Daily Blog
Thursday, 05 February 2009 07:02
Written by Paul French
Yesteryear's dive-bar strip was a den of iniquity that makes Julu Lu look saintly…
Love Lane, today the lower end of the Wujiang Lu food street, was one of the International Settlement's foremost streets of sin. Back in the 1860s it was a secluded lane following a creek to the west and north of the old British Country Club, and known by the Chinese as Diagonal Bridge Road. It was Shanghai's first toll road, and became a useful cut-through.
But it was in the 1920s that the lane really took off. Despite its romantic name, everything was for sale on Love Lane. The street was home to several high-class brothels, including Madam Margaret Kennedy's famous mansion-sized bordello catering to taipans and the wealthy. Kennedy operated a 'never on Sundays' rule, and gave her girls (strictly Europeans only) a day off for the Sabbath.
The next door Medical Massage Clinic may also not have been all it seemed. Love Lane regulars flocked to the St. Anna Ballroom – known locally as Santa Anna's – at the junction with Nanjing Lu where patrons got lively to Earl Whaley and his Red Hot Syncopaters (pictured right), an all-black swing band from Seattle who got fed up with the racism and segregation of America, moved to Shanghai and became the resident house band in the mid-1930s. Santa Anna's was also home to radio station XQHA – all big band music, all the time – before it was taken over by the Japanese in 1937 and used for propaganda purposes.
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