Shanghai - Pearl of the Orient

A beautifully photographed trip back to the Shanghai of the 1930s, with views of the Bund's busy harbourside.

Travel in luxury on the 'slow boat to China' in this remarkable film from 1938, passing through the Suez Canal to Hong Kong, Shanghai and beyond.

Join the hustle and bustle of Peking and Shanghai city life with this richly detailed 1930s home movie.

Take a cruise through imperial China on the world's longest man-made waterway, the Grand Canal.

Gruesome home movie scenes of metropolitan Shanghai brought to its knees in the first major battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Take a serene tour of the canals, bridges and pagodas of Suzhou in Eastern China.

Chinese junks and British battleships appear together in this film depicting the 1928 Armistice Day in Hong Kong.

Ordinary life in extraordinary times - these ex-pats' home-movie snapshots of Shanghai capture the city on the brink of Japanese invasion.

Fascinating, sometimes harrowing record of life in camps run by international aid agencies following the bombing of Shanghai by the Japanese.

Battalions of the Royal Marines and the Coldstream Guards parade through Shanghai as the Chinese Civil War looms.

A Dragon Festival tops the bill in this atmospheric look at life in the streets, parks and harbourside of 1930s Shanghai.

A sumptuous city wedding, captured on film by a retired British teacher and amateur filmmaker, during a trip to China.

Mesmerising snapshot of a China full of extreme contrasts: Nationalists versus Communists, urban versus rural, advanced versus primitive.

Allied forces vigorously parade their strength in China's commercial capital in a bid to protect European interests.

British troops make their presence felt in Shanghai as China slides towards civil war.

Tantalising stock-shot glimpses of mid-century Shanghai, probably snipped from a documentary – but which?

An epic amateur travelogue of eastern China on the cusp of Japanese invasion, filmed by British writer Lady Dorothea Hosie.

While the bombs fall on Shanghai its foreign expats continue to play, as this unique film shows. But it's only the lull before the storm - because the Japanese are on their way.

A Dragon procession, a Japanese beer festival, two duck shoots and a day at the races all feature in this remarkable film from 1930s Shanghai.

The brooding cityscape of 1930s Shanghai appears throughout this film as well as military parades and marches by British troops while Japanese soldiers look on.

Period fashions and cloche hats abound in this film showing a newly married expat couple and their guests in one of Shanghai's more leafy suburbs.

The bustling waterways of rural Fouzhou contrast sharply with the frenetic pace of life in Shanghai, as seen in this atmospheric film from the late 1920s.

Cloche-hatted wedding guests, armed with confetti, lie in wait for the newly weds as they exit from a Shanghai church while their limousine gets the treatment.

The remarkable Baochu pagoda dominates this film about a visit to the West Lake at Hangzhou.

This unique and beautiful tour of Southeast Asia and China is a treasure trove of picturesque views of Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

Join the Eng family on the long journey by ship from Europe to Shanghai, China