Getting There...

Travelling to Shanghai.

 

Once foreign settlement was established in Shanghai, everyone wanted to go there. The most efficient way was by water, via steamship, but rail connexions appeared shortly thereafter. These had far more troubles than the ships, in the face of a strong resistance from the Chinese Nationals, but by 1912 they were fairly strongly established.

From this point onwards, keeping tourists away from Shanghai was impossible; everybody from Ulysses S. Grant to Teddy Roosevelt dropped in to see what was happening. And the number of visitors only increased...

 

By Ship:

The Victorian era was the time of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the time of steamship travel. With the opening of both the Suez Channel and the Panama Canal, steamship companies such as the White Star Line established frequent passages between Southeast Asia, Britain and the USA. From the US the journey was fairly straightforward, across the Pacific; from England, the journey was broken up by stops at Malta, Calcutta, Goa, Rangoon, Singapore and/or Hong Kong, meaning that a journey of a similar distance as that from New York took a much longer duration.

 

From New York: 10,855 nautical miles / 20,103 kilometres

30-45 days

1st Class: US$110.00

2nd Class: US$75.00

Steerage: US$20.00

 

From New Orleans: 10,254 nautical miles / 18,990 kilometres

29-42 days

1st Class: US$105.00

2nd Class: US$70.00

Steerage: US$19.00

 

From Panama Canal: 8,556 nautical miles / 15,846 kilometres

24-36 days

1st Class: US$85.00

2nd Class: US$58.00

Steerage: US$15.00

 

From San Francisco: 5,550 nautical miles / 10,279 kilometres

15-23 days

1st Class: US$70.00

2nd Class: US$50.00

Steerage: US$13.00

 

From London: 10,979 nautical miles / 20,333 kilometres

60-70 days

1st Class: £15/15s/0d

2nd Class: £10/10s/0d

Steerage: £7/7s/0d

 

By Rail:

 

At this time there were no internal railway networks in mainland China and there wouldn’t be until early next century. The Chinese believed that railway construction disturbed the resting places of their ancestors and interrupted the feng shui of the land and so they vehemently opposed such construction throughout this period. On a more down-to-earth level, the ‘fire wagons’ eliminated the need for carters, coolies and barrowmen to carry produce and the train system was thus seen as an economic threat to the peasant class. The first attempts at railway building (instigated by the French, Germans and Belgians outside of Shanghai) were fraught with difficulties and a final plan to sell the works off to the Chinese Imperial Army saw the whole endeavour largely torn up and dismantled.

This being said, it is possible at this time to get close to China by rail if one is willing to continue towards China from the Russo-Mongolian border by some other means. The Trans-Siberian Express was begun in 1890 and completed after the Revolution in 1916. From 1890 to 1912 it was possible to travel east from Paris, thence to St. Petersburg and then to Irkutsk; the Irkutsk-Baikal part of the line was the last to be completed. Such a trip would cost around £35, or US$175. Alternatively, travellers could move west from Vladivostok to Harbin in Manchuria: this costs £5, or US$25.

The main issue with this plan of travel is that the White Russians, holed up in Vladivostok, regularly patrol the rail line in search of their Red Russian enemies, occasionally sabotaging the line and the carriages, and taking captives. This situation was not resolved until after 1916 so the brave traveller of the Russian railways should be well-prepared.

Intrepid adventurers travelling from Bhamo in Burma in the period 1909-11, have the option of travelling by train along the newly completed Yunnan-Szechuan Railway from the western hinterlands to the Yangtze, from where riverboats can be enlisted to continue on to Shanghai. Slow construction and general laxity of service mean that this route is anything but reliable: costs and times are highly variable.

 

Other Means:

The other option for getting to Shanghai is by overland routes. These can be fraught with danger and are arduous, not for the faint-hearted. This being said, they are also cheap. The most frequently chosen routes are from British-occupied Rangoon (following Aleister Crowley, among others) through the province of Yunnan, along the Yangtsze River to Nanking and thence to Shanghai; alternatively, a route can be established through French-controlled Annam from Indochina, to Canton and then north along the River Pei to Hankow and then along the Yangtsze. In terms of cost, compare ‘Chinese’ Morrison’s expenditure on his Rangoon-Shanghai trip in 1894 which took him 100 days at a total cost of £18: this included payment for two servants and several horses.

 

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Climate

 

Shanghai has a seasonal climate and experiences all four seasons despite being on an equivalent parallel to cities such as Cairo and New Orleans. Temperatures drop below freezing in the winter months and reach a humid high averaging 32°C (90°F), occasionally spiking into the low 40s, (104°F) during the hottest months of July to August. June through to early August is also the rainy period. Winters tend to be grey and cold, settling in by mid-December and not letting up until early March. Snow is quite common.

Autumn and Spring are generally considered the best times to be in Shanghai. Both seasons are cool and crisp with rain decreasing in the Fall and building up again in the Spring.