Shanghailander.net

I have often wondered how zones of Old Shanghai were urbanised, of there was any planning at all. I recently encountered a document showing occupation zones of the French Concession in 1934. The document is in French and I have not been able to ascertain its origin or its author, but here is it for sharing with [...]

As the reach of this blog grows year after year (Shanghailander.net is now more than 6 years old), so does the number of readers. Through it I have received a few mails from researchers and met a few  people who actually lived in Old Shanghai, including (among others) Liliane Willens, Lynn Pan, Isabelle and Raymond [...]

The first post in Shanghailander about Boonna Cafe was written about 5 years ago, being on the very first posts on the this blog.  The current one is like marking the 5th anniversary of Shanghailander, written in  the lastet Boonna incarnation. The original post was about this particular cafe, but also about the lack of [...]

It has been a few weeks since I wrote the last Shanghailander.net post, a delay very much caused by the number of Air Miles I flew in the last weeks. Taking me away from my favorite city and its history, I found myself confronted with its future. This post about New Shanghai if not future [...]

We met last year at the Shanghai Expo, having a short encounter at the Danish Pavillon. She had traveled all this way to honor our city, so I was looking forward to meet her again in her normal home, Copenhagen. The meeting was arranged with a the help of a Danish friend in Shanghai who [...]

Street names mark the lives of people and are very difficult to change in the common mind. There are numerous example of streets that reverted back to their old names after political changes, notably in Eastern Europe. As in all cities, street names in Shanghai carry the city’s history with them. Most large streets in [...]

Shanghai World expo 2010 attracted the eyes of the world to our city. Thousands came from abroad to see it, but millions traveled within China to attend. This gigantic tourism fair was a great opportunity to introduce the world to many people that had never seen it before. Just like the expos from the beginning [...]

Fake art deco or Fako in Shanghai was discussed in a previous post and continues to rise. This post is about a very fine brand new example, the New Heng Shan Cinema. This movie theater never really got much attention, as the original building was a concrete stack probably from the 1950′s or 60′s (see [...]

Watching today’s Chinese TV is not always very rewarding as content is often of various quality. Shanghai’s main commercial TV station Dragon TV is well known for its many talk shows, TV series as well as the current hit “China Talent” or  中国达人秀 .  The channel recently started broadcasting a new TV series called “Shanghai [...]

My beloved city of Shanghai has seen many transformations in the last 30 years. Skyscrapers have been erected, taking the space once occupied by small brick houses. The city has moved from being a ghost of a distant past to the latest member of the brave new world of modernity. For a long time, the [...]