The road to paradise : the cultural mapping of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage elements of Penglai Road, Shanghai

Abstract

Penglai Road (蓬萊路), which has almost over 100 years of history, is located in the South part of Shanghai Old Town. Some rehabilitation works have already been done on this road (Fig.1.2). Penglai means paradise in Chinese, and it is supposed to be a wonderful place for people to live. However, it is believed that the current protect approach is not appropriate and makes the “paradise” even worse. The dissertation takes a part of Penglai Road as an example to analysis what happened to this urban area by cultural mapping and to identify the current conservation problems and to discuss about it as a historic urban landscape. Although the conservation of heritage sites is becoming a mature professional field, methods or approaches that applied to the heritage site are not always appropriate. In the case of Penglai Road, workers simply covered defects by painting the old façade of these historic buildings with inappropriate materials, wrong color and wrong restoration. The original beautiful elevations of the buildings along the street have lost their character, and the residents are not satisfied. This kind of superficial practice is nothing related to the conservation because it did not retain any spiritual value of Penglai Road and it did not take people into account. Not only Penglai Road, but the whole Shanghai Old Town and even Shanghai has developed their own unique qualities during the past long time. This dissertation is about understanding the context of Penglai Road within UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape framework, with particular focus on the community – that is, the intangible heritage of that Penglai Road community that give life and character to the place. Understanding the whole context of the place and knowing the people are vital to conserve any heritage sites, so we need to provide right efforts for protecting historic districts in China and any place in the world.