One of the difficulties of researching Old Shanghai, is using the old street names references found in historic books, with today’s street names that are totally different in most cases. Long are gone the signs for “Avenue Joffre” and “Rue Lafayette”, and finding a small street on the most accurate maps can be challenging.
La Société d’histoire des Français de Chine, a group of French expats in Shanghai, researching the city’s history (www.histoire-chine.fr) have recently come up with a very useful to solve this issue. Their new online tool is an Old / New Shanghai street search engine.
It is extremely easy to use, just type the street name you are looking for, and the related names will come up immediately, both Old and New Shanghai names. This makes it practical and very useful. The search engine can be found at http://www.histoire-chine.fr/streets-of-old-shanghai/
Much lower tech but very complementary is Paul French’s “Old Shanghai A-Z”, that includes a lot of information about the history of Old Shanghai street names.