Finding Old Shanghai

An Unmarked Corner On My Map

Shanghai was once known as ‘The Pearl of the Orient’, yet stepping off the plane I walked into a mash of Blade Runner, Gotham City and The Jetsons, with a touch of The Fifth Element thrown in for good measure.

The Maglev, the world’s fastest train, raced me from the airport to the city at 430 km/hr. At first, the train passed farms and fields, which rapidly became smaller and smaller plots as houses and then apartments dominated the landscapes. Soon there was nothing but high-rises scraping at the sky. Multi-lane highways floated through the air before merging with massive overpasses. A hover-jet would not be out of place.

It was late morning when we landed; by the time we reached our hotel the sun had become an orange ball floating behind a haze of smog. This was the first time I've stayed in a hotel that comes with gas masks in the room.

Yet Shanghai began life as a small fishing village nestled on the banks of the Huang Pu River, near where it flows into the mighty Yangtze. Despite her now gargantuan size, parts of the old town are still to be found — although they, too, are rapidly vanishing. As the city rushes into the future and the population continues to grow, land is simply proving too expensive to preserve the past.

A glance at a map shows Shanghai is not a place for aimless strolling. Few taxi drivers speak English (our hotel supplied cards with the name and directions in Mandarin); the subway is efficient but the crowds can be overwhelming at first; then there are the sightseeing buses which go to the main sights but the stops can be hard to find. All adds to the chaos and charm, and a stiff drink at the end of the day definitely helped!

The Old City lies to the northeast of the city and was once the heart of Shanghai. Until the early 1900s, it was surrounded by a wall, which had been built in the 16th century to defend the city from Japanese pirates. After the Opium Wars, when much of…

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