NCT's Shanghai Series - the Old and the New, Xintiandi and more

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Xintiandi is a former Shikumen area transformed into a high-end leisure destinations. The buildings had undergone extensive renovations and modifications, and now house a multitude of expensive bars and restaurants, and the area has become one of the favourite locations for foreigners.

It is also part of a wider development with lots of new offices and flats, and there are plenty of scenes of juxtaposition like this.





Entering Xintiandi from the north

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The narrow alleyways







Brilliant brickwork





It's a popular destination for tourists photographers too ...

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There's always a glass skyscraper poking its head in the distance



Back onto the main promenade. This kind of pedestrian environments are exceedingly rare ...





A guided tour group ...



There are certainly a lot of trees planted in this place.

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If I remember correctly hkskyline was disappointed at the overcommercialisation of the place - I do think however that it would be either unrealistic or uneconomical to expect people to live in such conditions, and bars and restaurants probably are some of the best ways to unlock the potentials of this urban richness.



What I do have an issue with though, is this complete lack of Chinese!





And red telephone boxes ... entirely unecessary.

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A little map of the place



And a little covered passage



Xingye Road

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This is the other half south of Xingye Road





Xintiandi blends itself nicely with the towers on Huaihai Road.



To the south, these are some of the most expensive flats in Shanghai.

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Taipingqiao Park







Leaving Xintiandi through Huaihai Road commercial district

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Huaihai Road itself

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A little while before I visited Xintiandi I did a little tour of the old town, the part of Shanghai that stayed in Chinese control during the colonial era.

View from the Old North Gate, though there's very little old stuff that's remaining





Just 2 miles away, Wenmiao paints a completely different picture

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The name Wenmiao actually refers to a temple

[CoCoMilk]

Bravo : D nice pictures

and i see a hot lady

[christos-greece]

Awesome, very nice photos from Shanghai

[Nightsky]

Thanks for showing these different sides of Shanghai!

[NCT]

Thanks for the kind comments guys!

More pictures! Coming out of Xintiandi I went to a place called Laomatou, a smaller restaurant-and-bar complex by the riverside not too far south of the Bund. Laomatou means the Old Docks, or the Cool Docks as the official translation would like you to think, reminds one to the fact that this stretch of the riverfront used to be full of piers in the olden days.

When you are at the river front, you can't resist but ...



Zhongshan Nan'er Lu - a pedestrian island in the middle of a long crossing is a relatively new concept in Shanghai, and seems to be catching on.



I certainly hadn't come across a staggered crossing before, so it's nice to see pedestrian safety finally being taken seriously. But, but but ... the green man for either side of the crossing are NOT staggered, and in Shanghai it's always a race to get to the other side before the green man disappears and the red man appears, staggering the damn crossing in the middle actually slows you down! Oh we'll learn...



Some newly constructed apartment blocks replacing self-built shacks which are still common in the Old Town. I'm sure these flats are of amazing quality, but they just look like a suburban estate, and IMO do a disservice to this prime urban location

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Anyway, back to the Old Docks Cool Docks. These bars and restaurants are former warehouses and factories.









Just a thought - if I told an unsuspecting soul this was Birmingham, they'd probably believe it ...

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Unfortunately you do see the odd cars invading the pedestrian space, even though there's a car par just at the back accessible through normal roads. This driver even had the cheek to pip at pedestrians, utter **** ...



Anyway, a 'pollution'-free shot.

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Across the river there are more blocks of flats, which are just south of Lujiazui



As we are close to the bund, I'll just post these last two photos, again ...

[Taipei Walker]

I don't like Xintiandi, there are much nicer shikumen than Xintiandi. But for me in Shanghai nothing beats Huangpu district, area between the Bund and People Square, Suzhou Creek and Yan'an Rd. Just my personal opinion.

[Rinchinlhumbe]

I dont like it too much either just for the reason that there is nothing Chinese about it as NCV already said. I agree making money out of it is the only way to let a shikumen survive but when I am in Xintiandi I rather feel like being in Disneyland. Plus the overpricing, I paid around 6 Euro just for an ordinary Coke. Just ridicoulous!
I really recommend strolling around the narrow lanes between Fuzhou Lu and the old town: marvellous mixture of traditional European and Chinese architecture!