By TONY PERROTTET

Photographs by Philippe Chancel

ANCIEN RÉGIME | Pingyao, an intact 14-century Ming Dynasty walled city, is the last of its kind and was saved from the wrecking ball in 1980 by a crusading preservationist.

Johnson Chang, the man largely credited with introducing Chinese contemporary art to the West, is not difficult to spot in an art-world crowd. At Hong Kong’s China Club—a glamorous venue known for its high-powered clientele, and featuring a riot of artwork selected by Chang himself, many pieces playing ironically with images of Mao and retro communist propaganda—he can be singled out across the room thanks to his attire: Chinese peasant garments of a type rarely seen outside of historical films, a black cotton jacket with a Mandarin collar, loose trousers, and leather slippers handmade in Beijing.

Photographs by Philippe Chancel

CITY OF DREAMS | A nighttime view of the Bund, Shanghai’s art deco riverfront district.

His fashion statement is deliberate. A champion of the Chinese avant-garde who organized several landmark exhibitions after the Tiananmen Square crisis, Chang is also fiercely dedicated to the idea that ancient Chinese culture can endure today as a vital, relevant force. For several years, he has been pursuing his most radical curatorial project yet, a bold artistic experiment whose ambition is unprecedented in China—perhaps anywhere in the world. Working with a group of artists in a ruined factory zone on the edge of Shanghai, he has created an entire traditional Chinese village from the ground up, using ancient building methods that were almost lost to living memory. The village is not intended as a tourist destination, but rather as a working center for traditional Chinese artists, craftsmen and musicians, many of whose skills only survived underground during the Cultural Revolution. “I want to see the revival of Chinese material culture,” he declared. “Four thousand years of tradition need to be kept alive.” Along with the meticulous re-creation of history, Chang hopes to restore a fading universe of Confucian values to counteract the materialism seeping through the country, which ruthlessly dismisses and discards anything that cannot turn a profit.

Many in the West are unaware that China’s ancient artistic heritage, long battered by the excesses of the Communist Revolution, is facing an even more dramatic threat today from frenzied modernization. Since the country embraced capitalism in the 1980s, development has scorched the landscape at a furious pace, sweeping away untold architectural treasures, and with them the last vestiges of art, crafts and beliefs that form a kind of collective memory. “Twenty rural villages are destroyed by developers every day,” says Professor Ruan Yisan, the patriarch of Chinese preservationists, who directs the National Research Center of Historic Cities in Shanghai, quoting figures provided to him by the government’s Ministry of Construction. “We don’t know what is being lost with them.” Johnson Chang feels that China’s cultural identity is vanishing beneath an avalanche of modernity, wherein many Western styles and habits are regarded as superior to the Chinese. His project is an attempt to forge a link with the past before it disintegrates entirely. “The new generation isn’t even sure what Chinese tradition is,” he said. “It’s something to be imagined. So it’s absolutely crucial to keep the lineage intact.”

Chang’s art project is in a suburb called Jinze, but as I discovered after checking in at the Fairmont Peace Hotel—an icon of Shanghai’s 1930s decadence, where Charlie Chaplin kept a suite and Noël Coward wrote Private Lives—the name isn’t listed in any guidebook, and Google Maps was blocked (along with Twitter, Facebook and, in fact, my own website). After I’d tried to arrange a visit for several days, a call came in from Chang: An assistant would pick me up in 10 minutes. “Bring your bags,” he suggested. “Stay as long as you like.”

Downstairs, a Chinese hipster in decidedly untraditional clothing was waiting in a beaten-up city cab, and soon we were hurtling through modern high-rise developments and shopping complexes. Ever since the First Opium War of 1839–1842 opened the country at cannon-point, Shanghai has been mainland China’s most enthusiastic gateway to the West. Cranes cluster like praying mantises on every horizon, and the shudder of construction work provides a constant soundtrack. The result suggests a more crowded version of Las Vegas, except that many of the skyscrapers are capped with shapes intended to evoke the roofs of Chinese temples—to the untutored eye, they resemble giant power tools.

Even so, Shanghai remains an architecture student’s dream. Hidden among the towers are relics of almost every conceivable era—Russian Stalinist spires, neoclassical façades, a Gothic cathedral. In its passion for Western styles, the city is also graced with nine surreal New Towns, a series of residential developments that include Thames Town, with artificial Tudor houses; a Holland town; and a German town designed by the son of Albert Speer.

The skyscrapers began to thin as we approached Qingpu district in Shanghai’s west. Occasional stretches of farmland could now be glimpsed among acres of decaying industrial parks. Jinze turned out to be a bustling provincial township within the city limits, filled with grimy concrete-block housing and shabby stores. Although traffic was now mostly on bicycle and foot, we got lost in a maze of abandoned factories. Then the taxi stopped suddenly at a pair of wooden gates. A caretaker rushed out to open them, revealing a startling vision of Old China that might have been lifted from a Qing Dynasty vase.

A tranquil courtyard was surrounded by whitewashed timber structures, all with elegant upturned eaves. Goldfish gathered in a pool, shaded by blossoming trees. Paper lanterns fluttered in the breeze. After the chaos of Shanghai, it was a welcome vision of rural serenity. I was escorted to an empty tearoom, whose wood-framed windows looked out over a broad canal spanned by a stone bridge, and where we were soon joined by Chang himself, smiling in his trademark rustic garb. “This is our effort to return to the roots of Chinese culture,” Chang explained. “In Europe, civilization began in the cities, but in China, it was in the countryside. Everything changed with Mao’s land reform, which got rid of the wealthy and the intellectuals who were tied to the land.”

Although construction will continue for another five years, the first Shanghai artists, poets, scholars and musicians have already begun visiting and staying for short residencies. The centerpiece is a grandiose Ritual Hall, which has hosted traditional coming-of-age ceremonies, weddings, New Years festivities and birthdays for local villagers and Shanghai residents, using ancient costumes and rites. There are several performance stages for Chinese opera and music, which have so far included concerts featuring the guqin, a stringed instrument favored by Confucius. Accuracy is aided by an extensive network of specialists—Chinese historians, folklorists and anthropologists, and advisers from the China Academy of Art and the Shanghai Theater Academy—who draw on surviving ceremonial practices. “This is not a film set,” said Chang. “It’s a working place. To begin with, artisans in dying trades—craftsmen who have no apprentices—have come to pass on their skills to the next generation.”

Other sections lie outside the main gate. “This dates from the 13th century, when the Mongols ruled China,” Chang said as he stopped to admire a stone bridge with no railings. Several factory spaces have been converted into research centers, conference halls and warehouses, which store antique handicrafts salvaged from remote provinces of China. One chamber contained exquisite hand-woven clothes; another, dozens of ancient stone cake molds; another, wooden statuettes. A larger storeroom contained 20 varieties of wooden loom, all in working order.

We were joined by the Shanghai artist Hu Xiangcheng—a robust 62-year-old who is overseeing construction of the project. He has been a fixture of the Asian contemporary art scene for decades. Hu and Chang met in 1997 and collaborated on the São Paulo Architecture Biennial two years later, where they bonded over their despair at the number of ancient villages being razed. After decades of grim communal farms established by Mao, most urban Chinese regarded rural areas with disdain. “We decided to build something so beautiful that everyone would be seduced by it,” Chang said. “It would be authentic but attractive, and prove that country living is desirable—which, after 60 years of communist rule, young people don’t believe.”

“The idea for Jinze had been in my head since I was young, growing up in Hong Kong,” Chang explained. “In my imagination, the Chinese countryside always seemed more real and attractive. This vision was derived from ancient landscape paintings, martial arts novels, and the fact that one detested the overcrowding in Hong Kong, with its property-mad economy. But, of course, most Chinese people are now mesmerized by the new and the fashionable.”

The site, funded mostly by Chang and his brother, a successful Hong Kong financier, covers 400,000 square feet, a quarter of which now contains structures whose purposes are quickly evolving. There are 12 guest rooms for artists and scholars, with a dormitory for Shanghai art students under way, and even a working organic farm. “We want to show local farmers that you can follow traditional agricultural methods and still thrive,” said Hu. He regards this involvement with the villagers of Jinze as crucial. “Contemporary artists say they want to engage with society, but they aren’t doing it hands-on. They only have relationships with museums. Art is cut off from the lives of everyday people. But Confucian philosophy encourages artists to work with society—officials, businessmen, merchants.” He has already erected five theater stages for villagers in the traditional style and provided musical instruments. “At night, the villages around us used to be dead. They were dark and silent. Now people are coming out! There’s a new sense of happiness.”

Photograph by Josh Olins Styling by David Vandewal

Clearly, the project at Jinze doesn’t fit any neat categories. It’s an arts center, a rural retreat, an academic facility, a community center. But it’s also a conceptual artwork in itself—an implicit protest at the direction China has taken in recent decades. “The very existence of Jinze is a critique of the destruction of villages currently taking place,” said Professor Ruan Yisan.

According to Chang, the assault on China’s ancient traditions—including its architectural heritage—began at the turn of the 20th century, when the ancient Confucian social system began to crumble. For 2,000 years prior, China’s villages had experienced remarkable continuity: Their wooden buildings were maintained by master artisans who had intimate knowledge of carpentry, lacquer, paint pigments, resins and textiles. But when Sun Yat-sen began the process of Westernization after the 1911 Republican Revolution, wooden buildings were constructed less often, and traditional skills were slowly abandoned. The 1949 Communist Revolution hastened the process, as antique structures were regarded as vestiges of a feudal era. During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976, Mao let loose the Red Guards against “the Four Olds”—old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas—destroying temples, historical relics and tombs. Even Beijing’s vast Forbidden City would have been steamrolled had Premier Zhou Enlai not objected and posted troops in its defense.

China has seen both extreme communism and extreme capitalism in the past 100 years, and Chang feels “no other country has tried to cut off its history more radically.” The only comparison in the West might be the collapse of the Roman Empire, which shattered Greco-Roman culture. “The question is,” Chang says, “having gone this far, how do we rethink our situation? How does one redeem the past?”

The project at Jinze is certainly one of the more creative protests of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and modernity. Other artists have raised objections, such as Ai Weiwei, who in 1995 famously photographed himself dropping a Han Dynasty urn and letting it smash on the ground. In recent years, the stray voices have resolved into a more tangible clamor. “Chinese intellectuals—academics, architects and planners—are now in very hot discussion about how best to pursue preservation,” said Li Xiangning, a professor of history and criticism at Tongji University in Shanghai. “There is a growing sense that we need to slow down our pursuit of money and development. Ninety percent of Chinese society is charging toward the future at an incredible pace, but there must be a few of us who cast an eye backward. If we look to history and tradition, we might be able to rethink what we’ve done in the past two or three decades.”

Signs of a budding preservationist spirit can be seen even in development-mad Shanghai. Despite its reputation for the unsentimental pursuit of the yuan, the city has had more success in saving its heritage than many others in China, including Beijing. The local government declared 12 “preservation zones” in 2004 to give a modicum of protection to the city’s historical neighborhoods. The centerpiece is a waterfront district known as the Bund, lined with majestic art deco buildings such as the newly restored Peace Hotel. Tourists nostalgic for the 1930s can also visit the French Concession, once the refuge of opium lords, gangsters and prostitutes, where restored colonial mansions stand on streets lined by parasol trees. One former home of a wealthy Chinese family opened in 2010 as a boutique hotel, Le Sun Chine, complete with a retro champagne bar. “In the 1930s, there was a conversation between the cultures in Shanghai,” explained the owner, Sebastian Sun, an entrepreneur in his 30s. Even Chinese travelers are tired of all the 500-room business hotels, he has found, preferring Le Sun Chine’s more intimate scale.

Many historical sites that have escaped the wrecking ball, however, have suffered from gaudy restorations catering to China’s boom in domestic tourism, which can turn remote relics into fairground attractions almost overnight. “The Chinese do enjoy visiting their cultural treasures, but they have very different sensibilities to our own,” says Catherine Heald, CEO of high-end Asian tour company Remote Lands, in New York. “They prefer to go to sections of the Great Wall that have been fixed up and made to look brand new, while we prefer the original, even if it is in ruins.” Ancient sites are regularly demolished and replaced by copies, whose commercialism and lack of fine detail can suggest a dispiriting theme park. “Luckily, there are still a few far-flung towns and villages that have not been over-restored.”

One of the most impressive—and symbolic—is Pingyao, the last of China’s 2,000 walled towns to remain entirely intact. Located 850 miles northwest of Shanghai, its survival is a small miracle. Under Mao, authorities in the impoverished Shanxi province lacked the resources to destroy Pingyao’s formidable fortifications, which are 26 to 40 feet thick and topped with 72 watchtowers. These stubborn bastions also protected a thriving ancient town, its lanes lined with lavish mansions, temples and even banks dating from the period when Pingyao was the financial capital of the Qing Dynasty. But having survived the Red Guards, the remote town became the focus of a dramatic conservation battle in 1980, when the government decided to plow six roads through its heart for car traffic. Professor Ruan Yisan rushed to Pingyao to halt the steamrollers; given one month by the state governor to devise an alternative proposal, he moved into the town with 11 of his best students. It turned into a grueling assignment—all 12 of the group came down with dysentery and were plagued by lice—but Ruan’s plan for an adjacent new town was accepted. In 1997, UNESCO declared the entire town a World Heritage Site, and in 2009, the first boutique hotel, Jing’s Residence, opened, mixing ancient and modern styles within a former silk merchant’s mansion. But strangely, despite its iconic status, few foreigners make the effort to visit it today.

For the moment, Pingyao’s 50,000 inhabitants still live in a town that looks much as it has for centuries. But its status is fragile. “The larger public buildings have been saved,” Professor Ruan said. “But there are dozens of historic residential houses that are in urgent need of repair.” Pingyao is also being discovered by the first Chinese tourists, who travel in large bus groups and stay only briefly. As a result, the main crossroads has already been taken over by souvenir vendors, selling the same cheap knick-knacks you can find in Shanghai or Beijing markets (or New York’s Chinatown). The rise in housing prices is threatening to drive out residents. “We need to switch from mass sightseeing,” Ruan said. “People should stay for an extended time so they can understand Pingyao’s art, its culture, its cuisine. But it’s not easy to control tourism in China, because economic growth is such a focus for the authorities.” Rampant commercialism has the power to destroy Pingyao just as efficiently as neglect.

In Beijing, signs of the past are more elusive. The old city, once as admired as Paris for its beauty, has been under siege since the Communist Revolution, and its charming hutong, or narrow-lane neighborhoods, have been steadily disappearing ever since. Even so, protests were ignited last January when developers demolished the home of the country’s most illustrious 20th-century architect, Liang Sicheng, who had campaigned in vain to save Old Beijing under Mao. (After one defeat, he presciently shouted, “In 50 years, you’ll know I’m right!”) Thanks to public support, the house was declared an “immovable cultural relic,” but during the lull of the New Year holidays, a developer moved in and leveled it anyway. The company received a token fine of $80,000 from the government, which provoked a renewed level of outrage. “Some professors are calling it the Chinese Penn Station Movement,” says Professor Li, referring to the destruction of New York’s railway station in 1963, which spurred preservation. “But I’m not optimistic.”

Chang sees the fight to save historical architecture as one part of a broader mission. “One of the most drastic breaks with the past has been with traditional rituals,” he said. “Lunar festivals, ancestral rites, seasonal ceremonies, funerals.” He hopes to revive the Confucian concept of Li, he explained, which goes beyond the English word “ritual” to include everything from etiquette, education and morality to a cosmic vision of a balanced world order. “Many people are trying to exploit nostalgia by inventing rituals to fill our sense of loss,” said Chang, “but they don’t carry the weight of authenticity.” The Ritual Hall at Jinze is a setting for correct ancient ceremonies—or as correct as possible, given the enormous weight of research that surrounds their revival—and he hopes to create similar spaces in Beijing and Hong Kong.

On the opening night of a symposium Chang held on the study of ritual, a bevy of scholars, artists, and Chang’s family and friends (it was also his birthday) converged at a reception at the China Club, the Beijing branch of the Hong Kong club. The setting itself seemed to capture the quixotic nature of the enterprise, since the historic mansion, once in the heart of a hutong, is now the lone survivor, overshadowed on all sides by skyscrapers. The interior was exuberantly traditional. In the banquet hall, guests were entertained by a Chinese opera troupe, as Chang drifted happily from guest to guest, engaging them in conversation and making introductions across continents and cultures.

As the party wound down, Chang stepped from the warm glow of lanterns to the cold streetlight reflected off the surrounding skyscrapers. Standing by the busy highway, it was easy to doubt that an idyllic art project, even one executed at the grand scale of the village at Jinze, could have an impact on the juggernaut of China’s development. But Chang was, as ever, hopeful. “Art has a special role in society,” he said. “It provides a public space where reflection is possible, and criticism can be launched.” His village offers the disparate voices protesting the government’s vandalism of the past a living critique of China’s lightning modernization—a spark that could ignite an equally intense burst of energy to preserve its ancient heritage.

As he returned to the China Club for a last cup of rice wine, Chang and his friends seemed like genteel revolutionaries ready to take on the modern world.

It is a story told over and again all around the world. A neighborhood is considered undesirable, with a rather seedy populace and low rents. Someone shows up and decides to have some fun and sets up a shop. Usually it is a bar through there are some other variations on the theme. Next thing you know, the neighborhood, while still a little dirty around the edges, is thriving, teeming with hipsters and others keen to live the life.

Beijing’s HouHai (or Hou Hai, depending on your map translation) neighborhood fits this pattern nearly perfectly. A few years back a bar was opened by a famous proprietor. The “No Name Bar” (literally, it has no name) became the cornerstone of a revitalization effort that now sees scores of bars, restaurants and tea shops lining the shores of three interconnected lakes on the northwestern side of town. The area is very much a “see and be seen” neighborhood, with lots of young folks dressed up and out for a good time. In the designated strips of shorefront nearly every façade is a bar or restaurant. There are hawkers galore and folks trying to pull anyone they can in to their bars.

There is also live music in most of the bars. I’m not so sure this is a good thing. The crooning I heard in a few of them was remarkable only in the poor quality level it presented. It was bad. Not to say that jacked up on a dozen or so Tsingtaos I’d have a problem with it, but it certainly wasn’t high on my list of things to subject myself to while sober. I also had some pretty bad food in one of the shops. The atmosphere was nice enough but the beef was ridiculously dry and tough. I actually left most of it on my plate and went to a second shop for another try. That was sufficiently better that I didn’t go to bed hungry but still not great. When the market is focused like this I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise but it was disappointing.

Walking towards the bar area from the Jishuitan station on the #2 line of the subway I was pretty well lost. Lacking any sense of exactly what I was looking for or a useful map I ended up just walking around the lakes. Turns out that was a lot of fun.

Yes, it was dark and more than a little bit sketchy in some of the areas, but it was also incredibly quiet, with the occasional moped but no large vehicles in the area. There were others out enjoying the area but, as I was not yet quite to the main bar area, those folks were mostly locals hanging out and enjoying the evening. Stretching, exercising or fishing were the main activities of the evening, though one guy did decide to take a swim in the lake.

Remember how I mentioned above that these sorts of areas generally pop up in seedy parts of town? Houhai is no exception to that part of the pattern either. Walking the road parallel to the lake on the way back to the metro station I saw a number of women who were either prostitutes set up in the window of their shops or who just like to sit on a futon with very little clothing on in the middle of the night and call out to the guys walking by. Either way, definitely still seedy.

The neighborhood is also apparently fun to wander through during the day as well. It was a summer retreat more than once in the capital city’s history, giving it a cultural flair that is hard to match. The
hutongs (small alleyways and courtyards, connected to form small neighborhoods, similar to the hanoks in Korea) hold a lot of history and are under significant pressure from developers looking to reclaim the space and build much more densely populated structures there. Fortunately there have been some efforts to protect the last few of these neighborhoods which still exist so they will at least have the historical layout and feel, even if the new version of the cultural experience is slightly different. Alas, I didn’t have time to walk it during the day, but I can certainly see where that would be enjoyable.

©
The Wandering Aramean, a
BoardingArea Blog

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photo credit: AP | A view from the Li River near Guilin, China.

YANGSHUO, China – A search for iconic China often takes tourists to the Great Wall in the north and the archaeological pits of the terra-cotta warriors in the nation’s midsection.

But for a glimpse of China’s natural beauty, take the trip south to the city of Guilin, and board a boat for a four-hour cruise down the Li River to the picturesque city of Yangshuo, nestled amid the limestone karst hills known as the gumdrop mountains.

It’s a trip into rural China, past bamboo rafts, fishermen who use trained cormorant birds to make their catch, and farmers tending rice paddies with the help of water buffalo.

The trip starts in Guilin, a popular and growing tourist destination, with new roads, hotels and other buildings under construction.

One of the city’s best attractions is Elephant Trunk Park on the west bank of the Li, named for its rock formation that with some imagination resembles an elephant drinking from the river. On the top of the hill is a pagoda that dates back to the Ming dynasty.

The park is a popular spot for young couples who stroll along the river and add their padlocks or wish ribbons, signifying lasting love, to an ornamented tree. Vendors set up along the riverside sell some interesting food, including fried bugs on a stick.

The government is building a canal that will allow tourists to take a boat and avoid what is a bumpy bus ride to another popular spot, Reed Flute Cave, one of several limestone caves in the region. This one features colorful, if somewhat garish, light displays on the stalactite and stalagmite formations, as well as lasers that make designs on the cave’s ceiling and a bubble machine.

But the real show is the undisturbed nature of the river and surrounding hills.

The tour boats travel one way from Guilin to Yangshuo in the morning. A ticket will cost somewhere around 200 yuan, or about $32, and usually includes lunch.

Most boats are air conditioned and one of the three restrooms on board ours included a “western toilet,” for those averse to squatting.

The casual cruise includes photo-worthy scenery around virtually every bend as the boat passes landmarks such as Nine Horse Hill, where those with a good eye can find nine horses in the rock formations. (We were told former President Bill Clinton could only spot three of them.) I found six.

The guide will have passengers take out a 20 yuan note when they approach the view of Apple Hill, and compare the scenery to the depiction on the back of the bill. It’s one of the most painted scenes in Chinese art.

The guides note that the river scenes change with the weather, offering beautiful reflections on sunny days, and mist-covered mountains after a rain.

The boat passes by a scenic fishing village, waterfalls, caves, groves of bamboo, and terraced farms. Water buffalo can be seen on the riverbanks, and the tour boats share the river with traditional bamboo rafts (though some are now made from PVC piping).

Lunch is nothing to write home about, though some of the boats buy catches from the fishermen who pull up to them on the river. Ours offered the usual noodle and dumpling dishes (though you could spend a little extra and try the turtle).

Passengers disembark on Market Street in Yangshuo, where the fishermen will try to get you to pay to pose with their cormorants. The street is lined with vendors selling everything from “real fake” Rolex watches, to T-shirts, silk scarves and jade. Every price is negotiable, and bartering becomes a sport.

Bicycles or cabs can be rented in town for a drive into the countryside to the local caves, hiking trails and rice farms, some of which offer guided tours.

The farm we visited was run by two elderly brothers who opened their home and offered shots of what they called “medicine wine.” It was basically moonshine fermented in a jar filled with snakes, scorpions and other creepy crawlers. Tasty.

There is no boat back to Guilin, which is about an hour away by bus. But for those who choose to stay in Yangshuo for the evening, there is the opportunity to take in a spectacular opera-style light and music show put on by famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou, the man responsible for the opening ceremony in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The 90-minute show, “Impressions Liu Sanjie,” is based on a famous movie about a local singer. It includes more than 600 performers and incorporates stories and music from four minority ethnic groups in the region. It takes place outdoors on a lake in a 3,000-seat amphitheater surrounded by the hills, which become the backdrop for the performance.

The show, much like the region, leaves a lasting impression.

If you go

LI RIVER CRUISE Tickets for the four-hour one-way cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo are sold at a terminal in Guilin and cost around $32 or 200 yuan. Guilin, a well-known tourist destination located in Guangxi province and renowned for its scenery, is easily reachable by air from Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Hong Kong and other points.

Xinhua | By Agencies

Photo taken on June 19, 2012 shows scenery of the Badain Jaran Desert in Alashan of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The Badian Jaran Desert is 47,000 square km and sparsely populated. It is famous for having the tallest stationary sand dunes in the world. Some dunes reach a height of 500 meters. But it also features spring-fed lakes that lie between the dunes. Photo: Xinhua

By Sophie Friedman

Getty Images

What: Meander through the former French Concession’s lilong neighborhoods, narrow alleyways lined with Western-style row-houses and traditional Chinese courtyard homes built before 1949. These laneways, where laundry hangs from bamboo poles and neighbors gossip loudly, are rapidly disappearing, and with them an essential piece of Shanghai’s history. Housing expert and architectural project manager Fanny Hoffman-Loss leads this tour. Tickets are 300 yuan per person. RSVP via publicwalks@shanghai-flaneur.com.

When: Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Where: Okura Garden Hotel, 58 Maoming Lu