Trendy Grandmother: Pursuing the Fashion Life of Old Shanghai

Author: Jiang Weimin (Editor) / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: But that was the trend, the norm. So they had no choice but to tie their ties and wear white canvas suits. In Mr. Zhou Zhongying's photo album, we saw a picture of him with friends in the summer. Indeed, they were all dressed in sharp Western suits, shoes polished to a shine, and ties tied beautifully. According to him, those who were accustomed to wearing suits back then were all like that. When it comes to suit styling, men are no less meticulous than women. In the home of the Shao Binsun, a famous Hu Opera actor, he took out several suits he wore during performances, as well as small accessories like ties and belts to "dress up." He also told us his "winning formula" for wearing suits over the years—understanding reasonable overall coordination, not only having a unique touch in small accessories but also skillfully coordinating from head to toe. No wonder the saying goes, "Well-dressed in a suit." So, when wearing a suit, shoes are also very important. The shoes should be coordinated with the color and style of the suit as a whole. Teacher Shao told us that tying a tie and wearing shoes also had a certain amount of knowledge back then. "Tying a tie has a few styles. If you want to tie a wide tie, you wrap it around more, three times; if you want a small (tie), you do it all at once. Sometimes it's tight, sometimes it hangs loosely like this." "As for shoes, they were all made of real leather back then. Poor shoes would make a 'creaking' sound when walking. If you walked on a carpet or in a very quiet place, it would sound unpleasant." Well-cut suits can indeed give the impression of being broad-shouldered and strong. But no matter how you dress up, it's all just surface appearances. Many people pay great attention to taking care of their suits from the outside in to make them look more upright, often going to the gym to exercise. They work out their pectoral muscles, triceps, and muscles on both sides. Mr. Zhou often went to the gym back then. "When wearing a suit, you don't need a shirt underneath. But for very thin people, it doesn't work. Some thin people—Shanghai people say they look like ribs—they wear suits that look flabby. The tailor can only use a shirt to make it look fuller." Through the evaluation of suits, a large number of modern gentlemen were cultivated in old Shanghai. And these gentlemen's temperament and cultivation also injected fresh content into Shanghai's civilization. For a long time, suits have not changed much, but this doesn't mean men are sloppy or don't care about their appearance. Before liberation, young and stylish men in Shanghai usually had one or even several suits. Perhaps "keeping up with trends" wasn't their goal; what they hoped for was to find their own style in the ever-changing trends. Now, perhaps it's just a matter of habit, after half a century of circulation, suits are still thriving. The elegant young men of that time have now turned gray at the temples, but the spirited ones still maintain that meticulous attitude toward clothing. From them, we feel a timeless charm.
Jewelry Passion
Women's love for jewelry seems to be innate. In primitive society, women, even when unclothed, liked to string stones, shells, and animal bones together and hang them around their necks. And Chinese women have long attached importance to jewelry. In the 1930s and 1940s, fashionable women in Shanghai were already very skilled at wearing different types of jewelry in different occasions and on different outfits, making jewelry shine alongside their youth, and leaving behind the warm memories of jewelry we have today.
Grandma Hu Yunlei sat opposite me in a wicker chair, her body slightly leaning against the backrest. The traces of time had gently brushed her forehead. "I'm almost 70 years old now, without realizing it." The old woman's face was marked by the gifts of time—only given to those who have experienced the ups and downs of life but have calmed their hearts. Looking at her serene smile, I suddenly remembered an ancient saying—"Clouds turn white, the sea turns yellow; the world changes, the earth turns old." "Back then?" The elder's eyes, dimmed by time, slowly shone with light, and her pale cheeks flushed slightly. "Back then," I couldn't tell how much emotion was hidden in her words—longing, nostalgia, reflection? Her tone was calm, transcendent, yet melancholic, leaving my heart trembling.
Back then... back then, the high heels of fashionable women echoed "" on the grand Nanjing Road. The leaves of the French trees, in love with the autumn wind, fell gracefully, turning Xifeng Road (now Huaihai Middle Road) golden. The mighty ships from abroad, with their low voices, awakened the sleeping city. The incense from the City God Temple drifted away, turning into splendid evening clouds. The old woman before me was just a child back then, just like the city she was born in—full of vitality and confidence. She was born in this ancient land, with a yearning for all new things, watching everything around her, learning everything. Her city chased the footsteps of the world, appearing mysterious to the Chinese people because of its openness. It was always the focus of the world, like the bullseye of a dartboard. It left a thousand different impressions in a thousand people's hearts, but it never cared. In its dictionary, there were only two words—hope. It was called "Shanghai."
What Grandma Hu Yunlei wanted to tell me was a story about this city back then, a story about jewelry.
In 1852, on Fangbang Road in the Nanxi District of Shanghai, a jewelry shop named "Lao Fengxiang" opened its doors with a fanfare of firecrackers. The owner and his assistants, like their contemporaries, exploded firecrackers in front of the door, scattering them toward the black-tiger deity, praying for prosperous business. As the historian Sima Qian said, "The world is bustling with people coming for profit; the world is crowded with people going for profit." For them, it was just a way to make a living, and they never imagined that 150 years later, scholars would see them as pioneers of history—the Lao Fengxiang Silver Shop was the first jewelry shop in Shanghai, opening the 150-year history of Shanghai's jewelry industry.
In the early days of the newly opened commercial city, Lao Fengxiang was the only jewelry shop, and it was always full of high-profile guests and customers. Business grew like a snowball. Lao Fengxiang opened branch stores one after another, naturally making others envious, gradually attracting competitors and partners, and Shanghai gradually evolved from having only one jewelry shop to having an entire jewelry industry.
On the section of Shanghai's Yan'an Road from Ruijin Road to Chengdu Road, there were once more than ten shops that bought gold. After buying gold, it was simply processed and sent to Xifeng Road, Nanjing Road, and Mausoleum Road (now Sim), which were all gathering places for silver shops in Shanghai. It can be imagined how the jewelry in the windows and counters of these shops back then, with their own value, displayed the wealth of this emerging city and the cultural heritage of the ancient land they came from. Before they finally belonged to their owners, they brilliantly shone in the most prosperous corner of Shanghai; after they finally belonged to them, they followed their owners' footsteps, carrying this brilliance to every corner of Shanghai.
At first, Shanghai's jewelry industry, like its counterparts in the interior, focused on traditional gold, silver, pearls, and jade. The types of jewelry were also quite limited: earrings, bracelets, phoenix combs, hairpins, fan pendants, and the like. However, Shanghai was different from inland cities. It was the earliest open port in modern Chinese history and the place where Western culture left its earliest mark. The white people with high noses and deep-set eyes who came here not only brought money, guns, and opium but also completely different lifestyles. Faced with these new things, the "curious and skillful" Shanghai people first watched them with confusion, then brilliantly imitated them. Gradually, diamond and jade jewelry appeared in Chinese silver shops, along with brooches and other types of jewelry that the Chinese had never seen before. The Shanghai people accepted all this with ease, embracing it as if they were carving grapes from foreign lands onto the backs of bronze mirrors from the Western Han Dynasty.
When Grandma Hu Yunlei owned her jewelry, she was just a little girl with two braids. Her mother strung a string of pearls around her braids. Such decorations were quite unique and bold at the time, because in traditional Chinese culture, white was not a color associated with auspiciousness or celebration. For a long time, the Shanghai people, who had largely accepted Western culture, could never fully accept the idea of a bride wearing white in a wedding, because white was the color used in funeral rituals and the color of mourning clothes for sons-in-law.