The Astor House of Old Shanghai

Chapter 2

He arrived to Shanghai in the evening, under dark grey clouds, by a steam locomotive from Guangzhou. Dismal and sad were his first two impressions of the bustling city.

He bought the week's issue of the North China Herald at the railway station and then hired a rickshaw man to take him to his hotel. He was unshaven, wearing a dirty, mid-length leather coat of calf suede, a Sinclair club collared shirt, wrinkled canvas field trousers, and muddied mid-calf boots. He knew that his appearance would not be appreciated in the lobby of what many considered to be the best hotel in Shanghai, but he also knew that many Western guests would simply pass him off as another foreigner back in from the "bush".

When he arrived to the hotel he paid his ride, took his leather packsack, and walked up the red, carpeted steps of the main entrance. Two sleek and well-dressed Chinamen smiled, bowed, and opened the two main entrance doors. He bowed his head back to them and entered the lobby quickly able to distinguish between the American, British, French, German, Japanese, and Russian guests who were seated or standing throughout the grand Victorian room in their finest attire while speaking, observing, smoking, reading, or drinking. Many European heads turned to swiftly observe and dismiss him as some lost messenger. As for the Americans in the room, there were only two, and they were too busy drinking their whiskey to pay him much attention.

He approached the check-in desk and requested their best room; it had been too many weeks of sleeping in low-cost, filthy old guesthouses throughout southern China. He believed that he deserved a treat to feel like a gentleman again. The receptionist explained that there was one room left on the fifth floor for fourteen pounds. He hadn't spent that kind of money in an entire month. Regardless, he took the room for two nights.

A Chinese servant standing beside the check-in desk offered to take his packsack, but he declined the offer and simply asked where the lift was located. "Up these steps and at the end of the hall," the receptionist replied. He thanked the receptionist, walked up the steps, and approached the liftman that was already opening the lift cage for him. "Fifth floor," he requested as he stepped into the lift.

And as the lift ascended he reviewed the newspaper article on the third page; the article detailed what two sources believed would be the new foreign policy doctrine of the McKinley administration in regards to its increasingly aggressive approach to China. The article went on to discuss U.S. Secretary of State John Hay as the mastermind behind the policy and that perhaps by the end of the year the policy would be officially communicated to European nations. The lift stopped, the liftman opened the lift cage, and he walked out into a long, dark corridor. "To the end of the hall, sir," the liftman said before he closed the cage. He walked to the end of the corridor, turned to his left, and saw the door to his room. Room 502.

He entered and found the room very much to his liking: high ceiling, large windows allowing the grey light of the dreary day to illuminate the bedroom and bathroom, wood flooring, a master bed, and an oak desk against the wall facing a large, hanging mirror.

He approached the central window of the bedroom and looked out at a view of the Huangpu River that was filled with the traffic of both wind and steam powered cargo ships, the Waibaidu Bridge, and the Bund, which was lined with strolling, well-dressed Europeans, various types of horse drawn vehicles, and surprisingly one Benz Patent-Motorwagen that was catching the attention of nearly everyone it passed. He then turned away from the window, dropped his packsack and newspaper on the bed, wound his watch, and decided to take a shower.

After shaving and getting dressed in fresh but wrinkled clothes he decided to take a walk. He took the stairs down to the lobby, exited the hotel, crossed the Waibaidu Bridge, and walked south along the Bund. At Nanking Road, he turned right. Now walking west, he thought, West is home. Where I belong; it had been eight years since he had been to the land of his birth.