French Concession

To Shanghai for a 3-day East Asia Arts Meeting. By chance, Markus is in town from Singapore so we went out for dinner with some French friends of his, fittingly in the French Concession. From 1849 to 1943 this was effectively a swathe of land ceded to France. (There were also British area to the north which became the International Settlement). There's something very 'old world' and intimate about the FC's human-scale, gently curving roads lined with low-level Art Deco buildings, plain trees, indie boutiques and bijou restaurants. Pretty much unique to China and in many ways the opposite of Beijing. I'm just amazed that so much of it has survived.