Thread by @VintageShanghai

In many old #Shanghai photos, you can see this statue standing in the bund. It is not there anymore. Who is she, and what happened to her? A 🧵 👇 （1）

Long story short, it's a #WWI memorial erected in 1924. The puppet government took it down during the Japanese occupation in #WWII . Rumor says it was melted for Japanese war purposes. It was not. （2）

Prof. Robert Bickers wrote a great article on it if you want to know more in detail. robertbickers.net/2014/10/10/los… I want to add a little backstory, not in that article - about how the Angel was found. （3）

On 21 Jan 1947, Chinese newspapers in #Shanghai happily announced, “The Peace Angel was found!”They reported Major Fannie Johnston-Reynolds of the US Army found her. The major spotted her while shopping in a building on Yuen Ming Yuen Road. （4）

Major Reynolds spotted the Angel lying in a back street yard near Soochow Creek. Accompanied by an American colonel and a Chinese general, she entered a ‘spacious compound and, after having made their way zigzag through a number of brick buildings' and found the city’s angel.(4)

The next day, #British newspaper responded with a front-page article: The Angel was first discovered by a #Russian girl searching for the Pushkin bust in one of the Japanese metal dumps in HongKew, at the end of 1945. It was then transferred to the compound of the British CG. (5)

The Brits proposed re-erecting the Angel in the Bund on the same day. It would be costly, of course. A Chinese newspaper estimated the price would be 3000000000, quite a lot, even taking in the fact that the Chinese currency was inflating. (6)

Nevertheless, the #Shanghai Municipal Government seemed willing to cooperate. Mayor K.C.Wu actually led a service at the site in Nov. 1947. But eventually, nothing came out of it. (7)

Things turn dramatically bad for the KMT from 1947. The course of #Chinese history was about to change completely, so the Angel became a trivial matter. There would be no place for such an Angel in New #China for apparent reasons.(8)

Interestingly, there was a different vision of a Victory memorial in the bund after the communist takeover of #Shanghai.(9)

Where did the Peace Angel eventually go? I don’t know. But today, a replica is still in Chedun Film Park if you’d like to have a look. I still have one last question: Why didn’t the British say anything about the Angel until 1947 if it was founded in 1945? @chinarhyming (10)

@HistoricSH