From a homestay to an art deco hotel
Hallway in the hotel
Looking towards reception
Now for the extremes. The yesterday I posted about our overnight in a gir (yurt) with a Kazakh family in the wilds of Mongolia, and today it’s a look at a famous art deco hotel in Shanghai.
Now let me make it clear that we did not stay in this hotel. We stayed in a down-market hostel, and merely passed through this hotel wearing our daggy camping clothes. Poor John need a pit stop and we were quite relieved the doorman didn’t stop us from entering.
This is the Fairmont Peace Hotel. It’s the north building of two that make up the Peace Hotel on Shanghai’s Bund. This building is known as Sassoon House (built by Sir Victor Sassoon). The fourth to ninth floors once housed the Cathay Hotel. Sir Victor lived in the 10th floor penthouse.
Entry to the bar
In 2007, the hotel closed for a three-year renovation of both the exterior and interior, including the guest rooms, the lobby, and the dining and entertainment venues. It reopened in 2010, as the Fairmont Peace Hotel Shanghai with 270 rooms and 39 suites.
We never saw a guest room, but we admired the art deco decor in the lobby and hallways.
The other thing we admired was all the promotional material for the hotel’s Old Jazz Band that plays nightly. According to the signs—they aren’t the best jazz band in the world, but they are certainly the oldest, which has been confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records.
In fact, this season, the oldest member—96-year-old Zhou Wan Rong—has returned to the band for their nightly performances in the hotel bar. Not long ago, the band was the basis for a film, As Time Goes By.
We went along to listen on our last night in Shanghai, but decided against going in because the surcharge/minimum spend was about A$40 a person. Good grief, Poor John doesn’t drink and I’d be hard pressed to consume $80 worth of drinks.
It was probably just as well. We sat outside the bar and listened to a few numbers. The promotional material is right—they aren’t the best jazz band in the world.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the photos.
And here’s another extreme
Our daughter, Petra, who is living in Vietnam and who recently shared a post about a famous Vietnamese musician, shared another video on Facebook today.
I thought it was especially funny and asked if I could share it here. She’s playing on a women’s football team and a recent game got washed out.
The video shows Petra’s team members wading through the water on the field. It also shows the other players stepping from stool to stool to avoid getting their feet wet. Petra was pretty sure someone would lose their footing and fall in, but that didn’t happen.
Where to next? 
Beautiful pictures. 🙂 The floodball made me laugh too. I think I would have given up way before and gone home! Where are you off to next? xxx
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Tomorrow we head back to Irkutsk and very next morning we board a train to Moscow.
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What a lovely place. I am a fan of art deco architecture and design.
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I’m a fan of art deco too. I had to share. 🙂
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That hotel looks superb! The Floodball stepping-stool exercise looks like it could be good fitness training. Step, squat, turn, stretch, lift, place and step again.
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Oh gosh you gave me a good laugh—step, squat, turn, stretch, lift, place and step again. Hilarious.
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My knees aren’t what they were, but the next time we have a downpour and my courtyard turns into a mini pond I’m going to try it.
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And share a video?
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Really beautiful photos, Peggy 🙂
It looks very wet for football there…
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I think it rains almost every day in Ho Chi Minh City.
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That isn’t so nice, I think.
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Art Deco is my most-loved style of architecture, and the hotel is just sublime. If I ever get to Shanghai, that would be my first choice.
Strange to see the footballers using stools to avoid the wet. They are presumably going to get changed after the match, or walk home in the wet anyway. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I adore art deco too. I like your comment about the wet. Of course, they’ll get wet going home. hahaha
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Love the photos. And glad to see someone else likes to tour fancy hotel lobbies as we do! We can’t always stay, but we can appreciate the prettiness. Thanks for sharing.
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Fancy hotel lobbies are also a great place to sit on hot days. Take a book.
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That hallway is amazing and so is the bar entrance.
(and Petra’s video so funny. I looked after a Petra when a live-in Nanny in Melbourne. It’s not a common name).
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I especially liked the bar entrance. Oh, and Petra is named after the rose-red city in Jordan.
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Art Deco rules. As a result of this post I did some research on the old guys, found a great video where they’re debating the pros and cons of a female singer. Hilarious. Some things never change. I heard the band. Forty bucks a pop is a little high…That hotel…whew. Grand scale, spotless. The kids could have used sport tape to attach the stools and saved themselves some work. However, they probably could sell that video to a streaming exercise network!
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Thanks so much Phil. When I have a better connection, I’ll track down that video. Sounds good fun. I suggest that Petra put the video on an exercise network. Clever thinking.
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Sure have enjoyed the photos and the story, wonderful place to visit. and lovely video to watch, thank you.
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Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
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Lovely to see your pics of the Peace Hotel. I stayed there in 1978. Exquisite potential, but a little rundown at that time. Everything in the hotel felt terribly colonial.
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It’s still terribly colonial, but also very beautiful these days.
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What a beautiful hotel. Thank you for the description as well as the photo tour. And that football game – hilarious! Someone with a boat could have cleaned up!
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I’ll mention the boat to Petra. I thought it was cute the way her team mates waded through the water to move some of the stools.
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With those prices I would not have gone in either Peggy. Their renovations do look swish though.
Do you think the footballers were wearing cheap shoes that disintegrate when wet? 😂
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Shoes are so cheap in Vietnam anyway, I think they just didn’t want wet feet. But as someone else pointed out, they’ll probably get way on the way home. At least it made for an entertaining video.
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Wow the hotel interior is impressive!
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I know, I know. So glad we saw it.
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After seeing this, it reminds me of the less than stellar accommodations I have accepted in the past. I need to up my hotel game.
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You only need to up it for pit stops. Anything else is too costly.
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Nice photos and what a grand hotel for Poor John’s pit stop. Any future travel now I would have to include precise lay-outs for pit stops which should never be much further away than about fifty metres or so.
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Poor John is the king of finding good pit stops. Maybe he could do a map for you. 🙂
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A palace after a yurt, what a contrast !
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I thought it was a good time to make the comparison.
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It is, Peggy ! Here and right now, I feel more attracted by the yurt. Many thanks and have a great day, Peggy.
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We loved the stay in the yurt/gir. So warm and comfy.
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Oh that hotel! But the yurt looked much better!
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The yurt/gir was much more welcoming. 🙂
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How beautiful! It was worth the walk-through, I think. 🙂
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Almost always worth the walk. 🙂
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“Almost” always? 🙂
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We stepped into a deluxe hotel just this morning and it was nothing inside—all sterile and hard surfaces. Every now and then we get ‘nicely’ shooed out of the super deluxe ones. 🙂
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But as someone else pointed out, they’ll probably pay off means on the means plate. We stepped into a grand hotel just this morning and it was nothing inside—all unimaginative and unvoiced surfaces.
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Such a pity when a grand hotel is no longer grand.
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PRETTY GOOD , CAN I SHARE THE ARTICLE ON MY OWN BLOG??
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Yes, please do.
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Great post
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Thanks so much.
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