No matter in architectural design or decorative art, it was unparalleled at that time. His breathtaking charm is manifested in the charm of European classical court art that he created and distributed all the time. The most amazing thing is that several restaurants and reception rooms are inlaid with several Lalik art glass ornaments one and a half feet square. There are flower-and-bird screens, flying pigeons with wings, and fish flying in the shallow bottom, and you suddenly find a crystal world.
After the hotel was completed, it became famous in Shanghai, famous for its luxury, and mainly received celebrities from financial circles, business circles and countries. For example, Private Life, the masterpiece of American General Marshall, President Si Tuleideng and playwright Noel Coward, was written in the Peace Hotel. In 1930s and 1940s, Lu Xun and Soong Ching Ling came to the hotel to meet foreign friends, such as Chaplin and Bernard Shaw.
After liberation, the hotel reopened on 1956 and was named Peace Hotel. In recent years, the Peace Hotel has renovated its guest rooms and dining rooms, but its architectural style remains the same as that of that year, which makes the guests living here feel as if they are in just visiting, imagining thousands of things in the fusion and interlacing of modernity and tradition, trendy and retro.
The old jazz band of Peace Hotel is also a world-famous jazz band. This band was founded in 1980, and its members are old people in their seventies and eighties. This old musician, who is known as the "evergreen tree in the art world", is especially good at playing famous jazz songs from the 1930s and 40s and famous songs from all over the world. Their Legend of Youth has become a beautiful scenery in the Peace Hotel. Zhou Wanrong, founder and captain of the band, and Cheng Yueqiang, a jazz drummer, were members of Jamie King, the first jazz band composed of China people, which was popular in Bailemen Ballroom in the 1940s.
Not only that, but Sassoon invited the store of Lalik Company to the building, just in the shopping area on the west side of the building, and I don't know how many collectors were left.
Lalik art glass may seem strange to young people in China now, but for those "Old Kela" and "Last Small Opening" who have lived in Shanghai for more than half a century, it is really a beautiful dream that has gradually drifted away.
Lalik art glass swept the world in the last century, especially intoxicated with a precious special glass art in Europe. It was founded by a Frenchman, René Lalik. 1925 is the pinnacle of Rene's glass art creation. This year, his works won a sensational reputation at the International Art Fair held in Paris.
Its most famous product is a kind of glass art called opalescent glass, in which antimony, arsenic and cobalt are dissolved during firing. The works fired by this process contain special color effects, including transparency and frosting. This product is milky white from a distance, dark blue from a close look, bright red to the light, just like a fire, wonderful.
After Rene's death, his son and granddaughter inherited and improved the enterprise respectively, resulting in the second and third generation of Lalik's art works. The Lalik Art Glass products sold in the European market and the Shanghai Sheng Di Commercial Building are the third generation products. To see the first generation of products, only through the auction market, the price ranges from several hundred pounds to tens of thousands of pounds. A few years ago, someone from the Lalik family came to the hotel to appreciate the charm of their ancestors, claiming that the existing Lalik products in the hotel could be worth half of the hotel assets. The lion's speech and landing are valuable, which can be seen.
Treasure of peace-aluminum record
Hua Mao Hotel, the predecessor of Peace Hotel, is a luxury hotel built by Sassoon, a British Jew. 1929 The exterior wall of the hotel is granite stone, with a golden tower and a green copper corrugated skin. Rotary hall door; Spacious halls and corridors; Italian marble floors and columns; Bronze vintage lamp; "Lalik" lighting in beautifully decorated restaurants; Unique nine-country special suite; Everything is so perfect, gorgeous and simple, enjoying the reputation of "the first building in the Far East".
The "best feeling" of Huamao Hotel is also manifested in getting some "exclusive news gadgets" from time to time. For example, customers should hold birthday, wedding, anniversary and other celebrations in the hotel. For example, in other hotels, people leave as soon as the celebration is over, while Hua Mao Hotel can make a small aluminum record for customers as a souvenir. Today, there is also a custodian of this compact aluminum record on the beach, that is, Mr. Tang Wuji, nephew of the first Prime Minister of the Republic of China. That's the recording of his grandfather Mr. Zhou Jin Jue's 60th birthday celebration. 1938 Lunar September 18 is Mr. Zhou's 60th birthday. The celebration was held in the grand restaurant of China Trade Hotel. The guests were like clouds that day, and the children were even more excited. There are facilities for recording guests in hotels, which are rare even now. However, in the 1930s, there was only one Hua Mao Hotel.
At that time, the recording equipment was limited, and it was impossible to record all the contents of the celebration. We can only record alone in the special room on the ground floor of the building, and a record can only be recorded for 4 minutes. When we go back, we can play on the 78-turn hand-cranked record player with bamboo needles. According to Mr. Tang Wuji's memory, the recording studio was on the left side of the crowd in the jazz bar at that time, as small as a street phone booth. Zhou Jin Jue recorded his three speeches at the birthday celebration, entitled "Make contributions, accumulate virtues and make a statement". His third daughter Zhou Shuping and his seventh daughter Zhou Zhifu (Tang Wuji's mother) each recorded a song, sang a song dedicated to his father and said a few words of blessing. On the front of these records, there is an English description of the service of Huamao Hotel, which is nothing more than "Welcome to the hotel, we will provide quality service", followed by the text. Thinking of these old records, which are only the size of modern CDs, has brought happiness to a family for more than a century and still exists in the world after the catastrophe. 90-year-old Zhou Zhifu can't help but feel deeply.