterfront, or "Bund" (an Anglo-Indian word meaning an embankment). When the British and Americans in 1863 decided to join together to form a unified concession, the French said "non". They already had their own administration in place and running and declined to join the merger. The French delineated their concession, which lay just south of the newly-established International Settlement and was about half its size (ultimately about four square miles as opposed to the Settlement's eight).

The upper boundary was a smelly creek which was later viaducted to form a wide meandering street called Avenue Edouard Ⅶ. Fortunately the British did prevail in regard to traffic regulations and all traffic drove on the left. But if you had an accident in the north lane of this boundary street you would be assisted by a Sikh policeman, resplendent in a red turban, in the employ of the British. On the same street in the south lane you would be attended by an Annamite or Vietnamese policeman wearing a conical helmet and with teeth blackened by betel nut juice. When electric trams were later introduced, traveling between the concession became a problem: the current was 110v on one side of the street and 220v on the other. South of Avenue Edouard Ⅶ Frenchtown stretched westward from the waterfront, which the French called the Quai de France or French Bund (north of that it was simply "the Bund").

Businessmen of all nationalities soon started building their garden villas in the city's west end, both in Frenchtown and father out in the countryside beyond the concussions' boundaries. The conventional wisdom of the day was that in the International Settlement the British would teach you how to do business, but in the French Concession the French would teach you how to live. Here the foreigners established their own schools and clubs, their many amusements and diversions for both foreigners and Chinese, their elegant restaurants and cafes and scores of cabarets, nightclubs and exotically named (and staffed) ballrooms. All this despite the fact that even at their most populous presence, Westerners never numbered even five percent of Shanghai's population.

After 1918 many of these venues for entertainment offered jobs to the impoverished White Russians fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. They were naturally drawn to Frenchtown, as French had been the second language of the Russian Court and the Concession also offered more employment opportunities. The Russian Jews were already there, having fled the pogroms of the century, and many had been able to continue their old trades. In fact, so many opened stores and businesses along Avenue Joffre that the street became known as "Little Moscow".

Most of the White Russians, however, coming from the upper middle class and minor nobility, were equipped to earn a living. The language of commerce in Shanghai was English, which they did not speck, and by the time they washed up in Shanghai, by way of Vladivostok and Harbin, few had any capital left. They stayed on -- there was no lives here as best they could, adding an elan to the city's night life.

Other waves of refugees followed the Russian, and each added something to the city in general and to Frenchtown in particular. European Jews fleeing Nazism, first in 1933 and then in 1938, contributed to Shanghai's publishing, medical, and musical worlds. Newspapers and magazines soon appeared in five languages. The Jewish Hospital on Route Pichon became one of the best in all China. Musicians, both White Russian and Jewish, were welcome as music teachers and as members of the Shanghai Municipal Band, later to become the Symphony Orchestra. Those who did not make the cut were able to play in the  ubiquitous night club and dance hall bands. The closed the war came to Shanghai the more its multiple diversions flourished.

The expatriate Shanghailanders, unlike the native-born Shanghainese who could read their tea leaves better, thought the bright lights of Shanghai would never dim. By late 1939 the Japanese forces had surrounded the city. World WarⅡhad already engulfed Europe but it was business -- and pleasure -- as usual in the concessions. The Russians must have recalled their old proverb, "What good is gaiety and laughter in the old sleigh when that thing at your elbow is a wolf ? "

On December 8, 1941, Japanese military forces marched into the undefended city. The time had come for the Westerners to pay the piper for the dance. But fortune smiled on the French. They were considered supporters of the collaborationist or "Vichy" Government. Ever fervent Gaullists had only to keep their mouths shut and they were free to continue their lives in relative freedom in Frenchtown. Despite wartime hardships life went on pretty much as usual for the French, as well as for the Russian and the Jews, who as "stateless persons" were also not interned.

The old way of life for the foreigners in the concessions was, however, never to return again. After the Japanese left -- soon followed by the Jews, the Russian, and gradually foreigners of all nationalities -- Western businesses were not able to regain their old momentum. Fighting between Nationalists and Communist forces moved closer, wives and children were sent out for safety, attendance in the schools and clubs dwindled, inflation was ruinous, and one night in 1949 the Nationalists fled and the communists walked into the again undefended concessions. This time it was truly all over for Shanghai's foreigners.

Well, maybe not quite. They are back again, although not in the same numbers. And again most foreigners choose to live in the west end, in ex-Frenchtown or in the suburbs. Old villas are being renovated, new clubs are opening, and again you can find boutiques, bars and restaurant like those that once graced the old Frenchtown. (Even the Russian dancing girls are back, we hear, but now in entertainment troupes rather than as the "taxi dancers" of old. )

And the avenues and lanes, the old apartment houses and villas, the gardens, the ambiance of old Frenchtown has somehow survived for those with a scene of history who are seeking the Good Life. There may be no more "No. 1 Boys" ( alas ) but the Chinese still tend the lawns and guard the gates, the amahs do all the housework -- money still buys the leisure today that it did for the foreigners over fifty years ago.

In the following pages we will try to show you how the Westerners lived and what they left behind when they finally closed the doors in their lovely homes and left the leisured life of old Frenchtown.