One of the most famous film about Shanghai history is surely Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun”, that I wrote about a few years ago . The movie from the 1980’s was the film version of the JG Ballard novel of the same name. Ballard spent his childhood in old Shanghai until the Japanese invasion of the International Settlement, on 8th December 1941. Although most people think that like in the book, he lost his parents in the crowd on the Bund. He did not get separated from them and was interned with them in Lung Hua camp from 1943 (thank you Liliane Willens for information on this point).
Ballard’s life and books have attracted a large crowd of fans who looked for his old house located in Columbia Road (today’s Fanyiu lu). Ballard was a famous British author and died in 2009 (see the Wikipedia article about him). The house was found rediscovered by fans a few years ago and was still in relatively good state after decades of neglect. It was visited by JG Ballard a few years ago and was supposed to be protected. Sadly, this house has been severly damaged recently by the latest occupant. Here is the link to the excellent article from British Daily “The Telegraph”.
Anybody witnessing Shanghai destruction of its architecture heritage should be surprised about, as the same thing is currently happening with most the buildings in the Bund area and many others. I think the saddest part of the article is the interviews in the report. Still, this is a great loss.