Historic Shanghai: The final blow to the White Horse Cafe
One of the reasons we love Shanghai is its rich (and sometimes scandalous) history. Historic Shanghai isn’t a thing of the past, its stories and buildings are as much a part of this city as today’s news headlines.
Although we’re sure that the Expo will bring great things in 2010, the wave of urban renewal that’s preceding it just claimed another part of the city's storied past: Hongkou’s White Horse Cafe is no more.
Part of what was affectionately referred to as the Little Vienna of Shanghai (and less affectionately but somewhat more accurately referred to as the Shanghai's Jewish ghetto), the White Horse Cafe, was an area landmark in the early 1940s.
In early 2009, the Hongkou District government released plans to widen the street that White Horse Cafe, and many other historic Shanghai buildings were located on and would therefore have to remove the structures.
Through the efforts by foreign and local press, local preservationists thought the area could be saved. The most notable action was when NPR's Louisa Lim brought respected preservationist and Tongji University Prof. Ruan Yi Shan to the site so he could offer the local district officials a preservation plan for the area.
For the past six months, efforts seemed to have succeeded and local authorities stopped the demolition of this piece of historic Shanghai.
Israeli journalist Dvir Bar-Gal, who is writing a book about Shanghai's Jewish past, reports that while the world’s eyes were turned to the National Day parade, the White Horse Cafe was torn down.
"In October 2 the roof of the building was hammered down, next the covering bamboo scaffolds were removed and the final kill came yesterday October 6,” Bar-Gal said in an email to the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents club.
In an interview with NPR, Chen Jian from the Hongkou district government explains that "the buildings will be demolished to construct new exits to a major road. Local officials have had to balance history with the demands of the present."
Although there’s still much to see of historic Shanghai, as each piece of the urban renewal plan falls into place, there seems to be less and less to enjoy.
