Shanghai was famous for its dance halls, dance clubs and ballrooms ranging from classy and glamorous to raucous and tawdry. Yao Minji tells the stories of taxi dancers, courtesans, tycoons of a bygone age.

In January 1948, thousands of taxi dancers and staff of clubs and ballrooms in Shanghai rushed onto the street and protested against the Kuomintang government’s prohibition of “decadent” dance venues.

Officials had suggested that the dance hall girls could take up a more wholesome job ­— nursing. Both nurses and dance girls rejected the idea.

“What am I going to do now? I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t do nothing. Do you want me to become a prostitute to feed my elderly mom and little siblings?” said one taxi dancer, quoted at the time in a newspaper. “I’ve been working as a dancing girl all my life, I don’t know what else I can do?”

Taxi dancers or dance hostesses were hired to dance with customers on a dance-by-dance basis, and customers bought tickets to dance for the length of a song. The price of a ticket depended on quality of the venue and the popularity of the dancer. When the Paramount opened in 1933, the usual ticket was three yuan and the ticket with dinner cost seven yuan, which equalled half-month salary of a woman factory worker.

Taxi dancers typically earned a commission from dancing or chatting with customers, as well as the drinks and food the customers ordered. Although they only worked a few hours a night, they often earned much more than many Chinese professionals working for foreign firms.

The dance hall protest got raucous and rough. More than 600 people were arrested and 69 went to court, charged with disorderly conduct and assorted offenses.

The case, one of the most famous in 1940s Shanghai, dominated all the newspapers and eclipsed other news. It went on for months until the government rescinded the closure order.

The uproar reflected how big and popular the club and dance hall industry had become in early 20th century Shanghai. It was reported that around 200,000 people, including taxi dancers, band musicians, wait staff and others relied on the industry to earn a living.

“When my mom worked in one of those early clubs, they had to learn a lot, including foreign languages, Western manners, horseback riding (in case they were invited for an outing), and so on. It was just as high-level courtesans in ancient times needed to be good at poetry, playing musical instruments, chess and painting,” says a Shanghai woman surnamed Huang.

In her late 80s, she wears qipao and pearls, drops some English words into conversation, and sips coffee with style.

“My mother spoke both English and a little French. In those early times, dancing girls like my mom could get married to proper men like her first husband, a respected comprador,” she says. “Later, the clubs became popularized and vulgarized. Many dancing girls were sort of like bar girls and many went out with customers for more than just dancing.”

Her mother left comprador husband because he still frequented clubs and ballrooms after their marriage. Her second marriage, to Huang’s father, was also a failure and later she fell in poverty and had to sell her daughter, Huang herself, into a club.

The opening of the first Western ballroom in Shanghai is not recorded, but it wasn’t long after Shanghai opened its port in 1843. The early Shanghailanders started organizing balls in places like the Astor House by the Huangpu River.

At first, Chinese were not allowed into the all-foreign dance halls. They soon started their own venues, such as a ballroom in the Arcadia Hall in the famous entertainment venue Zhang Garden on today’s Weihai Road. It was built by merchant Zhang Shuhe in 1882 and included stages for movies, tea houses, a roller coaster and other diversions.

In the 1920s, a Chinese merchant opened the first Chinese ballroom called the Black Cat on today’s Xizang Road, and by 1928, more than 30 such venues were open, such as the Flying Bat and the Blue Bird. Many were on Xizang Road, a “dancing street.”

Guests were required to wear suits and bring dancing partners in some of the top venues, which only foreigners and wealthy Chinese could afford.

In the 1930s, some of the biggest and fanciest clubs were open, such as the Paramount ballroom (now under renovation), Ciro’s Club (now a commercial building with theaters, shops and restaurants) and the Metropolis Club (today’s Westgate Mall).

In 1936, Shanghai had around 3,000 licensed Chinese dancers and 300 foreign dancers, mostly Russians and Japanese. The dancing industry was developing so rapidly that some famous film stars also became dance girls for the attractive income. On average, they could easily make 10 to 20 times more than factory workers, while the most popular dance partners could afford clothes and jewelry fancier than that worn by the daughters of wealthy families. These venues developed their own slang.

The girls were called tan xing nuhai (弹性女孩), or “elastic girls,” as the Chinese pronunciation of tan xing is similar to “dancing” in English and they were physically flexible and nimble on the dance floor. The clumsy customers were called “rickshaws” (tuo che 拖车), since the girls had to pull them around, just as boys pulled a rickshaw.

Fortune telling vendor (ce zi tan 测字摊) was the term for patrons who only watched and never ventured onto the dance floor, just as fortune tellers sat on the street, waiting for customers.

“My parents loved Western music and dancing, but they could only do it secretly at home in the 1950s, and soon when the Great Leap Forward started, they couldn’t even play the music at home,” says 78-year-old Li Yueqiao, whose parents worked in foreign companies. “In general it was considered bad and corrupt to listen and dance to ‘capitalist music’.”

At first, before the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), clubs and dance halls remained open, but many people had fled the mainland and business was bad. Most clubs were soon turned into storytelling venues or theaters.

“When dance clubs and ballrooms reappeared in the 1980s, people went crazy,” says Li who dances daily at 5pm to saxophone music at Yong’an Department Store on Nanjing Road E. Many elderly people, some in their 80s, dance there regularly. They enjoy the free music and company of old friends. Some wear fancy suits and dresses as if they were attending a real ball.

“In the 1980s, dancing was encouraged as an exercise. Our bosses encouraged it and participated with us,” says a 70-something Shanghai woman surnamed Zhou, who used to work at a state-owned textile company.

Her company organized ballroom dancing classes and asked older workers, who had been dancers before 1949, to teach the staff. “The company rented dance venues for us to practice weekly. They were top venues and they even hired live band to play for us,” she says.

They mostly danced to Chinese pop songs, which had just reappeared.

Government-sponsored workers’ clubs, intended to provide entertainment for workers in their leisure time, also started opening ballrooms.

“The young people were addicted to disco clubs, and we middle-aged preferred the ballrooms, the international social dances,” Zhou recalls.

In addition to the company-supported sessions, she went to early morning dance sessions at these ballrooms to practice with her husband. It cost only one or two yuan and tea was free.

It’s difficult to find such good and cheap venues today since workers’ clubs started disappearing; they were converted into commercial department stores and more expensive entertainment venues in the late 1990s.

Zhou stopped dancing when her usual club was demolished. Like many others, she started again a few years ago when she discovered the Nanjing Road E. saxophone session as well as residential community dances.