James T. Areddy

Sir Michael Kadoorie sang a mariachi tune at the opening party for the Peninsula Shanghai

The Kadoorie family, like no other, exemplifies the tumultuous history of foreigners in Shanghai, and specifically a presence amid the parade of Western-style buildings on the Chinese river bank known as the Bund.

Ellis Kadoorie landed in Shanghai in 1880 while an older brother, Elly, went to Hong Kong, two path-breaking Sephardic Iraqi-Jews who did trading and banking to emerge as some of the richest people in East Asia.

Over time they acquired leading Shanghai hotels, like the Palace and Astor House, then world famous. In the 1920s, the family hotels played host to dignitaries that in one case included a famous panda but also endured the bombing of one property as war ravaged the city, and eventually lost key Shanghai holdings to the People’s Liberation Army in the early 1950s.

This week, to celebrate the Kadoorie family’s homecoming of sorts to the Pearl of the Orient after six decades with the official opening of the Peninsula Shanghai, the clan toasted to, perhaps surprisingly, Mexican food and Mariachi music.

The grandson of Elly, the current family patriarch and one of the wealthiest men on Earth, Sir Michael Kadoorie, can certainly have what he wants. And he knows how to throw a party.

At Thursday’s gala, Sir Michael offered his 3,000 guests a show of acrobats dressed like bell boys in pill box hats scaling the 235-room hotel, and feted them with champagne, shark’s fin soup, Peking duck and sushi in a highly styled setting meant to recall Shanghai’s jazz-age high points in the 1920s. The party took place throughout the hotel, from a basement bebop bar, to jazz crooning in the second floor ballroom, up to a 14th floor disco called Sir Elly’s that features outstanding views from its outdoor deck – including of the still-standing Palace and Astor properties.

But in that so-Chinese setting, it was the spicy south-of-the border music, courtesy of Mexican and Colombian bands, and food prepared by Mexican chefs flown in for the event, that drew crowds to the 11th floor patio, well past the 11th hour.

As his guests munched on fancy crab mini-burritos and hot tamales, Sir Michael took the microphone and sang in Spanish along with the white and gold clad band from Mexico, “Mariachi de la Secretaria de Marina“. A crowd favorite was the song “Jalisco,” a brassy homesick tune named for one of the 31 Mexican states. A spokeswoman says Sir Michael has long enjoyed Mariachi music.

During his stay in Shanghai, Sir Michael also toured his family’s former estate, “Marble Hall.” As a young boy, he peddled a tricycle through the mansion’s long white halls and could marvel at a room-size safe that held one of the world’s largest ivory collections. Today the building is known as Children’s Palace and sports a Communist Party logo.

Opening more than five years after Kadoorie-controlled Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. acquired its Shanghai land, and 10 years into its efforts to get back to the Bund with a Peninsula, the only new hotel on the Bund in decades cost, at $435 million, about $74 million above the company’s initial estimates (announcement in PDF here).

It is owned in partnership with David Wang’s SPG Land (Holdings) Ltd. and the two are working on a revival next door of the former British Consulate, a long planned project that is now making headway.

It won’t be the last: A strip that for decades has offered little fancy accommodation will soon have perhaps 1,000 luxury hotel rooms, with the opening of the Fairmont Peace Hotel, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel and later the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai. All of them are planned as modern versions of historic properties on the riverfront designed to evoke Shanghai’s 1920s and 1930s spirit.

In a foreword to a new 204-page book by Peter Hibbard commissioned by the hotel company and entitled “Beyond Hospitality,” Sir Michael says his family company “has always needed perseverance to realize its vision.”

He offers a positive spin rendition of the family experience in Shanghai, noting, “Other events were difficult at the time, but ultimately led to positive outcomes, such as the rise to power of the People’s Liberation Army in 1949 – one step in a process which 60 years later has seen the Company return to Shanghai, now, once again, one of the greatest cities in the world and the financial heart of emerging, modern China.”

–James T. Areddy