How much of this quote would you agree with?: "The quality of Shanghai's high-profile architecture is now world class," says Dodington. "While early versions of the city's skyscrapers were mostly boxes covered in glass, today each structure needs to embody China's ascendancy. Subtle, avant garde exteriors fuse Western and oriental aesthetics, while massive dimensions embody the city's economic might." From Asia Times. more ›

• Desperate women have been swindled out of tens of thousands of yuan by a man posing to be a potential husband, who in reality was already married and had three kids. Local police have warned single women to take care.
• New York University has started construction on its second major international campus here in Shanghai. The teaching will remain the same as the campuses in New York and Abu Dhabi as the university has been given independent status. No Chinese censorship?
• Apparently there is too much music in Shanghai, so much so that audience numbers are dwindling. A lack of motivation and self-promotion is to blame. It seems there can be too much of a good thing after all.

A piece of good news on the architectural preservation front: Trinity Cathedral (featured in J.G. Ballard's ) is finally reopening, according to a nice feature on the LA Times. The church was supposed to have finished renovation before Expo, but unfortunately wasn't able to make the deadline. We're excited to check it out. More after the jump: more ›

Part III of an ongoing series taking a closer look at all of Shanghai's 155 "important heritage sites" that are currently unprotected. Here are the locations in Luwan (French Concession!) and Jiading Districts - which housed the creator of the Chinese alphabet (bopomofo!), the poor discarded second wife of Chiang Kai-shek, and China's best art forger. more ›

Here's Part II of my attempt to take a closer look at all of Shanghai's 155 "important heritage sites" that are currently unprotected. Here are the houses and locations in Huangpu, Zhabei and Putuo districts which include amongst them the first homes of Shanghai's most notorious gangsters, a gorgeous villa of the founder of China's largest pre-revolution English-language newspaper and the mill where a protest leader was killed, sparking China's May 30th anti-foreign movement! more ›

Yesterday, Shanghai Daily reported that there were 155 historically significant homes in the city that are currently unprotected. These houses were previously used by Shanghai's most influential politicians, industrial tycoons, scholars and such, but are now in a dilapidated state (though, luckily, not yet torn down). Interestingly, many Chinese newspapers printed out exactly which 155 homes these were, so I thought I'd document them. more ›

We've reported numerous times on the sad state of architectural preservation here in Shanghai, but we will probably never get as deep as Shanghai history buff Paul French. French has now taken the time to compile a list of the worst losses of 2010 (there were a LOT of them) and it's well worth a read. more ›

We've heard our skyline compared to Blade Runner and an equally sci-fi term: "the future." Basically always, they're referring to Lujiazui. One company is adamant about changing that: Ping An Insurance. more ›

While one of them found a rollicking second life as a haunted house, there are other equally haunting buildings on Suzhou Creek that haven't been put to use. A member of our Shanghaiist Flickr pool, Hey It's William, went by last month to snap pictures of some of the abandoned, surprisingly graffitied, buildings by the water. more ›

Oh gosh, here's some really sad news. Remember Ever-spring Hall, which we featured a photo set of just a couple of days ago? The last couple of rainstorms were not kind to it - according to Shanghai Daily, its roof has completely caved in. more ›

Last year, Shanghai resident Katya Knyazeva stumbled upon Ever-spring Hall, a piece of historic Shanghai that had fallen by the wayside. Located just 100 meters east of the Temple of the City God on Wutong Lu, it was turned into a gymnasium at some point in time and then left to rot. A shame for architecture for which the saying was penned, "First, there is Ever-Spring Hall; second, there is Yu Garden." more ›

If it is what we can look forward to in 2012, then holy cow! I think Shanghai might have finally gotten its first absolutely must-see museum attraction. Designed by Perkins + Will, the "Shanghai Nature Museum" features a nautilus shell-like design shape and will contain 35,000 square meters of display space, as well as research space underground (which members apparently have access to). more ›

If you've ever wanted to know the nitty gritty about preserving and/or buying one of those beautiful lane houses - or really, anything built before 1949 - still dotted along the city (especially before they get torn down and replaced by another skyscraper), Shanghai Scrap has an informative interview with Amy L. Sommers, who recently co-published "A Tragedy of the Common: Property Rights Issues in Shanghai Historic Residences" with Kara L. Phillips of the Seattle University Law Library. more ›

With the Expo in 33 days and counting, the pace of demolition, renovation, and renewal in this city has only continued its forward sprint. While cleaning up for the Expo has been the primary motivation behind the large-scale demolition of old buildings and neighborhoods during the past few years, many have simply fallen victim to Shanghai’s rapid pace of urbanization. Those of us who live here are pretty immune by now to the daily sounds of construction and the sight of historical structures and traditional longtangs being torn down to make way for gleaming new residential or commercial buildings... but it still hurts to see it happen so wantonly. more ›

A marine merchant Shen, from Fujian, had this residence built in 1860. To pay tribute to the origins of his fortune, Shen had his house face not to the south, but the east, toward the sea. The building housed the whole Shen family with domestics and had enough space to store goods. There was a spacious garden around the house, but it did not survive. more ›

Glamour Bar is buzzing by the time I take my seat at 2:55 p.m. for Tess Johnston's Saturday session. Around me, people are talking about how excited they are to see Tess, wondering how Tess is, asking friends and acquaintances whether they've bought Tess's new book. People are referring to Tess in personal terms, like she is a dear old friend they are just meeting up with over afternoon tea. And it's no wonder it feels like everyone knows her: Tess Johnston is a Shanghai institution, a long-time resident of the city who needs no introduction for the crowds of fans gathered to hear her talk. more ›

I don't care what half the people said on that recent post about how ugly Shanghai's new cruise ship terminal was - it is an architectural horror and the amount of commenters who signed up specifically to say it was great makes me wonder how many PR flackies SPARCH has on hand. But this post isn't about that - this post is about some real architecture worth oohing and aahing at: the plans for the Shanghai Cultural Plaza. more ›

Shanghai has some insanely ugly buildings, but I was of the impression that they had scaled back on the craziness a little bit in the last couple of years. I don't know how I'd gotten that impression. This monstrosity, designed by SPARCH Architects, is going to be Shanghai's new cruise-ship terminal. more ›

Last summer, we brought to your attention a movie called Building 173, which profiled the transformation of a certain Shanghai apartment block from high-society penthouses to middle class family homes and finally to tenements for the working poor. Highlighted, too, were the external factors - namely war and politics - which underlay and, in some cases, directly caused this metamorphosis, narrated in the most accurate and vivid way possible: directly from the people who lived in the building through it all. more ›

Paul French is the author of Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand and Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium War to Mao. He is currently re-investigating the unsolved case of Pamela Werner, a young English girl horrifically murdered in Peking in 1937, to be published as Murder in Peking by Penguin Books. Today, he writes about some historic buildings we lost in 2009 thanks to thoughtless Shanghai development. more ›