Visitors to Shanghai are often struck by the visible traces of history throughout the city. Historic architecture attracts with its mystique, its stories to tell and its beauty. Though there is increasingly more information on Shanghai's history and historic architecture, still curiosity is often left unsatisfied.

Ten years ago, three expats recognized this gap in knowledge and created a group to address it - the Shanghai Historic House Association. This year it is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a series of events and a new name.

Historic Shanghai, as it is now known, will focus on not only bricks and mortar, but also on the people, cultures and ideas that made Shanghai what it is today.

The celebratory year begins with a panel discussion this Sunday at the Glamour Bar. The title: "Shanghai Ren, Shanghailanders and Other Interlopers: The People who Made Shanghai, 1800-2000."

It will concentrate on three types of people who contributed to Shanghai: the mix of Chinese who settled in Shanghai, foreign business people, missionaries and expatriate "Shanghailanders," and the diverse group of others - sailors, adventurers and people of mixed ethnicity who are often overlooked in stories of old Shanghai. The talk is an example of the group's wider focus on history and society.

"Architecture will be a jumping off point to explore more areas of Shanghai history," says Patrick Cranley, one of the group's co-founders.

The Shanghai Historic House Association was founded by Americans Tess Johnston and Cranley, and Singaporean Tina Kanagaratnam in 1998. It's a not-for-profit labor of love that the founders organized in their spare time. Initially its purpose was "the study of aesthetics," according to Cranley, or the appreciation of beauty in Shanghai's historic architecture.

Cranley and Kanagaratnam, principals at the communications consultancy AsiaMedia, arrived in Shanghai in 1997 and were immediately intrigued by the historical legacies all around them.

Digging deeper for information they found all roads led to author and long-term Shanghai resident Tess Johnston. She wrote one of the first books documenting Shanghai's architecture pre-1949, "A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai" (1993).

The meeting of these three history enthusiasts gave rise to the association. In most cases appreciating beauty naturally leads to an interest in protecting it, and the association was no exception - it has had a long, though often frustrated preservationist slant. "We have always emphasized the immense value of old buildings, but we call ourselves a group of like-minded preservationists with no power to preserve," says Johnston.

Over the past decade this expat group even managed to attract the support of Professor Wu Jiang, deputy director of the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau, who presented to the group the city's ideas for historic preservation planning.

Without any real lobbying power, however, the association was limited to raising awareness through lectures, walking tours of lane neighborhoods and guided tours of grand old Shanghai institutions. These include the former French Club (now part of the Garden Hotel) and the Morriss Mansion (now part of the Ruijin Guesthouse) in the former French Concession.

Ten years on, however, the group's focus changed again. "In the 1980s foreigners coming to Shanghai could not help but be struck by the old buildings that were here." says Kanagaratnam. "That's because from 1949 until the 1980s there was little property development.

"Our role then was to help people understand the history that was around them. But with all the development of the past decade, the present and the future have overshadowed the past. Our mission now is to help people find history."

The group's attention to Shanghai's constructed heritage will continue, but the rebranded Historic Shanghai will also concentrate on people-focused topics, literature, industry and the arts, "things not usually associated with Shanghai," says Kanagartnam.

In terms of preservation, Cranley is optimistic about the future. "The main problem is that there's little public or private money for preservation," he says, and no incentives for developers to do historically correct renovations.

"It's always cheaper to tear old buildings down." The progress in awareness is evident, though. While 15 years ago there was only a handful of protected buildings, today the list contains more than 630 buildings and neighborhoods.

"It's a case of seeing the glass half empty or half full," says Cranley, "but the trend is positive."

"Shanghai Ren, Shanghailanders and Other Interlopers: The People who Made Shanghai, 1800-2000"

Date: January 27, 4pm
Venue: Glamour Bar, Zhongshan Rd E1
Price: 50 yuan, includes a drink
Tel: 6350-9988
E-mail: info@historic-shanghai.com

(Shanghai Daily January 23, 2008)