Noel Coward’s Shanghai hotel defaced by film crew

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Shanghai’s historic Bund waterfront
Peace Hotel, where Noel Coward wrote “Private Lives,” has been
illegally daubed with red Chinese characters by a crew filming
a romantic movie, a state newspaper said on Friday.

The crew painted the characters on to window panes on the
hotel’s 1929-built north building on Monday night, apparently
unaware they were breaking the law, the Shanghai Daily said.

“We have done a lot to protect the environment and
architecture,” the paper quoted production manager Xu Wen as
saying. “If it is still not enough, we say sorry.”

Water used to remove the paint dyed the street red, the
newspaper said.

The art deco hotel, which in 2003 celebrated its 100th
anniversary, in its 1930s heyday welcomed such guests as
Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw.

It is protected by a cultural relics law, as are many of
the surrounding buildings built when Shanghai was a colonial
outpost known as the “Pearl of the East” for its architecture,
but also “Whore of the Orient” for its decadent nightlife.

It is not the first film crew to run into trouble with the
Chinese authorities.

Earlier this month, China said it would fine the crew of
“The Promise,” the country’s most expensive movie yet, for
damaging the environment in an area of outstanding natural
beauty.

The producers had not applied for permission to build roads
and buildings around Bigu lake in Yunnan province in China’s
southwest, and left a trail of detritus behind them, including
around 100 concrete pilings, state media said.