Xiaobailou

Xiaobailou (小白楼) is a commercial quarter on the south-eastern edge of the old British concession whose character was made in the 1920s. Several thousand Russian refugees arrived in Tianjin after the Russian concession had been cancelled, and they settled in the southern part of the British concession and the neighbouring streets of the old German concession, where the district came to be called the Russian city by foreign residents. Russian emigrants opened western restaurants, Russian food shops, bars, dress shops and beauty parlours there, as well as a Jewish club, with Russian signs along every street. Because it lay inside the concessions, Xiaobailou was untouched by the war of resistance and stayed prosperous through the occupation.