An ancient Shanghai town rejuvenated
It was freezing cold on a recent Sunday, but an ancient watertown near my suburban Shanghai home was humming with travelers, young and old.
Kids dressed in traditional Chinese attire scampered with joyful screams, while adults strolled along or shopped around. As I sauntered across the 50,000-square-meter commercial area at Panlong Tiandi in Qingpu District, near the Hongqiao transportation hub, I saw an old woman making sugar snacks in the shape of a dragon for a girl, a young mother selecting a wooden handicraft for her little son, and crowds of youngsters chatting or reading in riverside cafes or chocolate shops adapted from ancient houses.
Panlong Tiandi literally means Panlong World (heaven and earth) in Chinese, a communal complex comprising 230,000 square meters of public green space, 250,000 square meters of residential neighborhoods and 50,000 square meters of commercial outlets. Commercial activities are comfortably spread across or surrounded by restored rustic landscapes of Panlong, an ancient town dating back to the Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618).
The town’s cross-shaped marketplace, which began to thrive in the middle of the Qing Dynasty (16441911) but declined over time, has been restored, featuring well-preserved ancient bridges and buildings. Some of the buildings have been modified to accommodate such international brands as GODIVA, Häagen-Dazs and Blue Bottle Coffee.
What did I do at the brisk marketplace? I was not shopping. The marketplace has plenty of space for people just to loaf around, to meditate, to observe.
I chose to watch a video program about ancient Chinese culture played on the wall of a well-preserved ancient public stage. The program, using immersive multimedia forms to introduce ancient Chinese architecture and thoughts, was developed by researchers from the Harvard FAS CAMLab. FAS stands for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
As I watched and reflected upon several episodes of the video (I had watched a complete version in an ancient house not far from the public stage in January), which explained through imagined digital images how one should see the world in deep meditation, I felt as if I was living both in the past and the present. What a wonderful experience I had at the restored ancient town!
Panlong was in a bad shape just a few years ago, as it had deteriorated into something called an “urban village” (ѝᶁ) — a compressed urban settlement built wholly or partly on former farmland. As the local economy and life gradually lose their luster, such dense settlements become less and less ideal for sustainable growth or living. In Panlong, rivers were polluted and illegal buildings with safety risks were scattered here and there.
Shanghai decided to revamp its first batch of “urban villages” in 2014, Panlong among them. The
Paper, a leading Shanghai-based news outlet, reported on February 26 that the reconstruction of Panlong — from 2019 to 2023 — proved to be an exemplary case in the city’s renovation of “urban villages.”
“Our business is good, because a lot of travelers like to see the beautiful scenery here,” a female shopping assistant at a McDonald’s outlet at Panlong Tiandi told me. In her view, a more aesthetic environment may unwittingly bring about some business “manna.”
A middle-aged couple from Yangzhou City, my hometown in Jiangsu Province famous for its ancient bridges, said they were surprised to see so many ancient bridges at Panlong Tiandi that had been kept in good shape. As we chatted in Yangzhou dialect, I learned that the couple lived with their daughter in Changning District, and that it took them only 25 minutes to arrive at Panlong by bus.
Panlong is just one example of how Shanghai is sprucing up its image. According to the city’s master plan for urban regeneration, all its “urban villages” will have been revamped by 2037.
Such urban regeneration projects surely will improve local commerce, but they go beyond commercial interests alone. As Panlong’s rebirth shows, a well-designed renovation of an “urban village” contributes in no small measure to a city’s revival of its ancient wisdom in meeting today’s challenges.