Artist colony scrapped in favor of luxury goods market

The Shanghai Daily and local media report that a historic slaughterhouse located at 10 Shajing Rd in Shanghai's Hongkou district is set to open in July as a luxury shopping shopping center featuring "house jewelry and car shops". The old slaughterhouse, built in 1933, is famed for being one of three in the world with a unique octagonal architecture, and whose twisting passages, balconies and bridges have been a prized target for wily photographers who could talk their way into the off-limits building used as a factory and warehouse since the 1950s; this "reporter" couldn't get in, but others have. The Metro Express article-cum-press-release linked to above likens the project to Xintiandi and certain areas of the Bund, and reports that architects are referencing old photographs of the building during the restoration process.

What the Shanghai Daily fails to mention is that the slaughterhouse was originally slated to become an arts and design "creativity project", and that the quaint, backwater Hongkou neighborhood around the building is set to be given a "洗脸", literally "face-wash", into something that will likely be unrecognizable as Shanghai anymore. This causes one to wonder how they will fulfill one of the original stated goals of also making the neighborhood into a set for filming old Shanghai movies.