The Shanghai Peace Hotel will open a museum tomorrow to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

More than 80 artifacts will be on display, many of which were collected from hotel storage rooms, former employees and customers.

The hotel received its first artifact in January from Xu Meifeng, a former employee. She donated a hair brush, an ash tray and two silver spoons that belonged to the hotel in 1929.

The 80-year-old woman worked in the hotel's coat-check room from 1929 to 1945, before moving to Wuxi in Jiangsu Province.

Artifacts, which date back as far as the early 1910s, including antique furniture, imported sets of china with engraved Cathy Hotel logos, and other hotel souvenirs from the old days. Visitors can also see a photograph of movie star Charlie Chaplin, who stayed in the hotel in the 1930s.

A man looks at artifacts displayed at the Shanghai Peace Hotel's museum yesterday prior to its opening to celebrate the hotel's 100th anniversary.

"The museum is to speak for the past 100 years of the Peace Hotel," said hotel spokesperson Ma Yongzhang, who is also a donor to the museum.

The hotel opened as the Cathy Hotel in 1906. At the time it was the most luxurious hotel in Asia. After 1949, the hotel housed several government bureaus, but resumed its original function in 1956. The Cathy Hotel was renamed the Peace Hotel in the same year.

(Shanghai Daily March 7, 2006)