On the traces of writers, intellectuals and revolutionaries

Learn about the literary Shanghai of the past with Shanghai Flaneur experts Marcus Hernig or Maja von dem Bongart. Though you won’t find inscriptions on stones honoring Tang Dynasty poets – Shanghai was still just a provincial town until well into the eighteenth century – you will find traces of the literary flowering that took place here in the early twentieth century. 


The Colonial period saw the construction not just of banks and hotels on the Bund but also residential areas with European style houses, such as in the streets around Shanyin Road in Hongkou. China’s most famous literary son of the twentieth century, Lu Xun, and many other writers lived here.