Our archive interview with Tess Johnston, who has lived in Asia for over 40 years (Shanghai for 35), worked with the US Foreign Service and the Consulate General, and published 15 books about historic architecture in Shanghai. She's speaking at Lit Fest tomorrow at 10am.
I first arrived in Shanghai in the fall of 1981. My first impression was that of a shabby, monochromatic city, but on closer inspection, one filled with lovely old buildings - remnants of an earlier and more gracious era.
I'm from Virginia, the cradle of beautiful architecture - and of five presidents, I might add. From my last home there I could see on the distant hilltop Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, surely the loveliest home ever created anywhere.
I've chosen to live in old buildings all my life, and have mostly succeeded.
Selecting the most beautiful building in Shanghai is like saying which of your children you love most. But I suppose it's the old Gascogne, before its recent renovation - a perfectly-preserved 1930s Art Deco masterpiece. I lived there over a period of 12 years, in five different apartments and winding up in the stunning tenth-floor penthouse with a forty-foot terrace facing west - what's not to love?
The most interesting time and place I lived? It’s a toss up between Berlin in the 50s and Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. With the Russians rumbling around us in tanks in Berlin and the Viet Cong taking potshots at us in Vietnam, both fulfilled the toast “May you live in interesting times.” And who was it who said “The imminence of death concentrates the mind wonderfully”? Danger, perceived or real, gets the old adrenaline flowing every time…
What I miss most in the city since my arrival are all those lovely old buildings, of course!
Sadly, the striking commonality between the Communist countries that I have lived in is that it takes only two to three generations to eradicate all aesthetic sensitivities.
The change to the city that has pleased me most is the standard of living of most Chinese rising. Oh yes, and to see some of the lovely old buildings spared.
I am inspired to write by a missionary-type zeal to share with others something I have found fascinating and that they may not know or have noticed. (Of course I assume that everyone has the exact same interests that I have, and am disappointed when they do not.)
The author Lynn Pan introduced me to photographer Deke Erh in early 1990. He was very reserved and polite, even called me Nin instead of Ni, and spoke no English. I felt that would be a handicap, as my Chinese was rather limited, but my Chinese wound up getting better fast because of that. Thanks, Deke!
Amazingly, for two persons from two widely different backgrounds (or maybe not - conservative South, conservative China?) when we are working on our books we are in harmony, we have the same ideas, goals… We just both love creating beautiful books, and luckily he has the artist's eye that I lack!
Of the books, my all-time favorite is our Frenchtown Shanghai, because it is near to my heart and I know it by heart, having lived there for so many years.
I hope through my work to make people aware of what they lose when a government chooses to remake a city into another, different, faceless city - an Anywhere - and in the process destroy its uniqueness. (But then I'm just an old fogey, and I do know that you can't stop progress.)
I was raised a Democrat and never found a reason to change - and certainly not lately.
If I could live in Shanghai in any period of its history? Easy. The decade 1927-37 - momentous happenings politically and wild times socially.
The four people from Old Shanghai I would invite to dinner would be Du Yuesheng (Green Gang boss), Stirling Fessenden (secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council), Two-Gun Cohen (Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard, later a general) and Father Jaquinot (creator of the 1937 Safe Zone for refugees). They were contemporaries and totally disparate types as far as jobs went, but I think they would have gotten along just fine, as they were really all of one type: practical realists.
Newcomers fresh off the boat, please don't write another article about Poor Little Me, I can't get across the street, the locals cheat me, the pollution kills me, blah blah blah. Get over it. Move on, or move out.
The thing that brings me the most happiness in life is that Deke and my books have made a lot of Old China Hands - the ones who lived here all those years I didn't - so nostalgic and so happy to see again all the old places they lived in or loved, still here as they remembered them. Well, that’s only the photos in our earlier books, I guess…
What does the future hold for me? Hey, when you ask an octogenarian that, what answer do you expect? “Death and Taxes” is the obvious answer. But perhaps I still have one more book in me, who knows? I hope so.
Johnston is speaking tomorrow at A War Away – An American Woman in Vietnam, Mar 17, 10am, RMB85. Glam, get tickets here.
See full Lit Fest schedule here.
[Top image via radio.wpsu.org]
This article was originally published in the March 2011 issue of That's Shanghai magazine. It has been updated and republished on March 16, 2018.
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