If there is anything approaching a master list of leading musicians who ushered in China's jazz age, it's this article by Hal P. Mills published in the China Press in 1937. No other article I've seen sums up the history of Shanghai's jazz/dance band scene as tidily and comprehensively as this one.

The Paramount Ballroom is the most celebrated ballroom in Shanghai's history, and for good reason. I will be posting more info about this famed ballroom soon. Here is a sneak preview of what the ballroom looked like and how it was designed, for readers anticipating its opening in December 1933.

The Little Club opened in November 1926. Located across the Race Course on 60 Bubbling Well road, it became part of a nightlife zone encompassing other dance palaces and cafes. Today the Grand Theater of Shanghai still stands in that space.

This is the first English-language newspaper account I've found that describes in fair detail the "dance empress" contest, which took place annually among the dance halls in the city in the late 1920s and 1930s.

This was a very famous and terribly tragic incident in the history of the Paramount Ballroom and for Shanghai's taxi-dance industry. The incident occurred on the evening of Feb 25 1940. This was during the "lone island" (gudao) era of partial Japanese control over the city and the papers were filled with news of murders and assassinations on a daily basis.  Nevertheless it was shocking that this murder of a well-known dancer occurred in one of the most popular and crowded ballrooms in the city.

Here's another gem, the kind of story I used to delight in discovering while in the early stages of researching my dissertation and eventual book on Shanghai's nightlife industry in the 1920s-1930s, Shanghai's Dancing World. Taking place in 1932, this would be just after the war between Japanese and Chinese forces in the northern districts of the city, and soon after that there was a boom in the nightlife business.

While perusing the old China Press, I came across this article which had eluded me while I was researching my book Shanghai's Dancing World. It provides a valuable insider perspective on the cabaret/nightlife industry of the early 1930s.

Here's a letter to the editor of the North China Daily News, China's foremost English-Language newspaper from that age, describing the mechanization of the cabaret industry.