by
Christopher Szabla
Take a look at a map of Shanghai and it still jumps out at you — a
tightly-wound ball of narrow streets threading through warrens of
centuries-old houses. Call it what you will — the neighborhood seems to
have no standard English name, and “Old City,” “Round City,” or simply
“Old Shanghai” have been used before — but it’s impossible to deny this
slice of China’s largest city stands a bit aloof; what’s left of it
appears to exist in total defiance of a metropolis that appears
ceaselessly hungry for towers that soar high enough to match the gaping
width of its newly-broadened boulevards.
Old Shanghai’s uniqueness is a longstanding trend; the last time the
neighborhood didn’t buck the rest of the city’s form was during the
Middle Ages, when the Round City was Shanghai — a fledgling
Ming Dynasty port. But skip forward to the 19th century and Shanghai has
grown to become the hub of foreign commerce in China, its cityscape defined by the architecture the colonial powers have brought to their respective concessions — tiny fiefdoms run by local Westerners nominally reporting to overseas capitals.
Somewhat like Hong Hong’s Kowloon Walled City
nearly a century later, the Old City, or “Chinese City,” as it began,
then, to be called, remained an enclave within these enclaves, a
densely-packed and ghettoized dormitory for much of the city’s local
workforce. It even remained behind literal, medieval walls — until,
during China’s 1911 revolution, they finally came crashing down.
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