Glamour Girl Shanghai

This weekend was entirely devoted to discovering local Shanghai Glam. To kick it off, Anand (our superbly fantastic IDEO Boston business development director) invited Ela and me to his second party on The Bund in 48 hours. It’s good to know that our BD guys know how to schmooze, and have willing friends all over the world. So Friday night, I was instructed to dress in floral, and told that I would be liberally plying myself with some sort of champagne.

The Bund is a beautiful stretch of waterfront on the west of the Huangpu River, which was the waterway that turned Shanghai into a major port for foreigners doing business in China. Known as ‘Wai Tan’ to the locals, The Bund is home to a dozen or so beautiful European buildings that were erected by the French, Germans, British and Americans in the 19th and 20th century. By contrast, to the east of the river is PuDong (literally, river east), an ultra modern city of glass skyscrapers. After the Cultural Revolution, businesses started to set up shop on The Bund again and restore to it the 1930s Shanghai glam culture.

We arrived at Number 5 on the Bund and took the elevator to the top floor where The Glamour Bar is housed. The party was to promote Perrier Jouet, ‘champagne of the Belle Epoque’. The scene was a blur of very classy people who could dress, dance, drink, and socialize. Each guest was given a fresh corsage and the woman on the stage sang pieces from Bizet’s Carmen. With Anand’s help, we were introduced to some curious and interesting people, including a French film maker, an American party-planner, an Australian furniture importer, and an Italian hotelier. Yes, the world has descended upon Shanghai, to party. By midnight, Anand was still getting his party on, but being fish out of water compounded with jetlag, Ela and I started to wan a little, and hence the conclusion to a lavish night of high fashion and social life.

Cheers to not being hung over the next morning when my father came to visit me from Canada (via Hong Kong)! Since Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s former residence is within a stone’s throw of IDEO Shanghai, I spent an afternoon there with history-buff dad and learnt that my grandfather was a big wig in the Kuomingtang (National People’s Party), which started with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s revolution to rebuild China after the Ching Dynasty. Continuing the European Architecture Tour, we had dinner at the Ruijin Guest House in the middle of the French Concession, where Mao and his cronies used to stay and talk about communist politics in Shanghai. While it saddens me to hear that the Wu family home will be torn down to make way for new high rises, it is a small consolation to know that the local government has cared enough about these cultural gems to turn them into historical buildings. Preserving and celebrating the colorful past will make a great future Shanghai.

Photo of the weekend definitely has to be the boat with the giant LCD screen on the HuangPu River. I thought the giant LCD screen at Yu Gardens was odd but this one takes the cake. Looks like Shanghai has a pretty colorful future too!