Biased Review

I always try to write unbiased reviews... but this one will be a bit different since I have been involved in creating the book. "Promenades au coeur de l'ancienne concession Francaise" is the new version of an old guide about Shanghai's French concession. As the original one, this book was made by "A pleines mains" an expat charity in Shanghai. Proceeds are used in various help projects in Shanghai and the surrounding cities. The original guide was published in 2002 and has become out of print since then. It has been transformed into a number of guided walks throughout the French Concession. Each walk is about one hour and can be easily fit into a busy afternoon shopping or as a short break in a business trip. Walks are spread the old French Concession and the adjacent Xu Jia Hui area. One of them passes by the entrance of the lane where I live. Fortunately, my house is not included... which will avoid disturbing the quietness of my little private Shanghai.

The book is both in French and English, ensuring that the information collected within the important French community in the city is spread out to every lover of the old Shanghai. The original text was written in 2001 and the original author interviewed a few remaining Chinese survivors of the Concession time. This adds anecdotes and real stories to the book, making it a lively read. Having been interested in the topic for a few years, I still managed to learn quite a few things from it.

I did not design the walks, but I contributed is by landing some of my own collection of old Shanghai postcards and documents to be used as illustration. I am quite proud of having been part of it as the result is really good, but it's for you to judge. If you are looking for a practical book about old Shanghai, it's a good point to start.

Now on Blogger

Welcome to Shanghailander.net on blogger. If you come from the old host, you made it over successfully. I am glad you are staying along. For the newcomers, I write a weekly post about Old Shanghai.
I had been using Typepad as a blog hosting service since the beginning, i.e. two years ago. However, a few months ago Typepad blogs became inaccessible in China. With the Olympics approaching a large number of blogs became blocked. This had not consequence for anybody out of China... but for all my Shanghai friends it became a serious issue. I have tried to go around it using Facebook as a display and giving the address of proxies to a number of friends... but at the end of the day, it is not possible to have a blog about Shanghai... that is not visible in Shanghai. Blogger has been more clever than Typepad on this, introducing a system that allows viewer in China to get through, so I finally move to Blogger.

During my holidays in the Philippines, I have moved all the posts to this new host. The www.shanghailander.net address should be working very soon, i.e. when I have managed to solve some techincal difficulties. That should only take a couple of days. For the subscribers of the blog, there surely is a way to do that in Blogger as well but I have not found it yet. Please send me a mail if you want to continue receive notices about posts.

While moving all the posts I also took time to read them again (and correct some typos). It was a great time to see how this blog has evolved from an simple idea to a weekly column about the great city that is Shanghai. Postings will continue on a weekly basis, so see you at the new address: www.shanghaioldnew.blogspot.com and soon www.shanghailander.net