How to give a french concession walking tour
As this seems to have become an even more regulated and regular subset of the cultural tourist itinerary than the 798 gallery prance, I think it’s time someone set out some standards to insure that every curious foreigner comes away with a similar understanding of Shanghai past and present. Below, some points that the responsible tour guide should cover:
1.) Start with the part about the fishing village and the Chinese walled city. Traders in the mud and such.
2.) Move straight on to the Opium Wars, making sure to conflate the two. Offer a cursory sketch of how settlements were granted, first to the Brits, then to everyone else. (Advanced practitioners only: insert line about how the Zhoushan archipelago, not Hong Kong, was the initial object of British desire.) If the audience is predominantly American, knowingly make the point that “the French like to do everything differently,” leading them not to join the International Settlement.
3.) Veering toward Fuxing Park, field intermittent questions about the trees and those who planted them. Explain that Huaihai Lu used to be called Avenue Joffre.
4.) You must, absolutely must, include the fact that only 2000 actual French people lived in the French concession at its height, and that most of the residents were, even then, wealthy Chinese.
5.) Make at least twice the point about the inexorably wartorn nature of China in the early twentieth century. Pepper with unsubstantiated references to internal demographics of the same period, saying things like, “The north was full of warlords and corrupt officials. Shanghai was for businessmen.”
6.) Walking into a typical neighborhood, (extra points for having your group stand in such a way that they completely obstruct the flow of residents in and out of their compound, and for each dirty look thus drawn) get to the part where refugees flood the villas and their gardens driving opportunistic developers to improvise a form of block housing that draws on Western forms and Chinese fengshui. All hail the lilong!
7.) Moving on to the present, tell at least one moving story about a family reclaiming its real-estate inheritance in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. From there, segue into a discussion of the well-intentioned but ultimately flawed nature of preservation efforts today. Point to, say, a Russian Orthodox church that became a winebar in the nineties before becoming a retirement center in the world-expo run-up, noting that the crosses on the architraves remain, while the icon of St. Nicolas has been removed.
8.) Drop everyone in Tianzifang to shop for “Chinese design,” contrasting the organic nature of this renovation with the situation in Xintiandi. Sniffing the cesspool, explain how one young designer inherited a cramped apartment here from her grandmother, turned it into a shop, and that within a year the whole thing had exploded, a testament to the new vitality of the creative industries. As the remaining locals shuffle by holding chamberpots, tripping over the workers installing sewer mains that will soon make these daily journeys obsolete, marvel at how far Shanghai has come, and how far it has to go.
By this point, everyone should be ready for lunch.
Zhang Enli, Trees IV, 2004. Oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm.