Shanghai Style - Old time 1940’s

Qipao, penciled eyebrows, elegant mannerism, that’s Old Shanghai Style.

Those have been more or less “officially” documented in the old Shanghai advertisement drawing like the one above. The famous ones of these drawings were made by one artist call - Zhiying Hang. 杭zhi英，the character of ‘zhi’ is so complicated, it cannot even be found in the input system I have in my Mac. He painted the following watercolor masterpiece - 霸王别姬 Farewell My Concubine：

The lady roles in those paintings are mostly somewhat based on the movie stars of that time (1930’s-1940’s) in Shanghai. Like the following one:

This is a very famous female movie star of the time in Shanghai called Shangguan Yunzu - 上官云珠, which means ‘Pearl in the crown’. She was known to play ’second wife’ or someone who is making trouble of other people’s marriage. You can have a glimpse of her in the following video clip starting from 1:17.

As you can imagine, after the founding of the P R China, she has no role to play anymore in a communist Shanghai at that time of China. She didn’t give up, she waited and finally played some roles. One of the role was a Communist party guerrilla leader who lead her team fighting the Japanese invaders in the Hainan Island of South China. The Chinese audiences were shocked at her performing ability. If only Chinese actresses were allowed to contest in Cann or Oscar back then.

Unfortunately, she had a very sad and tragic ending.

She suicide during Cultural Revolution in 70’s. She was forced to report in detail what exactly happened during a meeting with Chairman Mao when he was visiting Shanghai on 1960’s. Some believes this was Mao’s wife Jian Qin’s doing. On the 3rd night, she was beaten up, and before she went out of the investigation room, she was slapped on her faces and kicked from behind out of that room. And she was told if she still not cooperating, then starting from tomorrow she will be responsible for whatever that will be happening to her and her life. She jumped out of the window of her room the following morning losing all hope…