The French Concession has become my favorite neighborhood. You can start at Wukang Mansion, the famous iron house, and explore Wukang Road and Anfu Road. On these approximately two kilometers there are countless cafés, tea rooms with beautiful, small gardens where you can sit under palms and banana trees, restaurants and backyards where expensive drinks are offered or where young people find place for their creative ideas. You walk through various architectural styles from country houses to classic modernism and you can hear the twittering of birds from the gardens of the beautiful villas. Some things seem a bit improvised, there are cables and air conditionings hanging everywhere, uncleaned, rotten windows. When I was new in Shanghai, that still bothered me, but this is precisely what makes the atmosphere. This mixture of creativity, history with patina and partly unrenovated buildings gives it uniqueness and unmistakability. It's great fun to dive into it. I never would have guessed that this city had its own style.
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