Forgotten Shanghai – ancient streets of the walled city

Shanghai is older than the foreign concessions. For 700 years it was a merchant city, a colony of leisure gardens and a multicultural hub. The opening of the ports in 1843 redefined Shanghai as a global city, both glamorous and notorious. As the urban core moved to the Bund and inland, the Chinese City became irrelevant, falling into decline and fading from memory.

But today, as Shanghai’s old lanes keep disappearing, the question of city identity brings us back to a ‘Shanghai’ that’s far older than the French Concession or the Bund. Today’s old town is a cluster of organic, pedestrian-friendly mixed-use neighborhoods that developers are keen to demolish and historians are struggling to preserve.

Despite many calamities of the 20th century, inside the old walled city one can still find living remnants of Shanghai’s pre-modern history, including Ming Dynasty ruins and thousand-year-old streets. The expert who will guide through the labyrinth of lanes is Katya Knyazeva , who lives and breathes the old town, and who is completing a photographic atlas of Shanghai’s old town (to be published in 2012).