Old Shanghai, mock replicas
WITH the largest restored shikumen neighborhood in Shanghai set to open in the downtown area in March, debate is ratcheting up about how to best protect the city’s remaining traditional old stone-gated houses.
Is this really heritage preservation? After an eight-year redevelopment project, the Jianyeli neighborhood on Jianguo Road in the Xuhui District will reopen with 55 shikumen-style small hotels, 40 serviced apartments for lease and about 4,000 square meters of commercial facilities.
In the name of progress, two-thirds of the neighborhood was bulldozed and then reconstructed in shikumen-style architecture.
“It’s a pity that real cultural heritage has been replaced by the fake relics,” said Wang Weiqiang, an architectural and urban planning professor at Tongji University, who protested against the demolition for years.
But the government-backed company in charge of the redevelopment said original houses and building materials were too rotten to salvage.
Skeptics are a bit aghast that more than 80 percent of the commercial facilities in the new Jianyeli neighborhood will be rented out, with restaurants, flower shops, tailors and gymnasiums moving in.
Shikumen is an architectural style unique to Shanghai. It combines Western building styles and China’s traditional courtyard structures.
These houses were first built in the 1850s by Europeans living in foreign concessions and then rented out to Chinese locals. The Jianyeli area was built in the 1930s by a French developer.
In their heyday, there were more than 9,000 shikumen lanes with 200,000 buildings across the city.
Only 1,900 lanes and about 50,000 buildings remain, according to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee, the city’s top political advisory body.
About 2 million residents still live in shikumen, which once housed about 80 percent of Shanghai’s population. Redevelopment projects have gobbled up historic buildings, replacing them largely with commercial sites and modern housing.
Since the 1980s, an estimated 70 percent of the city’s shikumen heritage has been demolished, and many of those left have fallen into serious disrepair, according to the political advisory body.
“One major reason for all this is the pursuit of profit,” said Cao Yongkang, director with the International Research Center for Architectural Heritage Conservation at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “There has been a scarcity of funds to maintain the remaining buildings.”
The city and district governments say they have heard the public clamor to save the old neighborhoods, but projects like the Jianyeli redevelopment have left some wondering about the notion of destroying heritage to save it.
Shanghai’s four major preservation strategies are represented by four typical projects — Xintiandi, Tianzifang, Jianyeli and Cite Bourgogne, said Tongji University professor Chang Qing.
Xintiandi and Tianzifang now house boutiques and fancy restaurants and bars. Both were once hailed as successful examples of protecting traditional style.
But heritage experts argue that demolishing the old neighborhoods and replacing them with commercial facilities in mock shikumen style isn’t really cultural preservation.
Tianzifang on Taikang Road was another area once held up as an ideal model. There, residences on ground floors are rented out to art galleries and fashion shops. The residents who remain live upstairs.
But inevitably, commercial activity doesn’t meld well with residential living. Locals complain of incessant noise, especially at night.
The Jianyeli project retained 22 rows of two-story shikumen buildings and turned them into villas that offer luxury overnight accommodation. But eastern and middle parts of the area were completely rebuilt.
In the Cite Bourgogne community on Shaanxi Road, all the historic buildings were kept and renovated, but many residents complained afterward that their living conditions hardly improved.
“The current four models for preserving shikumen heritage obviously are not working,” Chang said.
So, now there is a new model being trialed on an historic building in the Fengshengli neighborhood of Nanjing Road W.
Engineers dismantled the structure of the 105-year-old No. 9 building on Lane 995 of the road, after a detailed survey. They salvaged key materials dismantled from the building, like weathered door frames, windows, tiles, stairs and even wall decoration. For the stone arches on the front gate, a key feature of shikumen architecture, engineers inserted steel beams into the arches and wrapped the decaying structure with concrete.
The original materials salvaged from the dismantling were then added back to the original site.
“The project can serve as a new model on shikumen protection,” said Shen Jiaodong, the project manager.
Shen Sanxin, a senior engineer for the preservation of historic buildings, said local authorities need to establish a database on how shikumen buildings were originally constructed so that preservation efforts can draw on that information.
However, he noted that some features, such as the lime originally used in the buildings, cannot be replicated.
He has asked authorities to find a suitable replacement that is both fire-safe and preserves heat.
The Huangpu District government, meanwhile, is spearheading a redevelopment project on shikumen buildings in Shangxianfang Lane, whose name translates as “respect intellectuals.”
The red-brick lane, built in 1924, has three rows of 52 houses, which will be turned into luxury hotels, serviced apartments and commercial facilities. The lane, featuring a white Baroque-style facade, is one of the best-preserved shikumen areas in Shanghai.
In the northeast of Yangpu District, the government has begun restoring the historic look of a century-old shikumen residential neighborhood and upgrading the living conditions for residents.
Workers are repainting the facades and roofs of the buildings in their original color in the Huisanli neighborhood on Huoshan Road. After that, they will re-tile the kitchens, modernize toilets and upgrade plumbing and wiring.
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