Shànghǎi: The French Concession

11th April 2013.

The Lonely Planet waxed lyrical about Shànghǎi’s French Concession area, rating it as #7 in 25 top experiences in China, and the only one in Shànghǎi.  Maybe we missed the best bits, but we would have rated quite a few of our Shànghǎi experiences well above it.

Anyway, here are our impressions of Shànghǎi’s French Concession:

 

Firstly, we had a bit of trouble deciding whether we had arrived.  Was this the “residential, retail and restaurant district with atmospheric tree-lined streets” so tantalisingly described by Lonely Planet?  We decided it probably was.

 

The most exciting thing we saw so far was some people hoisting a sofa up to a fifth floor apartment, amongst “the cream of Shànghǎi’s
old residential buildings and art deco apartment blocks, hotels and edifices.”

 

Aha, we have found the Xīntiāndì district of the French Concession.

”Xīntiāndì hasn’t even been around for a decade yet and already it’s a Shànghǎi icon. An upmarket retail and dining complex consisting
of largely rebuilt shíkùmén houses (low rise tenement buildings built in the early 1900s), this was the first development in the city to prove that historic architecture does, in fact, have economic value. Well-heeled shoppers and alfresco diners keep the place
busy until late, while two museums add a dash of culture to the mix” (Lonely Planet).

 

We saw lots of signs advertising the building where the Chinese Communist Party was founded in July 1921, but although we followed the signs carefully we couldn’t find it.

We finally asked at an information office and were shown to this unassuming French Concession shíkùmén building across the road, which had already closed for the day, and was completely unmarked.  We were surprised at this, as it is “one of Chinese communism’s holiest shrines” (Lonely Planet).

We decided that the charm of this particular “trendy and happening enclave” was a bit lost on us, so thought we’d return to our hotel to reclaim our errant luggage.

Bad luck, after two days in Shànghǎi, our luggage still hadn’t turned up.