Xintiandi

Xintiandi (新天地, Xīntiāndì) is a car-free district of restaurants, bars and shops built into restored shikumen (“stone-gate”) houses, just north of Huaihai Middle Road in the former French Concession. It was completed in 2001 by the Hong Kong developer Shui On Group, and it is a development, not an untouched old neighbourhood.

The project began in 1996, when Shui On took on the wider Taipingqiao area. The US firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill worked on the planning. The part now called Xintiandi covers about 30,000 square metres, with about 60,000 square metres of floor area. The old houses were kept at the exterior, while the rooms inside were joined up to make larger spaces for restaurants, bars and shops.

The name has its own story. Chinese Wikipedia says the project was first called the “Yida” (一大) redevelopment, and that the characters 一 and 大 were combined into 天, which paired with 地 gave Xintiandi, “New Heaven and Earth”. The first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party took place at a site beside the district, now a museum.

The project has been judged in different ways. It is regarded as one of the first lifestyle centres in China, and it influenced efforts to revitalise older neighbourhoods elsewhere in the country. Some experts have criticised it for keeping only the outer form of the shikumen lanes, with modern interiors and a modern way of life in place of the lane life that was there before. Tianzifang took a different approach: its houses were renovated rather than demolished and rebuilt.

For a look inside a shikumen house, the Shikumen Open House Museum is on Xingye Road, on the south side of the North Block. It presents Shanghai life as it was in the 1920s and 1930s, in about five rooms with period furniture. One is a tingzijian, a small triangular room.