The Wukang Lu Tourist Information Center has been open for a few years now, and somehow always escaped me. Located on a tree lined street typical of the former French Concession, it would have been the perfect place to show people what this area was at the time it was created and how it compared to today’s transformation in the Shanghai equivalent to New York’s Greenwich Village, or Paris, Saint-Germain. Although it’s a nice effort from Xu Hui district, it still felt short of my expectations.
As the name says, it is a tourist center, not a museum. Located in a 1912 building, it includes a number of fake art deco fixtures (also called fako, see post “the rise of fako“). The result of a strangely shaped building with a mix and (not) match of decoration from architecture style is a little strange but not uncommon in today’s China. Models of buildings on display are really nice. They are some masterpieces of the area and this presentation really shows them in original state.
What is really weird is that no reference is made to past names, usage or inhabitants of those buildings, nor is there any pictures displayed. It’s like this part of the city suddenly jumped out of nowhere, that the past never existed. At the same time, there is lot’s of space for today’s picture of the district and its various bars and restaurants, mixing old and new buildings without any regard for architecture style or time period. Just like inofficial books about Old Shanghai like “Classical Buildings of Old Shanghai“, no information is given to about the past times that created this very special part of the city.
Instead of a source of information to understand and appreciate the history of the area, we get an empty shell with little interest. This even more surprising as Wukang Lu has been the first (and only) place in Shanghai, to display the former name of the street as well as extra information of the buildings in the area (see post “What’s in a name“). The same space was used a few months later, for the Normandy building VR exhibition.
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