I clearly remember the first time I learned about the Peace Hotel. I was in graduate school in Hong Kong, emailing my mother back in the United States. My parents were getting ready for a multi-week trip to China to attend my wedding to a man from Hubei Province. Since they were going to fly into Shanghai from the U.S., my mom wanted to firm up our plans there before I left Hong Kong for a summer in China without Internet access.

“Have you heard of the Peace Hotel?” my mom wrote. “It’s an old hotel on the Bund and looks nice. If you agree, I’ll book a few rooms there.”

I hadn’t heard of the Peace, but I knew the Bund, from my first trip to China in 1988. On that high school trip, we were on a tight budget and stayed at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, but visited the Bund and Nanjing Road, where the Peace Hotel stands.

Three years later, I returned to Shanghai with my father, in the summer of 1991. Again, we didn’t go to the Peace Hotel, but we were close.

And four years later, in 1995, I was firming up plans for Shanghai. Staying at an old historic hotel sounded great to me, so I agreed with my mom’s generous idea. And what a fabulous idea it was.

After roughing it in China for more than six weeks, nothing could have been more perfect than a short stay at the Peace Hotel. My then-husband and I arrived at the hotel hours before my parents, uncle, and brother landed in Shanghai. The first thing I remember upon checking in was the dull golden plaque on the wall designating the Peace as a four star hotel. It was state-run back then and while it was by far the fanciest hotel I’d seen in China up to that point, I could tell it had seen better days decades earlier. The wood paneling seemed old and neglected. The lobby was spacious but lackluster.

Once we entered our room, all the stress and exhaustion from traveling around China for the last month and a half seemed to disappear. The ceiling was so high that it gave the room a spacious feel I hadn’t seen since I’d left the U.S., more than a year earlier. And when I walked into the bathroom, I found an old-fashioned scale. It was also the first bathroom scale I’d seen in China.

My family arrived from the U.S. hours later and went right to sleep. The next morning, we all met in the hotel’s dining hall for breakfast. Here’s a photo of my brother at the hotel restaurant.

That evening my parents stumbled upon the Old Jazz Band in the hotel. They stayed for quite a long while, listening to the geriatric musicians playing old American tunes back from the time when the Peace was built. It’s all my parents could talk about the next day. So that night I took my then-husband to the Jazz Bar, but he didn’t have much interest in the music so we didn’t stay long. That’s been one of my regrets all these years. I wish I’d stayed to hear the Old Jazz Band, one of the only remainders of Old Shanghai back in the mid-1990s.

I also remember the small gift shop at the Peace. Shanghai was not a shopper’s paradise back then, but the gift shop proved to be quite a find. It was extremely difficult to find postcards in China in the 1980s and ’90s, but the Peace Hotel’s gift shop sold a set of sepia prints from 1930s Shanghai. I bought a pack and sent them to my grandparents back in the US.

The gift shop also sold copies of Vicki Baum’s Shanghai ’37, an epic novel set in a hotel based on the Peace. My mom bought a copy and still has it. The price tag was stitched on a small piece of paper just inside the back cover. I’ve read the novel a few times and it’s one of my favorites.

After a week and a half inland, my family, then-husband, and I returned to the Peace. Upon checking in again, we were asked if we wanted rooms in the old building or the newly remodeled annex. At that time, the building across Nanjing Road, which had been the Palace Hotel before 1949, was also part of the Peace Hotel. But we’d had such a nice stay in the original building, which had been constructed as the Cathay Hotel, although we ate at the restaurant at the annex building one evening. The waiters served an eight treasure tea from copper teapots with super long spouts.

A lot has changed in Shanghai in 20 years. Several years ago, the Fairmont remodeled the original Cathay building. The annex building is now managed by Swatch. I can’t wait to see the changes at the Peace Hotel in November when my mom, our good friend, and I attend the World Congress on Art Deco. And this time I’ll be sure to hear the Old Jazz Band for more than few minutes. – Susan Blumberg Kason

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair With China Gone Wrong and lives in Chicago. She hasn’t visited Shanghai in 20 years and is beyond excited to return for the World Congress on Art Deco this autumn.