Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Tseng Tau Tsuen, Sai Kung

There's a large section of the film filmed on the beach next to a rather picturesque body of water. It turns out that the water in question belongs to Three Fathoms Cove in north Sai Kung. It looks as though the production crew went to some effort to build some rather nice looking adornments to a wooden jetty as well as some other buildings nearby.

The island in the back of the second picture above is called Wu Chau and the one in the picture immediately below with the bump on the right is to its north and is called Sam Pui Chau. It's quite a distinctive shape as you can see.

The wooden pier used in the film looks like it still exists - minus the Chinese style embellishment - and looks as though it is now private and used by a nearby organic farm. Sadly, there is no Streetview for this particular neck of the woods at the moment.

Furthermore, there is a brief scene where Penn's character finds himself stranded in a remote area and flags down and convenient passing taxi. Although it has drastically changed with village house development (the Tseng Tau village mentioned in the title seems to have expanded considerably since filming was completed), there is still a small strip of road leading out of the village and it looks like this is where the following scene was filmed - with Three Fathoms Cove still in the background.

Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Rua do Guimarães, Macau

Over to Macau for a brief visit to the Hotel Cantao on Rua do Guimarães. In the film, Penn is put up at a hotel called the Penang Hotel and a fair bit of action seems to have been filmed here. In reality the building was an old dilapidated hotel called the "Hotel Cantao" (i.e. Hotel Canton) and has a fair bit of history to share. Here are the grabs.

View along the side of the building

Inside the lobby

Up until just a few years ago this building was once again falling into disrepair and was all boarded up - you can check out Streetview to see - but during my last visit to Macau in July 2015 I walked past here and noticed it has been renovated and turned into what looked like a very stylish cafe. Sadly I didn't have time to venture in but will try to next trip.

After digging around a bit I found a few Portuguese articles that noted the hotel held the very first congress of the PCV (Communist Party of Vietnam) quite soon after it was founded. The location of the hotel (in an alleyway behind the vastly more notorious Grand Hotel - see here) was more conducive to secrecy than elsewhere and rightly so because at this meeting, held in 1935, various aspects of the party's ideological founding came to fruition. It was at this meeting that the party statutes were formalised, and a call was made for the mobilization of various parts of society.  Workers, women, youth, ethnic minorities, and soldiers were told to form militias to fight against the French. It was also at this meeting that the party central committee was elected (with Lee Hong Phon as the secretary general) and Ho Chi Minh himself was elected to be the new Vietnamese representative to the Comintern. So you see, quite a significant meeting in world history for such a small establishment.

The picture below was taken in July 2015.

Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Kowloon Walled City, Kowloon

Another site that seems to have satisfied the film makers with regards to being dilapidated enough to represent old Shanghai is the Kowloon Walled City. We don't get to see inside the "city", but the ramshackle illegal tenements that formed the outer walls of the place can be seen in the background of the next scene along with the shaved hillside at the back of the Tung Tau Tsuen Road.

The buildings at the back used to form part of the western edge of the slum which would put the filming action pretty much in the centre of today's adjoining Carpenter Road Park near (or perhaps on) the site of the Kowloon City Plaza mall (it was built in 1993).

Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Catchick Street, Kennedy Town

The following screengrab seems to just be one of those very brief snippets that serve to illustrate the surrounding environment of the story. I'm sure there is a technical term for this type of thing but I am ignorant in those ways and so will just refer to it as an "establishing" shot. Feel free to enlighten me otherwise if you know.

Anyway, it's a brief look down a seemingly old road in old Shanghai. In fact it was also shot in Kennedy Town along Catchick Street close to the junction with North Street. In fact the modern Streetview capture shows us that a tram stop has since been built but the more observant of you should also see that the red signs above the shop on the right are still the same.

Update 2024: Joseph on Gwulo.com has recently started uploading his tram images and has a BTS image from this shoot, apparentlyit was filmed on 12th February 1986.So there you go. Gwulo thread is here (see secondimage down): https://gwulo.com/node/60319

The old block of buildings on the corner in the background have all been redeveloped into somewhere called the "Harbour View Garden". I'm guessing if you live on lower floors your harbour view may be more along the lines of "harbour no view".

Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Kennedy Town Waterfront, Hong Kong

It's changed significantly over the past few decades, but back in 1986 Kennedy Town waterfront was still considered aged enough for the purpose of filming this period set comedy. Most of the old buildings seem to have gone and there has been a proliferation of high rise development making identification of the exact place quite difficult. However, the hills at the back as well as the appearance of Green Island in the background confirms where this was shot.

The hillside in the background of the top grab is actually the eastern flank of Mount Davis and the small hump in the back of the lower two pictures is Green Island. The modern view for comparison is below courtesy of Streetview. It shows the New Praya where I am fairly certain this was filmed, however, pretty much all of the waterfront property here has been redeveloped in the past 20 years.

Shanghai Surprise - Madonna (1986) - Avenida da Praia, Taipa

Despite getting universally panned on release and failing dismally at the box office, Shanghai Surprise is worth watching for HK film fans because it includes lots of locations, some never seen on the blog before. We kick off proceedings with the opening scene shot around the Taipa Houses museum in Macau. If you've never been it is a recommended excursion to catch some breeze along what was then a waterfront location - now landlocked due to the unbelievably tacky and naff Cotai strip reclamation with all its resort casinos.