B.C.

Before we leave Shanghai, in this series anyway, the Park Hotel is one of my absolute favorites. Not only is the hotel and surrounding area itself interesting, I just love the label. I find the artwork to capture everything that it was. It makes no pretense of being Chinese at all! Who thinks of horse racing in China? The Brits. When completed in 1934, this magnificent art deco hotel was the tallest building in all of Asia at 24 floors! Note that the Shanghai Tower in Pudong (built recently) has 124 floors. Designed by Slovakian architect Laszlo Hudec, it evokes the American Radiator Building in New York. The hotel was established to compete with The Cathay as the premier destination for lodging and nightlife. The location is off the Bund, across from the Public Recreation Ground (today People's Park) where the famous shopping centers on Nanjing Road became Bubbling Well Road. Bubbling Well was the area where the wealthiest British ex-pats had their stately country home...

The other hotel mentioned on the label with The Cathay (from part I) is the nearby Metropole. Opened three years later in 1932, this hotel is two blocks east, and three blocks south, at what is now Fuzhou Road and Jiangxi Middle Road (formerly Foochow and Kiangshe). If you have ever been told your hotel is overbooked, so they put you up in the "south tower," I wonder if that happened here. The location is one block from gorgeous the Holy Trinity Church (coincidentally obscured by a park celebrating Communism). This was the actual "Cathedral" that the boy Jim of  Empire of the Sun attended for school (the movie filmed at another church location in Shanghai). The Metropole was also designed by Palmer and Turner for Victor Sassoon. This time a Baroque style was employed according to some sources. It all looks art deco to me, and in fact is referenced as such in other sources. In any case it is fourteen stories and together with Sassoon's Hamilton House (acr...

In the late 19 th century, ocean liners began the practice of putting stickers on trunks to identify the owner for easy access and retrieval. Over time, these stickers would act as histories of the luggage, and thus the person, like a highly visible passport. Of course the decoration became a symbol of status, and so elegant hotels and newly-established airlines soon followed suit. Much effort was put into the design of these artistic labels. Unfortunately, the history is largely lost to modern times as travel became common, cheaper, less elegant, and well… more practical and even drudgery at times. Ultimately bag tags became barcodes readable by airport luggage handling systems, as passport stamps were replaced with QR code stickers or even nothing at all for certain expedited travelers. Status was converted into loyalty programs. Luggage was minimized. Time became the most precious commodity in a 24/7 world. This series of articles presents some example labels from the ...