Shanghai Shines

Seductive, glamorous, captivating, and booming beyond belief, Shanghai is a showstopper, a surprising blend that mixes Eastern culture and traditions with foreign influences and 21st-century style. Dramatic changes have been driven by a serendipitous combination of state-fueled economic policy and foreign investment — and they're helping to make Shanghai the new global face of China.

One curious fact: Shanghai has been here before. Back in the 1920s and '30s, the city saw a surge in glamour as Westerners — mostly Europeans as well as a sprinkling of Americans — took over much of the old town and set about creating a sort-of Paris East, a city of European-influenced style, design, and culture. 

What's incredible about Shanghai's current burst is the way the city is enjoying the same visual excitement and eclectic, China-meets-the-West allure that fueled its last glamour age. And the current boom stands a good chance of being more sustained than the last one. In the early 20th century, strict regulations confined foreign business to certain designated zones, and back then it was mostly foreigners leading the charge into new areas of style and taste. This time, many if not most of the trendsetters are Chinese. This emotional and human connection between East and West defines the real face of the future.

Shanghai is a city hell-bent on modernity, but in many ways, it has retained its striking European character. French, art deco, and neoclassical structures dating from the last rush are still visible around the city. Although foreign visitors pop in and out of brand temples like Louis Vuitton and Dunhill — with its quirky, old-fashioned, gentlemen's club grandeur and touches of contemporary bling — it's mainly the new-money children and cashed-up tycoons of Shanghai who are the bread and butter of these designer outposts.

The combination of Chinese tradition and Western influence, ultramodern foreign gloss and local custom, does give Shanghai an element of polarization, one that's sorting itself out in real time as the city sees thousands of restaurants, bars, cafés, and boutiques pop up each year. Mandarin-speaking lao ban (business owners) flash their cash at restaurants owned by chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten, but whiskey might still take prominence over wine. Swish, concrete-floored cafés with names like Bellagio are open 24 hours, yet the diners are puffing on Marlboros and chowing down pork rice, chicken feet, and stir-fried beef. Hot clubs like Bon Bon have all the slick LED-lighting and billboard-worthy DJ names of their London counterparts, and yet they proffer prix fixe ($12–$15) all-you-can-drink admission to bring in the crowds. If Shanghai were a kid, it would be a newly licensed driver buzzing around town in a Porsche Cayenne SUV.

A River Runs Through It

Shanghai is an enormous collection of separate districts, divided in two by the Huangpu River. On the east bank of this shipping artery lies what's known as Pudong, a flashy, modern financial zone where locals and foreigners work in office towers and visitors stay at five-star hotels. Here you'll find the kitschy bubble-and-spire-shaped Oriental Pearl TV Tower and a clutch of into-the-future skyscrapers, including the new 1,614-foot-tall Shanghai World Financial Center — the tallest building in mainland China, third-highest in the world, and home to the new Park Hyatt.

On the west side of the river (known as Puxi), you'll find the remnants of Old Shanghai in the downtown business district, where many art deco buildings of the Bund (the former financial center of the 1920s, neglected for decades after the Communist Revolution of 1949) still stand. Two main commercial thoroughfares in Puxi are worth remembering. Nanjing Road runs from the Bund alongside People's Square, and Huaihai Lu ( lu means road in Mandarin) more or less defines the northern boundary of the hip French Concession neighborhood.

The contrast between the two sides of the Huangpu — glassy Pudong skyscrapers and Bund deco — is “very Shanghai,” as locals would say. The two sections are forever intertwined for the simple reason that everyone goes to one side to take in the view of the other.

The French Concession (a district settled by French nationals in the mid-19th century) and People's Square are also nearby. Not far down the river, you'll come to neighborhoods of old alleys and markets before eventually reaching Yuyuan Gardens, with its ponds and teahouses.

Keep in mind that navigating Shanghai is fairly easy so long as you have a few key pieces of information — namely street addresses and cross streets — and a phrase book (or better yet, a Mandarin-speaking companion) to translate directions.

 

Defining New Taste

While the capital city of Beijing prides itself on being the center of Chinese culture and history, Shanghai presents a modern face, one that's defined in large part by entrepreneurship and commerce, with a marked Western influence. Just about every major world city serves up luxury wares, international cuisine, and nightlife, but Shanghai gives them a unique East-West context and some particularly charming settings, like YongFoo Élite, a restaurant housed in a 1930s villa that was once the British consulate. With its burnished chandeliers, leather chaises, gilt mirrors, and smart interior design, with well-placed splashes of red, green, and purple, YongFoo is so well styled you'd swear it was either decorated to within an inch of its life or not altered one bit over the past seven decades.

Another favorite spot for drinks or dinner is People 7, which sports a secret no-handle door and a bamboo garden. And then there's 1931, which, as the name might suggest, has the atmosphere of a private literary salon or artist-owned café in between-the-wars Paris. Six or seven antique tables with small candlelit lamps give the dining room a sensuous amber glow, and the menu of northern Chinese dishes is matched by a great wine list of South American reds and Australian whites. The vibe feels as close as you could get to the 1930s.

One experience that you'll not want to miss is enjoying a sundowner high up on one of the old buildings on the Bund. Glamour Bar (5 on the Bund) and Bar Rouge (Bund 18) both have decks where you can enjoy the views of the Pudong skyline.

 

Neighborhood Snapshots

There are few excursions as inviting as a wander after dark through the French Concession, where street lanterns flicker, conversation hums quietly, and scents of grilled meats billow from small cafés. Just as mesmerizing at dawn are Fuxing Park and the riverside promenades where older Shanghainese, tough souls who lived through the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and even remember Old Shanghai, quietly move through their tai chi practice.

The French Concession is built for strolling. Plane trees planted by the French settlers line two-lane streets leading from People's Square, forming canopies that meander for miles as high-rise office buildings and construction sites give way to brick-clad homes, old villas, and cobblestone footpaths. Along Maoming Lu, there's a charming strip of shops specializing in handmade qipaos, the Mandarin-collared, body-fitting dresses that are an icon of Chinese fashion.

And then there's Taikang Lu, with its winding maze of cobblestone back alleys and brick courtyards. Today it's an arts district reminiscent of SoHo in New York, with boutiques, galleries, and cafés. But it was only a decade ago that the revitalization of derelict factory buildings and old shikumen (brick tenement houses) began. The design faction moved in, and with it came a host of ethnic cafés. An old candy factory was repurposed as the International Artists Factory, where designers from around the world produce their wares. Check out Danish-inspired handbags and home accessories at Jooi, London-meets-Shanghai fashion at Cha Gang, and cocktail dresses at Happiness Is Fashion, a designer blending British and Chinese tailoring.

Shaoxing Lu, a one-block street with minimal car traffic, is home to a string of distinctive coffeehouses like the Old China Hand Reading Room, a library-like spot with cozy area rugs, soft jazz in the background, simple wooden furniture, including a Qing Dynasty reading table, and bookcases filled with Western lit classics, hard-to-find Chinese texts, and poetry books.

Upscale revitalization has spread to the North Bund as well. There, a former abattoir from the 1930s has debuted as 1933, a retail complex that takes its name from the building's glamorous birth year. Though still a work in progress, 1933 (not to be confused with the restaurant 1931) is already home to brands like Apple and American Apparel and will soon welcome art galleries as well as a steakhouse from Australian chef David Laris. The venue will also be a site for lectures and cultural workshops.

Art and Style

For years after its opening in 1996, Lorenz Helbling's Shangh ART was the lone standout on the city's art scene, and many outsiders thought the Swiss art dealer would never be able to sell such cultural sophistication outside Beijing. However, things changed quickly in 2004, when Helbling moved his gallery into an enormous old warehouse near the bank of Suzhou Creek, in a district now known as M50, a former industrial complex at 50 Moganshan Road. Since then hundreds of galleries have spread out across town, from the Bund to the French Concession and beyond.

Gallery gazing and opening night hopping have become popular sport in Shanghai. The city even hosts a major international art show every two years, the Shanghai Art Biennale. Many of the gallery spaces in Shanghai's old factories and art deco apartments are works of art in themselves. A one-day itinerary should include ArtScene Warehouse and ShanghART at Suzhou Creek, Studio Rouge (17 Fuzhou Lu) near the Bund, the charming 140sqm gallery (1331 Fuxing Zhong Lu) in the French Concession, and the Shanghai Sculpture Space (570 Huaihai Lu), with its eye-popping interiors.

Museum fanatics also should not miss two People's Square landmarks. The Shanghai Art Museum specializes in antiquities, while the Urban Planning Exhibition Center looks to the future. At the latter you can see a 328-foot-long model of what Shanghai will look like in 2020, down to every tree and streetlight, with controlled lighting that takes viewers from dawn to dark. The importance of high-profile public projects like these can't be understated in a town that in just a few years transformed from a near art-free zone to the home of a biennial international showcase.

In many ways, the ability of young artists to make their fortune selling sexy, wildly colored canvasses and flashy sculptures embodies Shanghai's allure to foreigners. And as Shanghai's contemporary art world displays what's new and fabulous, the city's museums and state-owned villas still house ancient Chinese treasures of bronze, ceramic, and wood.

Looking Ahead

Shanghai clearly has its eye on history. The municipal government has already begun plotting future historical dates — 2010 for the World's Fair and 2020 to actualize the striking city model on display inside the Urban Planning Exhibition Center. Meanwhile, master plans from legacy-makers like architect Ben Wood of Studio Shanghai (the mind behind Xintiandi, a collection of rebuilt shikumen homes that's now a retail hub on the edge of the French Concession) will remake key swaths of areas like the North Bund. The effects are already starting to show as the historic downtown, between People's Square and the Huangpu River, livens up. Developers like Swire are already digging holes for megaprojects in the city center. Saks Fifth Avenue and The Peninsula expect to open their doors in the coming year, while other big-ticket and boutique hotel brands such as W, Ritz-Carlton, Alila, Conrad, and Jumeirah all plan to open glittering properties within the next three years.

There's no doubt a bright future is in store for Shanghai. What one hopes is that however glamorous and business-focused it may be, it also has a distinctly Chinese character. That, as mainlanders like to say, would be very Shanghai.

— Rob McKeown

Day Trips from Shanghai

Shanghai is part of an enormous urban cluster that includes such cities as Hangzhou and Suzhou. Its sprawl and proximity to these smaller satellites (which are still home to millions of residents) make Shanghai a great base for side trips. Your first stop should be Hangzhou (about two and a half hours from Shanghai by train), known for its serene tree-lined West Lake, right in the city center, and the many temples and teahouses strung around the shore. Just an hour’s drive from Hangzhou is a bamboo forest that leads up into an area known as Moganshan, a popular destination for hikers looking to get away from the bustle of Shanghai. In this hilltop village, you can find solitude while exploring aging stone paths, pagodas, and old villas.

Often called the Venice of the East for its network of canals, Suzhou boasts the superb Suzhou Museum, designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, along with ancient teahouses and lane homes on the canals. Suzhou is well worth a detour, but there are many other waterfront towns within reach of Shanghai — small, canal-laced villages where locals still conduct commerce by boat and the low-slung stone and brick homes have not changed in centuries. One destination popular for its Ming and Qing dynasty–era homes is Zhouzhuang, just a 90-minute drive from Shanghai. Here, 14 arched stone bridges span the canals. — R.M.

Getting there: On March 25, Continental will launch new nonstop service to Shanghai from its hub in New York/Newark.

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