New Walks – Shanghailanders and the Shanghainese

The inimitable Tess Johnstone’s Old China Hand Press has just published a new book of walks around Shanghai, Still More Shanghai Walks. The theme of the book is ‘Shanghailanders and Shanghainese: Where They Lived, Worked and Played‘. There’s some great areas of the city featured here and some all of the contributors are old friends of China Rhyming. William Patrick Cranley tackles the Bund. Patrick reminds us that while the new Peninsula Hotel likes to act as if it is a welcome addition to the Bund and has some sort of rightful place there that it was responsible for one of the worst acts of vandalism in recent memory – the bulldozing of the 1865 Pustau and Company building which had an intriguing art-deco frontage until it was pulled down in 2004 to allow the nasty shiny marble contraption that is the nouveau riche Peninsula Hotel (standing completely out of character with the rest of the river frontage). You won’t find that particular sin noted in the Peninsula’s glossy PR. I had cause to attend a meeting in the Peninsula the other day and parts of the interior already appear quite shabby and gloomy due to the poor interior architecture.

Next up is a walk from Sue Anne Tay, the Shanghai street photographer, through Tilanqiao and the former Jewish ghetto. This is a pleasant walk as, as well as the familiar and well documented sights of the area such as the old Ward Road Jail etc, Sue Anne reminds us that much of this area is still a sprawling market selling everything from vegetables to jade to old rags. Just about all Shanghai’s former sprawling street markets are gone now, victims to the relentless march of ‘modernisation’ but Tilanqiao just about hangs on.

There are two Frenchtown walks – one from Tess concentrating on Hengshan Road (Avenue Petain) and relfecting her love of architecture, and another from Lisa Movius, a journalist who has done much to chronicle the city’s music and artistic community. She looks at an area of Frenchtown life, especially around Anfu Road (Route Dupleix), and the Chinese artists and writers that congragted in that area.

Bill Savadove wanders around Xinhua Road (Amherst Avenue) and the marvellous and, sadly to a newer generation of Shanghailanders little known, Columbia Circle. Much of this walk derives from some time Bill spent with myself and Duncan Hewitt crawling over this area – good days, but marred of course by the sad gutting of the cornerstone property of the walk, JG Ballard’s boyhood home. And Duncan Hewitt rounds out the book with a walk along Hongqiao (Hungjao) Road. I am actually going to do this walk soon as it is ages since I went around that area in any detail and the villas are excellent.

A good collection of walks – if you’re coming to Shanghai do pick up a copy and see these areas before they’re submerged under shopping malls. Interesting that nobody seems very interested in a walking tour that goes lavatory tile tower block to lavatory tile tower block and shopping centre to shopping centre!