Remembering Tess Johnston, Chronicler of ‘Old Shanghai’ (opens in new tab)

“I had never seen anything like Shanghai in 1981,” said Tess Johnston, describing her impression of the city when she first arrived. “I had never been to a foreign country that looked so utterly and completely Western. It was perfectly preserved, a cross between Warsaw in 1938 and Calcutta, a totally Western city with an Asian population. It was a scruffy showcase of Western architecture—and it was absolutely wonderful.” Tess, who died this week at 93, had arrived in September 1981 with the U...