1920s

The Shanghai Conservatory considers jazz to be a "bad form of Western music.”

1927

Musician Li Jin Hui begins developing "Sinified jazz,” combining elements of Chinese folk music and big band jazz, securing Shanghai's title as the "Paris of the East.”

1933

The Paramount, which soon becomes the center of the Chinese jazz world, with Jimmy King and his orchestra, opens.

1935

Du Yu Sheng, the notorious overlord of Shanghai's Green Gang, orders into creation the first all-Chinese jazz group (including Li Jin Hui) called "The Clear Wind Dance Band.” Critics call the music "pornographic.”

1949

Communists ban jazz as a decadent form of entertainment linked to drug lords, gambling and prostitution.

1978

At the Communist Party's 3rd Plenum, Deng Xiao Ping quietly rolls back the disfavor on many cultural freedoms, including jazz.

1980

The refurbished Peace Hotel Old Jazz Bar founds the Old Jazz Band with six veteran musicians.

1988

Old Jazz Band pianist Gao Ping releases "Jazz in China,” possibly the first indigenous jazz recording made in China since 1949.

1993

Udo Hoffmann, a longtime China expat, founds The Beijing International Jazz Festival and 700 jazz enthusiasts attend.

1996

After The Beijing Jazz Festival drew 10,000 listeners to the seven day event, The Shanghai International Jazz Concert Series is set in motion. Newsweek calls the Peace Hotel Old Jazz Bar "the world’s best bar.”

2003

EMI releases "Shanghai Jazz: Musical Seductions from China’s Age of Decadence,” featuring Carrie Chang, Ginger Zheng, Coco Zhao and Fu Hua. American jazz duo Phil Morrison and Keith Williams return to Shanghai for the fourth time to play at the JW Lounge.

2005

Tenor saxophonist Eric Wyatt, a significant name in New York jazz, drummer Fritz Wise and caustic bass player Mike Carr from Los Angeles play Shanghai.

2006

The Shanghai Jazz Orchestra, a big band in 1930s and 40s Shanghai, plays their first public performance since 1949 in the same white suits they rocked 60 years earlier.

2007

Alice Jagtman publishes “Shanghai Jazz,” a photographic look at the movers and shakers in Shanghai’s jazz circles over the last two years.