Pudong may be upwardly mobile, but Shanghai is about more than just the next skyscraper. Across the Huangpu River in the former French Concession, artists, artisans and others with an eye for the unusual have made a home for themselves among the crumbling shikumen, or tenements. The area, which is about as pedestrianised as it can be on the mainland, is dotted with galleries, workshops and stores beneath the dripping washing of the families living above.

Shikumen, buildings with a combination of western and Chinese architectural influences that made up more than half of Shanghai’s housing in the first half of last century, are fast disappearing. Most of the two or three-storey houses once owned by a single family were divided into smaller units after the revolution.

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