Seeking history in a city without a long past might be considered a challenging undertaking.But with Shanghai, the economic powerhouse of China, things are different.

Seen from a high-rise, the old "Shikumen" houses which combines Chinese and Western styles are a strong contrast to the tall buildings that have risen nearby in recent year.

The short albeit colourful history of the city has been deliberately preserved within its remaining zigzag alleys and ancient but newly decorated old buildings, as well as in its various museums by the shrewd Shanghainese.

The old made new

Shikumen, a special old form of building found only in Shanghai, which combines Western architectural techniques and traditional Chinese flavour, is such an example.

Shikumen were first developed by foreign architects in the mid 19th century in foreign-ruled settlements in Shanghai - which were the product of the unequal treaties imposed on China by Western powers - when a great number of people swarmed to the city to escape the turmoil in neighbouring areas. In the 1850s, the Taiping Movement, a great peasant upheaval, swept southern China, especially the rich Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, both neighbouring Shanghai.

Shikumen's Westernized structure and exterior design met people's demands for more safety, while the traditional Chinese interior layouts and finishing satisfied the Chinese intellectuals and rich landlords who moved to Shanghai to avoid peasant wars.

The emigration of affluent landlords, Shanghai's geographical location in China's richest regions, and the city's full opening to foreign trade have made it the economic hub of China since the mid 19th century.

The economic boom also stimulated the development of shikumen.

During the city's heyday, there were more than 9,000 alleys with such buildings in the city.

In the 1930s, however, shikumen witnessed their first decline, because these residences were frequently divided into as many as half a dozen households, a result of the increasing population pressures. Six decades later, shikumen had to give way to high-rises when the city was undergoing its development. However, people began to realize their unique charm and tried to preserve them.

Shanghai Xintiandi, a group of renovated shikumen in downtown Shanghai, has been designed to please both residents and visitors.

Xintiandi Plaza, which is developed by Hong Kong-based developer Shuion Group, features antique shikumen with modern interior layouts, decor and equipment. The area has become host to a dazzling array of restaurants and bars specializing in French, American, German, British, Brazilian, Italian, Japanese and Chinese cuisines.

The night drops its curtain with the profiles of the antique buildings adumbrated by the colourful blaze of neon signs.

"Restaurants and bars here are much enjoyed by native Shanghainese because the renovated shikumen offer them a nostalgic feeling as well as modern and trendy enjoyment," said Maggie Zhao, public relations director of Shanghai Shuion Development Co Ltd, a subordinate of Hong Kong Shuion.

Xintiandi's rising popularity for its renovation of historical buildings, some experts point out, might not see many repeats because one cannot make all traditional houses into shopping or restaurant centres.

"But that doesn't matter. We have preserved a piece of history and we enjoy it; that is enough," Zhao said.

Yet all compressed histories are not isolated from the rapidly changing skyline of the city's business hub. Viewing the 468-metre-high Oriental Pearl Tower from the front courtyard of a house, one feels a strong contrast but it is by no means a shock. Anyway, it is Shanghai!

Climbing to the lofty observation room of the Oriental Pearl Tower, you can see a batch of skyscrapers, including the 420-metre-high Jinmao Tower, looming before the foggy window.

There have been talks that some of the Western-style buildings have been designed with the consideration of fengshui, an ancient Chinese discipline based on geomantic forces.

But Hua Wei, a management official of Oriental Pearl Tower, said the Oriental Pearl was not designed in accordance with fengshui.

The reinforced concrete tower, the symbol of Shanghai's modernity, has been linked to the historical past in another way. The Shanghai Urban Historical Development Museum, a 10,000-square-metre waxwork exhibition, is located on a subterranean floor of the Oriental Pearl.

Past well recorded

The museum is composed of seven sections.

Walking by the exhibition of life-size models of electric trams which ran on Shanghai streets from the 1920s to the 1940s and various old traffic paraphernalia, one begins to get a taste of the cleverness of the Shanghainese who compress the short history of their city within vivid wax figures in underground streets.

The waxworks are arranged chronologically. Farm tools, big pickle jars, and coarse looms remind you of the peaceful but hard bucolic life of early Shanghai, which was under the administration of Huating County in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when half of modern Shanghai had not yet been reclaimed from the sea.

The waxworks are by no means silent copies of historical textbooks. In the small garden of an old house, a mischievous boy is creeping toward a jar of food, with his mother rushing to stop him, while the boy's grandma, sitting by a grapevine in the garden seems to be scolding the mother. "Let him be!" the old woman seems to be calling out.

Images of rural life are followed by pictures of the busy commercial life of Shanghai in the early 1800s. In the city not yet opened to the outside world, people gather in a small teahouse in a traditional street and talk about the price of crops and the quality of homemade clothes. They are totally unaware of the impending first Opium War (1840-42) which brought shame to Chinese but prosperity to the then small county site of Shanghai.

Walking along the dismal lanes of the museum, visitors are suddenly confronted by the early street lamps in the foreign settlement areas in Shanghai, which was one of the earliest five open ports in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The Western-styled street lamps must have been something quite novel to Shanghai natives in mid-19th century. People still dressed traditionally, and made their own things in their workshops. They seem to peek at the street lamps from time to time.

Some Western-style buildings began to appear among Shanghai's old houses, yet the city remained largely a Chinese one with traditionally built shops peddling farm tools, restaurants filled with people with long braids, and finally, bawdy houses and opium shops trying to attract rich old goats and dandies.

Going further, streets become more conspicuously Westernized. Three-storey colonial-style houses begin to appear and Indian policemen - a common scene in former British colonies - walk in the foreign settlement areas. In a Westernized court, a mandarin and a Western judge are jointly hearing a case. Before the judges' bench, one defendant is kneeling but another is standing. Beside them stand a Chinese guard and an Indian policeman.

It is a strange but commonplace historical scene from the late Qing Dynasty when the then Chinese Government was forced to agree that foreigners in China's foreign settlements who had been charged with breaking the law could only be sentenced by their consulates, while the cases involving both Chinese and foreigners had to be jointly heard by Chinese and foreign judges.

Museum of quality

Shanghai Museum is one of the leading museums in China with 120,000 precious historical relics.

In most other museums in China, all relics are displayed chronologically. The historical periods are always divided into primitive civilization, slavery, feudal society, and capitalistic cultures.

But in the Shanghai Museum, relics are divided into 11 sections based on their characteristics, covering such categories as bronze, pottery and porcelain, handwriting, and painting.

"We just want viewers to taste the splendid culture and artistic achievements of our ancestors," said Guo Qingsheng, deputy director of the Shanghai Museum's Education Department.

Lighting of the bronze exhibition is elaborately devised so that the hall is in semi-darkness while most exhibits are displayed in a soft and somewhat mysterious light.

It is hard to believe that people in the Xia (21st century - 16th century BC) and Shang (16th century - 11th century BC) could make such splendid objects with simple tools and poor food. They must have been quite upbeat despite the hard work, for most of the works of art are made for drinking alcohol or making sacrifices to gods and ancestors. In the Shanghai Museum alone, there are 12 kinds of bronze utensils that were used for drinking spirits, and their different forms satisfy people's diversified drinking styles: sipping, quaffing, and guzzling.

Our ancestors did not stop with making utensils for drinking. They designed various decorative sculptures: tigers to ward off spirit-stealers, goats with their strong vitality to preserve alcohol for long periods, and fish with their great fecundity to mean there will be wine forever.

The cleverness of the Shanghainese is not limited to their deliberate efforts to arrange exhibits and relics. They have demonstrated that history, no matter how short, can be turned into something marketable.

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