The January 13, 1911 issue of The North China Daily News reported that on its opening, there was "a guard of honor of armed Sikhs, the Town Band, and later a detachment of bluejackets arrived from the H.M.S. Flora ... and the British Consul General, Sir Pelham Warren, in his brougham escorted by a detachment of Sikh troopers, who presented arms."

The club building is a massive white marble building in the neo-classical style. The main marble-floored hall, over 40 feet high, has six Ionic columns which would have

Click here to see a Shanghai Club "chit" from the mid-1930s.

fitted right in with London's club scene. On the upper floors were a card room, a writing room, dining room, a ballroom, and above that a number of bedrooms for resident members.

All floors were linked by twin elevators which ascended in the middle of the curving marble staircase. No expense was spared in making the club an elegant but comfortable refuge for its privileged members - male only, of course. The North China Daily News reported it was "lighted with 'Tungstoliers,' a new American method of illumination."

The club was most famous for its Long Bar, reputedly the longest in the world. There, the taipans (big bosses) and griffins (junior officers and clerks) stood in exactly prescribed positions, by rank and as minutely calibrated as on a ruler. Up front near the window would be the leaders of the city's most powerful hongs and down in the shadows on the far end the newest, greenest griffin. God help the new boy in town who did not understand and observe the subtle gradations.

So select was membership that an anecdote is told that, in the days right after the Pearl Harbor attack (December 8th in China), a young Briton was passing by the Club just as some incoming rounds were hitting uncomfortably close.

For protection he sought to dart into the door of the club only to be stopped short by a Colonel Blimp type who said: "Sir, you can not come in here, you are not a member."

Just then a round landed even closer. The club members consulted and decided to convene a quorum and voted in their unfortunate compatriot - but only as a temporary member.

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