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Last of the famous playboys
SHANGHAI has long been home to a certain type of elegant older gentleman with a taste for the finer things.
Known as lao ke le (sometimes translated as “old class pursuers”) these sophisticates are known for wearing tailored suits that mirror the Western fashions that were popular in Shanghai during the 1930s-50s. They also appreciate fine dining, good coffee, ballroom dancing and the chivalrous etiquette of the early 20th century.
References to lao ke le date back to the 1930s, when the term became used to describe Westernized Chinese gentlemen.
It later became a term for anyone who sought out the best and trendiest. These lao ke le were in-the-know, the trend-setters, the connoisseurs, the epicures. They wore the most fashionable clothes, spoke some English and read newspapers.
There are various translations: lao, of course, can literally mean “old.” It can also be an honorific when placed in front of a noun.
The original English for ke le is debatable. Some say it’s a transliteration of “carat,” symbolizing something precious, like 24-carat gold. Some say it’s from the word “clerk,” as clerks in the foreign firms of old Shanghai were among the first in the country to access Western culture.
Today’s lao ke le, however, say it means “class” and indicates an appreciation for fashion and good taste. Many are also descendents of the magnets and tycoons who made the city famous during the treaty-port era.
“We lao ke le are the last generation of colonial-era culture in Shanghai,” said self-described lao ke le Xu Yuanzhang in an interview several years ago with Shanghai Daily. “We enjoy a combination of local and foreign cultures; the root of the widely recognized haipai (Shanghai-style) culture today.”
Xu is the grandson of Zhou Zongliang, who was known as Shanghai’s “King of Dye” in the 1920s. Zhou bequeathed a 5,000-square-meter house with a garden to Xu’s mother. Xu began holding weekly house parties, mostly for other lao ke le, at the house at 3 Baoqing Road in the former French Concession starting in the 1980s.
Though Xu and the descendents of other local king’s of industry have no special titles or status today, they still uphold the traditions of refinement.
“In Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ the city is full of indecency and barbarism, but there was nobility in the prisons among the aristocrats. Nobility still exists among us,” said Xu.
The parties came to an end though in 2007, when Xu was forced to move following a property dispute with his relatives.
Xu died at 69, just a few years after leaving the house. Much like the rest of the city’s colonial history, time has also claimed many of his lao ke le peers.
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