Xintiandi, a posh bar area with restored shikumen (stone-arched) houses, has become a hot tourist destination in Shanghai, just like the historical Bund promenade. Visitors marvel at the shikumen houses that blend Eastern and Western architectural styles, a unique cultural heritage of Shanghai.

But just blocks away, old shikumen houses that are at least historically and culturally as rich as Xintiandi are being torn down. On these sites, more of Shanghai's ubiquitous high-rise buildings will come up.

It is alarming to see such indiscriminate demolition, even after repeated calls by experts years ago to preserve the city's old buildings.

Shanghai indeed deserves great credit for its massive urban transformation in the last 15 years that has impressed the rest of the world. But while boasting that half of the world's cranes were in Shanghai in the mid-1990s and that Shanghai has finally dwarfed New York City in the number of skyscrapers, we are sad to see that some important part of Shanghai's history has gone.

If this continues, it will not be long before we change the saying "if you want to see Chinese history for the last 100 years, go to Shanghai" to "if you want to see China for the last 20 years, go to Shanghai."

This is, of course, no compliment, but a sharp criticism of how imprudent we have been in pushing a great leap forward in urban transformation. We have wiped out too much of Shanghai's relatively short history, notably the heydays of the 1930s and 1940s.

Like the hutong in Beijing, longtang, or alley, that vividly reflects Shanghai's rich daily life, is fast disappearing. Buildings that have borne key witness to Shanghai's history in the last century are, or will soon be, found only in photo exhibitions.

It is a shame that metropolitan Shanghai, with a population of 17 million, has only 632 buildings on the protection list, fewer than a small city in Italy.

Ruan Yisan, a professor of Tongji University and a famous conservationist, told China Daily last week that he believes a city the size of Shanghai should have at least 50,000 sites on the list. Ruan is one of those visionary people who has helped preserve some canal towns in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang as well as the old cities of Lijiang in Southwest China's Yunnan Province and Pingyao in North China's Shanxi Province.

Local leaders should start to share some of Professor Ruan's vision, despite the fact that preserving our cultural and historical heritage is much more difficult and costly than ruthless demolition. In the short term, it probably would mean a slower GDP growth and less government revenue. But the long-term benefits are obvious, as places in Xintiandi and the Bund are commercially viable as well as culturally attractive.

For years, officials have been assessed on the basis of their performance in local urban transformation, such as how many new buildings have been constructed and how many roads have been widened. This has led many myopic officials to resort to short-term behaviour in order to garnish their records during their few years in office.

Also, land development is a highly lucrative business and local governments badly in need of money usually find it hard to resist the temptation, thereby sacrificing the protection of old buildings and streets.

What we see in Shanghai is that more than 4,000 high-rise buildings have come up in the last 20 years in the densely populated downtown area, leaving no space for further construction by our children. Land development has been an important contributor to Shanghai government coffers and the city's double-digit growth during the last decade.

A sad fact is that many people, including some decision-makers, still think only high-rise buildings and wider streets represent modernity and development. Some even scoff at the millions of old buildings in Europe as being backward.

To their big surprise, foreigners visiting Shanghai usually think otherwise. They are often more fascinated by the city's historical legacy, rather than its futuristic skyline. They hunt down the city's old buildings and neighbourhoods - the Bund, Yuyuan Garden, Jewish ghetto, bars and restaurants - in renovated structures.

In initiating a new round of urban renovation leading up to the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the city should not repeat the mistakes of the last 20 years. Visitors to the Expo are sure to be disappointed if what they see is only a futuristic Shanghai - a city without its past.

Shanghainese are proud of their historical and cultural heritage blending East and West. It is better late than never to do everything possible to preserve old Shanghai. Repeating our past mistakes is simply unforgivable. We do not want to visit Xintiandi in a few years time and find it a heartbreaking monument of Shanghai's vanished past.

Source: China Daily