Shanghai, China's biggest industrial and commercial centre, has been a topic of heated discussion since early this year.

In many places one can hear people arguing over the city's magic facelift, an on-going process which started in the early 1990s and has so far endowed the city with great charm.

It is in vogue to talk about Shanghai in many Chinese cities. Business people in cities such as Hong Kong and Taipei itch to wash gold in the emerging dreamland.

Currently about 200,000 Taiwan business people reportedly run businesses in Shanghai.

Those who have already settled in Shanghai, from all parts of the country, find themselves increasingly obsessed with their love of the city.

With Shanghai finally saying goodbye to its gloomy image in the 1980s to become an international city of mystery, a new nostalgia seems to be growing and spreading.

Locals are nostalgic about the 1930s and 1940s, when Shanghai established itself as the most renowned city in Asia.

Found everywhere in Shanghai now are shops, bars, stalls and restaurants decorated in the old flavor and styles that were so dominant 80 years ago.

Partly a result of the nostalgic trend, many press houses have rushed to publish books about the city in its heyday as an international community.

Among these publications are "Old Shanghai - A Lost Age," a photo-essay album jointly published by the Beijing-based Foreign Languages Press and the Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House.

The album contains hundreds of "old pictures" of Shanghai, mostly taken 80 years to a century ago.

The photos, recording ordinary scenes of routine life in Shanghai, might not have been out of the ordinary at the time they were taken.

But now that the past glory of the city has gone, and they have become an avenue to take us back to that bygone, vibrant era, they have acquired a new attraction.

In addition, the pictures are accompanied with short essays written by renowned author Wu Liang, a Shanghai native.

The pictures cover many aspects of social life, ranging from women workers pulling barrows to a bride in a Western wedding dress, from an opium addict to the portrait of Hu Die, the movie superstar of China in the 1930s.

Combined, they offer a kaleidoscopic and by no means superficial vision of old Shanghai, helping readers understand what the city was like in that not-so-far-away time that now seems so far away.

"Shanghai is much too deep to fathom...Although we find ourselves at home in this city, we are still outsiders," writes Wu Liang.

That might be true. But with the help of the old photographs and Wu's commentary, readers can get a real feel of the old Shanghai.

City of contradictions

Flipping through the album, one may get a deep impression of contradictions of the old city.

Shanghai was a giant among Asian cities in the 1930s and 1940s, comparable to any other metropolis in the world at that time such as Paris, New York and Berlin.

Many photos in the book illustrate how prosperous old Shanghai was, through reminders of the old times - the beauty salons, double-decker buses, taxis, skyscrapers and so on - things unusual then but frequently seen and therefore common today.

On the other hand, many pictures, such as the one featuring a young war refugee, and another featuring a homeless child begging in a street while beating a drum, highlight the poverty, turbulence and woe that co-existed with the city's charm.

Shanghai was somehow at its peak when China was at its most destitute, Wu writes.

There were magnates, gangsters, missionaries, coolie-laborers, refugees and artists in Shanghai.

The city was China's most urbane centre, and at the same time, home to the country's biggest slum.

Another contradiction was the way this Chinese city took on such a Western look, with many buildings of modern European design along the Bund.

A bird's-eye view picture of the old city could easily be taken for a shot of some European city.

There were a great many foreigners who were deeply rooted in the city and took it as their second home. There were Jewish millionaires, Indian policemen, English managers, French attaches, Japanese performers and White Russian counts.

The foreigners, mostly American, British, French and Japanese, made up less than 5 per cent of the city's population, but they enjoyed the bulk of its riches and pleasures.

There were many other contradictions, which were the result of historical factors.

Wu Liang writes: "Invasion by foreign powers, internal insurrections, deteriorating villages, infiltration of Western culture, the Westernization Movement, the New Reform, going abroad to study, the running of enterprises, the rise of education, foreign powers and revolution, trends of thought and political parties...each has left its trace on Shanghai."

Vicissitudes of a street

Among the hundreds of photographs in the book, many are of streets and buildings.

There are nearly 10 pictures of Nanjing Road, which has been turned into a world-class pedestrians street today.

As the pictures indicate, the area became Shanghai's shopping centre more than a century ago. Readers might be surprised by what they see in a photo of a night scene on Nanjing Road in the mid-1930s, with its dazzle of neon lights and advertisements.

There is another photo in which five-colored flags flutter in the wind after the success of the Shanghai Uprising in 1911.

Just as the city itself, which was considered to have a feminine soul, the women of Shanghai fascinated visitors.

Among the photos, there are many featuring the women who lived and worked in the city in those days - prostitutes, factory workers, and stage and movie stars.

One shot of a beauty parlor might seize the reader's attention. It features several women languorously looking at themselves in large mirrors.

Behind the busy attendants there is a door open to a street. Outside, the sunshine dazzles brightly and a few pedestrians are passing by.

All in all, the essays and the photos provide full fare for the nostalgic longing many people have for this earthy yet ethereal old city.

The only pity is that all of the photos are small and some of them too dark for the reader to see clearly. But this, one supposes, is fitting, as the past can never be relived fully.

(China Daily April 9, 2002)