Reviews: Book

How Paris shaped Shanghai

Since Art Deco swept into Shanghai from the West in the 1930s, little contemporary Chinese coverage has been devoted to this movement born in Paris in 1925.

With his huge work Shanghai Art Deco, photographer Er Dongqiang has finally given this movement the attention it deserves. The book includes photographs he took over the last 20 years of the cosmopolitan's best-known architecture, the architects who designed them or their descendants, as well as the interior decoration bearing that period's traces.

"Art Deco is everywhere. Despite tremendous changes, it still stands proudly on some buildings and in the families deep in Shanghai's alleys," said Er, who believes Art Deco still influences Shanghai.

The fishing-village turned metropolis was the nation's center of finance and commerce in the 1930s, contributing nearly half of the country's total customs tax revenue.

As billionaires flaunted their wealth, the growing class of "petit bourgeoisie" were eager to follow. The lively state of the media, which back then was unrivalled in the country for its progressiveness, also helped spread modern life as represented by the Art Deco movement.

While Art Deco is confined tocertain parts of cities such as Miami in the United States and Melbourne in Australia, Shanghai embraced it full scale. On Henan South Street, previously a slum area, Art Deco architecture is being discovered as old houses are torn down.

(China Daily 01/16/2007 page20)