拍品描述： China - Hong Kong, Kiauchau & Shanghai，SHANGHAI: 20 cent token, ND, Chinese junk similar to the silver dollar design // reverse legend SILVER DOLLAR BAR / 18-20 RUE CHU PAO SAN, EF. Rue Chu-Pao-San was the probably the shortest street in old Shanghai. According to "Huangpu District Gazetteer" the street had a total length of 138m, and a width of 12m. It was the street within a border of Shanghais French Concession. Rue Chu-Pao-San was the official name, but among sailors and soldiers it was known as Blood Alleyand it was full of bars like "Georges Bar", "Laci Bar", "Finnemores Bar", the "Silver Dollar Bar", the "Manhattan Bar" or "Pops Place", and casinos, cabarets, fancy restaurants, cafes and brothels. It was a street of sin and vice where every night there were some good fights, just a few steps off the Bund. The street was named after Mr. Chu Pao San. He was born in 1848 in the ancestral home in Taizhou, Zhejiang province. He was a businessman and a philanthropist, who set up Chinas first modern bank - the Commercial Bank of China. He is rightly called the veteran merchant of Shanghai, having engaged in business, of different kinds, in Shanghai for over 60 years. After his death on 2nd September 1926 concession authorities decided to change the name of former Pei Zhen Road to Rue Chu-Pao-San road. In the foreign concessions, only two streets were named after Chinese figures. One was Rue Chu Pao San. The other was Yu Ya Ching Road (now Xizang Zhonglu), named in 1936 after a leading figure also from Zhejiang who was a member of the Shanghai Municipal Council. In the 1930s foreign sailors who came there for alcohol, gambling, listening to jazz and other pleasures often ended up fighting on the street, sometimes lethally. The dance tickets could be bought for only a few cents there and hostesses were nearly all prostitutes. Some of them were Russian, but the majority were Chinese girls coming from the poorest suburbs of Shanghai. In 1949 the new government changed the name of the street to Xikou Road and that was the end of Blood Alley..