The 2014 White Collar Boxing in Beijing

Club plans annual party in vintage style

"I came from a very traditional family, though, so I didn't socialize a lot or attend all the glamorous parties during that period.

"The Bund was very different from how it looks today, without any of those walls and railings.

"People could actually walk along the riverbank, as though it were a beach. It was also much less touristy. People who hung out in the Bund area were clerks from banks and officials from the consulates.

"The best restaurant at the time was Lubolang (green-wave-porch) in Yu Garden. The chefs there made the best xiaolongbao (dumplings) in the city.

"But things went downhill at the restaurant when it was reopened after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). The original chefs were all replaced and their traditions and skills lost.

"People back then always had the courtesy to dress well for concerts, with men in suits and women wearing qipao.

"It seems that the trend now is more casual: the more sloppily dressed you are, the more fashionable you appear. In the '30s and '40s, the more elegant and fastidious you were about your appearance, the more fashionable you were.

"But overall I prefer Shanghai how it is today, because the good life of the 1930s was only available to a small section of society.

"Most people led miserable lives. It was common to see people starving to death on the street back then. Every time I went out, I would grab some coins to give them to beggars."