“Shanghai Wukang Mansion, three portraits, ten yuan! Not happy, no problem! Retake until you like it!” Photographers weave through the sea of people gathered at the junction before the newborn Shanghai landmark, posters of influencers’ photos dangled around their necks, cameras in hand. Even more tumultuous is the crowd of tourists, many of whom are better equipped.
Every lens was aimed at the architecture, yet every gaze stared in the opposite direction. Many would snap a photo, hastily assess its worth for a fleeting social media post, and then move on to the next tourist attraction, next frame, next post. Physically, they were there in the city, but inwardly, they were elsewhere. This way of navigating the city is not rare, in fact, there is a term for it: 打卡. The phrase literally denotes “punching the clock”, emphasizing reaching a destination rather than experiencing it, the people, the culture, and the stories.
Wukang Mansion, before going viral in recent years, stands quietly in the heart of Xuhui District where I grew up. The architecture, and more broadly speaking, its architect László Ede Hudec’s other often forgotten works, were active participants in my childhood. They were how I see Shanghai——a storied landscape.
Ten years ago, after a long day at primary school, my friends and I would walk three blocks to Wukang Mansion, our steps eager as we crossed the street to 新亚大包—everyone agreed it was where the best 粢饭团 (rice rolls) in Shanghai was made. If we hear the distinctive calls of Shanghai’s street vendors “栀子花、白兰花!” (Gardenias, white orchids!) and had spare coins in our pockets, we never missed the chance to buy a flower bracelet from the old lady who always lingered near Wukang Mansion. Her presence, set against the crimson backdrop of the building, was as familiar as the scent of the gardenias blossoms she sold. Sometimes, my mother would pick me up from there after her hair appointments at Violet Salon, tucked under the Wukang Mansion’s archways, a place she had been visiting for perms before I was even born, just as her mother did before her, tracing a thread of stories that stretched back into the last century.
Hudec’s architecture was not just the setting where my own stories took place, it was also the lens through which I came to understand the stories of my family and others, the lens through which I saw the city of Shanghai itself.
László Ede Hudec, to my father, is the architect who built the wedge-shaped Normandie Apartments, where the lobby was his playground, lost in the unburdened joy of childhood; Hudec is the aroma of butterfly palmiers that permeated the streets of the Park Hotel Deli. László Ede Hudec, to my mother, is the designer of McTyeire School’s Richardson Hall, an institution she dreamed of attending as a young woman; Hudec is the harmonious sound of a choir she heard traveling from his Moore Memorial Church on Christmas Eve of 1991. László Ede Hudec, to my grandmother, is the Red House Hospital where she was born in 1939; Hudec is the Shanghainese saying “If you wish to see the Park Hotel, hold your hat on your head first,” commemorating the once tallest building in Asia. László Ede Hudec, to poet Guo Muoruo, is the experience of ascending to the Park Hotel's top floor on one misty day in 1959; Hudec is the one who made it possible for him to survey the illuminated urban expanse below from such great heights, as his cascading thoughts turned into penned verses “雨中跃上最高楼，仲年摩云摘斗牛；直欲飞升栊火箭，红旗插到九重头”. László Ede Hudec, to Tao Fuji Construction Firm’s proprietor Tao Guilin, is the pride and the formidable responsibility that came with securing the Park Hotel project at a time when high-rises in Shanghai were predominantly commissioned to foreign contractors; Hudec is the dear friend who entrusted to Tao the construction of his Shanghai residence, a home the architect would inhabit for seven years to come. László Ede Hudec, to Alessa, Theodore, and Martin, is the father who built their beloved Tudor Revival childhood house adorned with half-timbering on 129 Panyu Road; Hudec is the father who excitedly rattled on about Park Hotel ballroom’s retractable roof that opened up to a “starlight view”. László Ede Hudec, to Shanghai, is the unsung architect whose hundreds of architectural works are inextricably rooted into the fabric of the city; Hudec is the legacy that echoed through generations of locals, unmentioned yet profoundly felt.
To end this blog, I recall a conversation with an elderly volunteer I met at the Hudec Memorial Hall, who also happened to be a resident of the Wukang Mansion. In her words, “洋房有价，故事无价” (A villa’s worth may be quantifiable, but the stories it holds defy any valuation). I feel that the same can be said for the city of Shanghai.
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