When walking from People's Square to the Bund riverside promenade, one usually goes straight down Nanjing Road, Shanghai's most famous street, a lively pedestrian street lined with expensive shops. One purposefully overlooks the streets and quarters that lie to the left and right of it, although there is a lot to discover there. Just a few meters from the hectic hustle and bustle of Nanjing Road, you can ignore consumption, it becomes quieter and more contemplative. The sensory overload subsides and stately buildings of former trading posts and old residential areas have a chance to come to the fore.
Between Nanjing Road and Suzhou River - the northern part
It is worth wandering around the area between Nanjing Road and Suzhou River, especially through Jiangxi Road, Sichuan Road and Dianchi Road. The latter is sometimes used as a film set, so it is quite possible that the street will be blocked off and fog machines will create the appropriate atmosphere. There you will find two interesting old Shanghai institutions, the East Sea Coffee and the Jazz Club at the Fairmont Peace Hotel.
East Sea Coffee
It looks a bit plush and you feel like you're in old Europe, for example in Vienna. It's difficult to get a seat there and you usually have to sit on one of the yellow upholstered stools in front of the counter until you're assigned a table. The staff speaks English and apart from coffee and cake there is also lunch, which many guests like to come for, so that it is not possible to get a seat immediately at lunchtime. The menu includes various Russian dishes with borsch. The café was founded in 1941 by the Russian-Jewish immigrant Semyon Libermann, who, like many other Jewish emigrants from Europe, fled here. Above all, the Jews from Vienna enriched the coffee house scene in Shanghai with their new establishments. The East Side Coffee was initially called Mars Café and was located at 147-149 Nanjing Road. After closings and reopenings, it finally came to its current location at 110 Dianchi Road and got its current name. The lemon pie with meringue is particularly recommended.
The Jazz Club at the Fairmont Peace Hotel A few yards away is another legendary Shanghai institution, the oldest jazz band in the world, which has multiple Guinness World Records. It was founded in 1980, the oldest musician who recently passed away was 94, the youngest 79. They play there every night from 8pm to 1am. From 9 p.m. the singer comes along, the entrance fee is 300 yuan, but that includes all consumption. Of course, if you drink and eat more, it costs more. The band is advertised with the words that they are not the best jazz band in the world, but the oldest. There are certainly livelier musical experiences in Shanghai, but the atmosphere in the grandiose Peace Hotel alone is worth a visit. The food is good and the music accompanies the evening. German filmmaker Uli Gaulke produced the documentary "As Time Goes By" about the band in 2021.
In every district there are old quarters with two-storey buildings that are gradually being demolished. With that, an old piece of Shanghai dies and a lot of everyday Chinese culture will disappear forever. If you visit a really lively old quarter, of which there aren't many anymore, you experience the full life, even more than in the part of town I live in. Almost like a labyrinth, alley after alley is lined up in this quarter, people everywhere are working, repairing, cooking, sleeping, playing. The buildings are of course hardly renovable and do not have the comfort that is taken for granted today. Often there is not even running water.
When a quarter is about to be demolished, the doors and windows are bricked up, the windows on the upper floors are nailed shut from the inside with red wooden panels. Sometimes a cross is painted on the windowpane, like trees that are about to be felled. A few residents still live there, just like in Germany in the towns on the Lower Rhine that have had to make way for lignite. Some houses are not affected yet, but it is only a matter of time. The photos below show a neighborhood that will soon be demolished.
Between Nanjing Road and Yan'an Road - the southern part South of Nanjing Road, the neighborhood extends to Yan'an Road, which runs where the Yangjingbang Creek canal used to be, which was filled in and on which Edward VII Avenue was built. The street was later renamed and received its current name. The canal was the boundary between the British and French concessions. It led down to the Huangpu River, where the historic Gutzlaff Signal Tower still stands. Walking along Sichuan Road, crossing Yan'an Road and continuing south, one soon arrives at the area of ancient Chinese Shanghai. However, the Chinese city wall was demolished a long time ago, but the impressive gate was built, which stands exactly where the city wall once ran. Today it is the entrance to the Yu Yuan Garden, popular with tourists.
But I stay in the area north of Yan'an Road. There is an impressive architectural ensemble at the intersection of Fuzhou Road and Jiangxi Road. Art Deco skyscrapers stand at all four corners of the intersection, forming a cylindrical unit with their concave facades. It is somewhat reminiscent of city planning from the Baroque era, in which buildings were integrated into an overall plan. As is almost always the case in this district, the skyscrapers are banks and a hotel.
Next door, as is often the case in this city, there are completely normal down-to-earth residential areas.
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