Shanghai Nightlife

The Past

Of all the dance halls Shanghai once had before the liberation in 1949, only the Paramount has survived all the demolition and infrastructure changes.
It was completed in 1932. The hall was designed by architect Yang Xiqiu in the art deco style. The first floor of the Paramount was the lobby, kitchen and shops, the second floor was the dance hall and banquet hall and the third floor was a hotel.
The colourful lights always flashed to the rhythm of the music, adding what then must have been a mysterious touch to the dance hall.
The Paramount was fully air-conditioned, a great luxury in the 1930s, so that the temperature on the dance floor remained at about 20 degrees in all seasons.
At the beginning, the dance hall was rented to a Frenchman to run. The Frenchman hired no escorts and all guests had to take their own partners. Also, the entrance fee was very expensive.
Due to its poor business, the Frenchman was dismissed. Later the dance hall hired a group of young and pretty women to work as escorts and the business began to improve. State-of-the-art facilities, glittering lights, pretty taxi-dancers and the Filipino jazz band combined to make the Paramount the most popular and most expensive dance hall in Shanghai.
During the Japanese occupation, the Paramount was reduced to a place where spies and traitors sought fun and caused trouble. In 1941, escort Chen Manli was shot to death in the hall by a hitman hired by the Japanese simply because the patriotic Chen refused to dance with a Japanese officer a few days before.
In 1954, the dance hall was changed into the Red Capital Cinema and the auxiliary buildings were altered into a department store.

The Present

After long restoration, the Paramount Hall was once again opened to the public as a night club in January, 2002. The interior, designed by a Taiwanese architect, was abundant with bold adoptions of gold, red and white patterns and designs with some touches of Art Deco. The dance hall was where many middle-aged and senior people gathered to dance and relived the pre-liberation "Night Shanghai".

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