The Chinese seem to be enamoured of their version of Le Corbusier’s concept of ‘la cite’ radieuse’: the radiant city composed of high-rise concrete blocks placed within a park-like ambience. Throughout the country there is a relentless, tryphid-like march of new multi-storied housing, rarely less than twenty stories high, that is taking over more traditional settlements.

Most have heard about the destruction of over half of the characteristic Beijing alleys or hutongs in the last thirty years.

Shanghai, too, has its characteristic shikumen lanes which are increasingly under threat. They are also known as londang and consist of two or three story houses with a large gate before each house.

In many respects shikumen are like the old back-to-back terraced houses so common in early industrial Britain and which, after years of demolition as slums, are now being preserved, gentrified and even turned into National Trust-like tourist sights.

Some preservation orders have been placed on the Shanghai shikumen but, regrettably, the damage has been done, the traditional city skyline has changed inexorably and soaring land values encourage high density housing and speculation.

These photos describe what is increasingly happening to Shanghai and it is rather sad. The same thing will no doubt increase in my beloved Saigon but it is all about being part of ‘dragon economies.’

China is a ‘no arguments’ state. Conservation societies have little shrift here. One day a city dweller may have been living for generations in a hutong or shikamen only to be told that a roomier and more hygienic twentieth floor flat is awaiting them twenty miles away for immediate occupation. Communities are fractured, families dispersed and I can only wonder if those blights of social anomie and drug trafficking will follow as they so often have done when Britain began to despise terraced housing and fell in love with a debased version of ‘Corbu’ in its post-war estates, so many of which are now being torn down and replaced by those once-considered outdated low rise housing.

A weird phenomenon of modern China is that of ghost cities, well described elsewhere. So many new high rise sprawls lie empty or even uncompleted. While Britain is desperate to catch up with its housing shortage it seems that the Chinese government is planning to avoid such an eventuality by building accommodation even before it’s needed. What else can be behind the interminable row of vacant high rises one spots from train windows in that country? Mass social engineering and movement of rural populations to urban environments? Who knows.

The mysteries of the east are ever present to transform themselves into new ones.

Marco Polo and his travel book known in Italian as ‘il Milione’, first published at the start of the 14th century, comes to mind when relations between China and Italy are mentioned. However, there was contact between the ancient Roman empire and China well before that time as archaeology has revealed. Roman coins have been found in China, and even Vietnam, and there was a flourishing trade in Roman glassware and Chinese silk.

Marco Polo was certainly not the first European explorer to re-establish links between the two hemispheres and his accounts are not always trustworthy. For example, they do not mention the Great Wall or the former practise of female foot binding. More trustworthy are the journals of Odorico of Pordenone, in north east Italy, which are contemporary with those of Polo. A friar minor, Odorico’s mission was both religious and diplomatic and he mentions many sights and customs, including that great wall, absent in Polo’s more famous book.

Statue of Odoric at Pordenone

Italian relations with China continued through subsequent times. Anyone familiar with the museum in Fiesole’s Franciscan monastery will recognise how involved missions were with that empire. Italy even had a concession in Tianjin, the port city for Beijing which was only given up in 1947 when communist China came into power. I didn’t visit Tianjin but evidently it has fine examples of Italian art deco architecture. Moreover, it’s where diplomat Baron Edoardo Fassini-Camossi lived and brought back a musical box of Chinese melodies to his villa at Bagni di Lucca which Puccini heard and incorporated three melodies in his ‘Turandot’.

(Piazza Regina Margherita Tianjin)

Italy is back again in today’s China in a big way, especially in fashion and architecture. The old French quarter has a fine pasticcieria for example.
Italian architects like Stefano Boeri have had a big impact on the design of many buildings in the Pudong area which only twenty years was marsh and farmland.

Look at it now…..

Where will Shanghai be in another twenty year’s time I wonder.