School Above the Sea: Shanghai Municipal Council Polytechnic Public School
The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) Polytechnic, or Gezhi Academy, was founded in 1874, and remarkably, this pioneering institution, with its links to missionaries, reformers, scientists, and revolutionaries, is still going strong. Today, it’s the Shanghai Gezhi High School. In 2005, I was privileged to meet two ...
>
Hidden Histories: The Shanghai Shanty
It’s not often that a shanty stops you in your tracks--in a good way!--but this one did. This little house, clinging to a lane wall in the old Chinese city, defies the usual definition of a shanty: that is, a haphazard illegal structure on the edge of a city. You enter via an Art Deco gateway in the heart of ...
>
Shanghai’s Little White House
They call it the “Little White House,” and it was one of the finest grand mansions of old Shanghai. Still is. Constructed by a company whose buildings would become icons, this gracious belle époque mansion on Fenyang Lu never housed Presidents, but for nearly half a century after it was built, it was the home of men ...
>
AstraZeneca, Shanghai, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty
by Duncan Hewitt // You may – just possibly – have heard the name AstraZeneca recently…But did you know about its Shanghai connection? One of the pharmaceutical company’s forerunners had a close association with China in the first half of the 20th century, leaving an architectural legacy in Shanghai – where it ...
>
Chin Woo Athletic Association Buildings
“Historic Beauty to be Torn Down”, blared the headline. It was August 5, 2011, and it was clear that time was of the essence, so despite the sweltering Shanghai heat, I headed down to 379 Huimin Road, at the corner of Dalian Road, in Yangpu District. There, I discovered an island of architectural beauty in a desert ...
>
Shanghai’s Hidden Ming Temple
In a narrow lane off the Nanjing Road pedestrian street stands a small, shabby box of a building. It’s no match for the flash and buzz of the famous street, yet its powers are so mighty that it has remained part of Shanghai life since the Ming Dynasty. On the roof, a plain red sign with two bright yellow ...
>
5 Reasons to Visit the Old City Right Now
This autumn, we’ve seen the atmospheric Old Chinese City disappearing with unprecedented speed. Sure, it’s been slowly vanishing for years, but a recent visit saw one of our favorite sections demolished, and recently living neighborhoods emptied out and boarded up. The recent rapid clip adds an urgency to taking a last ...
>