ON SHANGHAI TIME BY
SAMANTHA CULP
THE SHANGHAI WATERFRONT IN THE 1930S
ON FENYANG ROAD IN THE HEART OF SHANGHAI’S FORMER FRENCH CONCESSION, BETWEEN A FRUIT VENDOR AND A CRAFT COCKTAIL BAR, THERE IS A DARK WOODEN DOOR WITH THE OUTLINE OF A VIOLIN PAINTED IN GOLD. IF YOU’RE WALKING BY IN THE DAYTIME, BUFFETED BY THE ROAR OF SCOOTERS AND GRANDMOTHERS BARGAINING FOR APPLES IN LOUD SHANGHAINESE, YOU’LL LIKELY MISS IT. But on occasion — perhaps
the road. On these gray stone streets lined with platane trees, you’ll find piano tuners, sheet music stores, even classical coffee shops; you can sit in the cafe dedicated to the works of the legendary writer Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing) at the ground floor of the art deco building on Changde Lu where she lived and wrote in the late 1930s, drinking an overpriced latte and listening to the same Beethoven concertos she so loved.
in a quiet moment at dusk — you’ll hear the keening strings from inside. Testing, tuning. When the door is swung open, it reveals a long corridor hung with small paintings and burgundy carpeting leading deep within the building. For decades, this has been the shop of a luthier, a maker and repairer of violins.
In her era, they would have been played at concert halls and tea
The neighborhood is home to dozens of other music shops (many that have remained in business for almost a century) clustered near the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, which was founded in 1927 just up
to pay, instead of leaving a few heavy coins, you scan a QR code with
24 | PEAKPERFS.ORG
dances by a diverse array of musicians — Chinese, Russians, exiled Eastern European Jews — or amplified through a scratchy Gramophone. Today they’re streamed through the Bluetooth speakers hidden around the vintage, wood-paneled space. And when you get up your smartphone. Hail a cab with the same app, and walk out into the increasingly futuristic present.
