ancient cities

Shanghai has become a cosmopolitan and global city, with other Chinese cities following its lead.
Source: Blake Buyan.
fast track of building into a global city and aims
to become one of international economic, finance,
and trade centers. Foreign capital flowed into
Shanghai. But Shanghai’s reglobalization is driven
by the state’s development strategy.
Because Shanghai has a history of entrepôt
and immigrants, its culture—Shanghai genre
(haipai)—presents the trait of secularism, pragmatism,
and cosmopolitism. Urbanism (in the
sense of urbanism as a way of modern life) first
appeared in Shanghai and then spread over to the
rest of China. Leo Ou-fan Lee describes the flowering
of a new urban culture in China from 1930
to 1945 in his book Shanghai Modern. On the
other hand, because of its significance to the
national economy and national industries, the
planned system was more developed and codified
in everyday Shanghai than in many other Chinese
cities. Shanghai developed a more established
regulatory control. This is manifested in the
Shanghai, China
705
management of rural to urban land conversion and
regulation over service industries. But from time to
time, Shanghai served as an alternative political and
cultural base to counterbalance the mainstream
trend in China.
In the 1990s onward, Shanghai nostalgia emerged
with the rediscovery of colonial Shanghai in its
golden era of 1920s and 1930s. By remembering
Shanghai’s identity as “Paris in the Orient” and its
petite-bourgeoisie life, Shanghai nostalgia tends to
re-create a life in China’s modern metropolis, recreating
or reusing 1930s-style calendars and commercial
advertisements, Western-style bars, cafés,
restaurants, cinemas, theaters, and dancing halls.
Urban Life
Old Shanghai is characterized by lane housing
or alleyway housing (nongtang or linong). The stoneportal
gate style of housing (shikumen) is thought to