How upscale was the restaurant that the French once opened in Hankou a hundred years ago?

On April 1906 and 1, the first north-south railway artery in China initiated by Zhang Zhidong, Governor of Huguang, was completed and opened to traffic. Han Jing Railway connects Beijing and Hankou, with the northern end starting from Zhengyangmen (Qianmen) West Station in Beijing and the southern end starting from Dazhimen Station in Hankou.

Han Jing Railway

When Dazhimen Station in Hankou was completed, a French businessman named Sao Paulo keenly smelled the huge business opportunities contained in it. Around the railway station, it must be a place where business travelers gather. Is there anything more suitable than opening a restaurant? Sao Paulo visited around Dazhimen Station for a period of time, took a fancy to a piece of land next to the station and decided to build a high-end hotel here.

The name of the hotel is "Deming Hotel". "Deming" is the English translation of "TERMINUS", which means the end point. The implication is that Dazhimen Station is the terminal of Jinghan Railway, and Deming Hotel is the terminal of tourists from all over the world.

Deming restaurant

Sao Paulo's wishes are very good, but the construction of Deming Hotel is full of twists and turns.

Deming Hotel, designed by the French Jew Stessen and his wife, is a three-story brick-wood building with typical French Renaissance style: bucket-shaped iron tile roof, round tiger window, snow-white grooved Ionian column, door bucket protruding towards the street center, wide outdoor corridor and garden for guests to relax. Because the design was too complicated, the contractor felt that he would lose money after completing the basic project and ran away. Fortunately, there is a guarantor. After the guarantor paid a sum of money, he allowed Deming Hotel to continue construction and escaped the fate of "uncompleted residential flats".

19 19, Deming Hotel finally completed all the projects, declared it completed and put into operation. Up to now, Deming Hotel has a history of 10 1 year.

Deming Hotel is located in Consular Street, French Concession, Hankou. Later, Consul Street in Detome was changed to Simin Road, and Deming Hotel was located at Simin Road 185. With the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Siming Road was changed to Shengli Street, and Deming Hotel was located at 245 Shengli Street.

Shengli steet

Deming Hotel is positioned as a high-class hotel with luxurious decoration: magnificent hall, spacious room, comfortable French sofa and embroidered carpet with gold thread ... For a long time, Deming Hotel has been the most upscale hotel in Hankou and even the whole three towns of Wuhan. People who can stay in Deming Hotel are either celebrities or powerful people.

Nie Hualing, a famous contemporary writer in China, was born in Wuhan. When I was a child, I lived in Liang Yi Street in Hankou (now Dongting Street in Jiang 'an District of Wuhan) in the Russian Concession, and I often passed by Deming Hotel, which left a deep impression on this luxury hotel. Later, Nie Hualing mentioned Deming Hotel in his memoir "Sansheng Stone III", saying that all the people going in and out of the revolving door were "foreigners with high noses and blue eyes".

In 1930s and 1940s, British journalist George Hogg killed more than 60 orphans in China during the "China Rescue". Mike manus wrote the novel Children of Yellowstone. In 2008, China, Australia and Germany co-produced a film of the same name, which was directed by roger spottiswoode and co-starred by jonathan rhys meyers, Chow Yun Fat, Radha Louise Mitchell and Yang Ziqiong.

Stills of "Children of Huangshi"

In the novel Children of Huangshi, there is a chapter devoted to Hankou, which reads: "There is a famous bar in the Intercontinental Hotel in Saigon, a Quayle Club in Salisbury, a Comand Hotel in Beirut, a US Navy Club in Hankou, China and its nearby Deming Hotel ... The core figures of Smedley are media reporters who have a drinking party at the Navy Club and Deming Hotel ..."

American female journalist Smedley lived in China for 12 years, and wrote books such as The Destiny of the People of China, China's Counterattack, and China's Warsong, which reflected War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in China to the world.

1949, Wuhan was liberated. 1954, Deming Hotel was renamed Jianghan Hotel. Since then, Jianghan Hotel has become one of the main places to entertain foreign guests and carry out foreign affairs activities in Hubei Province, and it is also the first Sino-foreign joint venture hotel in Hubei Province marked by the "golden key". According to the statistics of foreign affairs in Hubei Province and the data of Wuhan literature and history, Jianghan Hotel has received more than 200,000 foreign guests from more than 70 countries and regions since 1950s, making it the largest hotel in Hubei Province.

Jianghan restaurant

There are a long list of cultural celebrities in Jianghan Hotel: fadeev, ulanova, Gagarin, Mei Lanfang, Cheng, Hua, Han, Xu Beihong, Qi Baishi, Zhang Wei, Huang Zhou and other Chinese and foreign celebrities have left footprints on the carpet of Jianghan Hotel.

After the reform and opening up, Jianghan Hotel was opened to ordinary people. As a result, many Wuhan citizens were able to stay in Jianghan Hotel. However, due to poor management, Jianghan Hotel collapsed and basically closed down. From July 2065438 to July 2009, a fire broke out in Jianghan Hotel, making this century-old shop the target of major news media reports.

A fire broke out in Jianghan Hotel.

Today, Jianghan Hotel has lost its former glory. However, Jianghan Hotel, as a special old building, is still a cultural landmark of Hankou. Many Wuhan people have friends from other places at home and are often recommended to visit Jianghan Hotel and take a photo as a souvenir.