Ruan Lingyu: The Greta Garbo of Old Shanghai

The ghost of Old Shanghai is buried under the concrete and steel of the city’s skyscrapers today, but China’s largest metropolis was once nicknamed the “Paris of the East”. During the 1930s, its tangle of opium dens, brothels and casinos jostled alongside the Shanghai Club (home to the longest bar in the world), the Art Deco Park hotel with its retractable roof, and Astor House, a favourite of Charlie Chaplin and Noe...