Gallery: Shanghai street scenes from 1986

The 56-year-old U.S. citizen David Gleit can answer a question that most Shanghainese can’t: what did Shanghai look like without the skyscrapers and luxury stores?  

Traveling from the United States to Shanghai in 1986 with his friends, Gleit used his Pentax 1000 to capture the street scenes in a city that had been opened up to the West for less than 10 years.

Posted by Gleit through his Flickr account, the set of photos called “Shanghai 1986” caused a splash among Shanghainese netizens and was shared throughout major Chinese forums.

Many netizens posted that they were attracted to the photos by the "unsophisticated ambiance" the city once had.

Currently living in San Francisco and working as a headhunter, David Gleit shared his memories of the trip that made him an Internet hot topic across the ocean. 

(Interview continues below photo.)

Huaihai Lu in the 1980s. This picture captures the Huaihai Zhong Lu stretch between Sinan Lu and Ruijin Er Lu.

CNNGo: Why were you in Shanghai in 1986?

I came out to California -- from New York -- to study in a Masters program in East Asia studies in Stanford University. I had a chance to study advanced Chinese in Taiwan before then in 1977.

During the end of my first year in Taiwan, a few of us had the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong, then into Guangzhou. We were very lucky to visit the mainland of China as early as 1978.

A few years after getting my Masters degree, I decided to go back for an MBA.

A few students I was enrolled with were also interested in China and we decided to go on a trip to Asia. There were six of us and I was kind of a tour guide because I spoke the language.

We went to Guangzhou, Guilin, Nanning and Kunming, then ended up in Shanghai and went back to Hong Kong after that. 

CNNGo: Did you know much about Shanghai before you came?

As a student of China and Chinese history, I was already aware of the importance of China.

I am originally a New Yorker, but even back then I kind of sensed that Shanghai is like New York in the way it views itself as the most happening and the most exciting city of the country.

CNNGo: What was your first impression on Shanghai in 1986?

It was in the middle of winter in early January when we came. I remember it was extremely cold.

The impression that made the bigest impact was that it was the most modern city -- or, more exactly, it was becoming the most modern city -- in China that we had seen. The new stores and the way people were dressed all struck me as a big advancement over what I’ve seen in China eight years earlier.

The size and the advancement of the city, and also the friendliness of the people all inspired me.

You really feel the imperial China in Beijing, whereas in Shanghai, you really feel that the city that was coming back to life as a commercial and very modern expression of Chinese culture.

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A random shot in Laoximen (老西门) in Shanghai. The baby in the photo may have had a baby herself now.

CNNGo: There are rumors online that you had a craving for xiaolongbao in Shanghai. Is that true?

I’d heard about xiaolongbao before I came to Shanghai. When I got off the plane, I was pretty hungry, so the first thing I wanted to do was to go to downtown and get xiaolongbao.

CNNGo: Did you like them?

I found a place that was selling it. They asked me how many do I want.

I didn’t know there was a difference between liang [fourth tone, meaning weight] and liang [third tone, meaning 50 kg]. So I said, “Well, I want 10 liang [10 x 50kg].”

I quickly figured out my mistake.

The xiaolongbao itself was good.

• More on CNNGo: "Shanghai's best xiaolongbao"

Then when I was paying for my food, they asked for food coupons, 粮票 [liang piao]. I didn’t know what that was. So I showed them what I had -- the foreign exchange certificate (外汇券), the certificates foreigners had to use back then to replace the local money.

They were very happy to take that.

CNNGo: Name one Shanghai tourist spot you can still remember.

Yuyuan and the hotel we stayed at, Jinjiang Hotel.

I was only in Shanghai for three or four days before I took a train to Guangzhou. My friend and I went to Yuyuan, the older part of Shanghai, and we also went to Suzhou. I’d say the only real sightseeing thing we did was to ride a boat on one of the canals. We had a great time.

CNNGo: What was the fashion like in Shanghai?

It struck me how Westernized and fashionable it was.

I have a picture that I call “Shanghai style." It shows some young people walking along one of the main shopping streets [below]. They were pretty fashionable. A young girl had got a long dark coat and a nice purse over her shoulder.

It could have been anywhere in the world in a major city.

CNNGo: Any holiday romance?

I can share one story.

On the overnight train from Shanghai to Guangzhou, I was sitting by myself. A young and attractive woman from Shanghai overheard me speaking some Chinese with the people next to me. She was very forward and started talking to me.

She was native Shanghainese student and was on her way to visit some friends in Guangzhou.

CNNGo: And?

We ended up going to the same hotel in Guangzhou. She was with her friends. I remember we had the dinner together in Guangzhou and went to disco.

Then we went together to Shenzhen. She and I went to a park, rode a boat and had a great time together.

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Young people stroll outside of Xinshijie Department Store to find their next fashion buy.

CNNGo: How about nightlife?

You would think so, but I don’t even recall going to a bar.

CNNGo: Why did you take so many photos?

This is back in the film days. We didn’t have a digital camera.

On a student budget, you had to be very conscious about how many pictures you took because every one of them cost money. I didn’t take as nearly as many pictures as I would have today.

I’m afraid of all the cities I visited, Shanghai got the fewest. Still, I was lucky to get some street pictures that captured Shanghai in that period pretty well.

Very few foreigners had a chance to visit China then, I just wanted to capture what it really looked like in that moment.

CNNGo: Your favorite photo among the set?

I got a picture of a couple dressed in pretty modern-type winter clothes, looking into a store window at a refrigerator [see gallery at the top]. When I was in Guangzhou, you wouldn’t see people dressed that way, and you wouldn’t see big refrigerators for sale in store windows.

Another one is the picture of gentlemen in the train station [the former Shanghai North Train Station], which to my understanding doesn’t exist anymore. A late afternoon, a smoky and a hazy waiting room with some gentlemen dressed in blue suits was the China that was quickly disappearing.

CNNGo: Which photos got the biggest reaction online?

They are the ones of food or food being served. The one showing how people prepared shengjianbao in 1986 got a big reaction.

CNNGo: Why do you think Shanghainese netizens care about these photos?

Part of it is because photos like these are kind of rare. Not too many people had good SLR camera films then. If there were pictures taken, it would just be for family or a wedding. Those were the pictures that families would have.

There were everyday scenes, buses, stores and streets [in my pictures] and they were not typical subjects of pictures taken by Chinese people.

They were slices of life that people never saw pictures of.

I'm sure I wasn't the only foreigner to bring a camera to China. I’m just an earlier adaptor of digitizing them and put them on the web.