Curating the selective memory of gentrification: the Wulixiang Shikumen Museum in Xintiandi, Shanghai

Abstract

ABSTRACT The relationship between micro-narratives of house museums and the macro-narrative of urban development constitutes a gap in the research on the gentrification of historical urban areas in China. The commercial redevelopment of two blocks of Xintiandi, located in the core of Shanghai’s former French concession and a major tourism destination, embodies one of four major urban heritage conservation methods applied in the city. We argue that the Wulixiang Shikumen Museum, which is Xintiandi’s primary cultural facility, reinforces an argument of ‘modern nostalgia’ that has characterised heritage production in Shanghai. Our discursive analysis, based on site visits and interviews, focused on the museum’s architectural layout and the collection and interpretation of materials relating to a nostalgia discourse that integrates cosmopolitanism, tradition and cultivation, considered as attributes of Shanghai’s modernisation during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. We argue that the micro-narrative of this museum contributes to a macro-narrative of development, which, as exemplified by Xintiandi, encourages the gentrification of Shanghai’s historical neighbourhoods. We further argue that an authorised version of Shanghai’s semi-colonial past legitimises wider social and economic changes, while obscuring memories associated with decades of collectivisation.