Shanghai Club

The Shanghai Club is the beating heart of the Empire's warm body in Shanghai, an imposing neo-baroque temple to British commerce (and monument to its excess) that occupies prime real estate on the banks of the Bund. Though most of its antediluvian chambers are reserved for titans of industry and dignitaries from far-flung fiefdoms, most visitors gather here for its lively bookie scene and to bask in awe at the Long Bar, which is so infamously named for its record-setting length. It is, in fact, so long that it has with age developed a strict hierarchy: those closest to the front and its natural light are the taipan, the jetset, the local and foreign elite—and in diminishing order toward the end of the room are the not so wealthy down to those on their last buck. Griffins and newcomers are always welcome, but they are expected to shuffle to the end of the line, no matter how well-off they may be.