Now vacant and a property owned by The Cotton Textile Co. Ltd., the old lady of the cloth shop at the other side of the street told me this building was initially built by the Japanese as an office building for a factory, and it later became a wine factory after 1949.

Shanghai started using GAS in 1864, and this building, erected at around 1934, was used as residential building for Senior Staffs of the River Gas Plant.

Built in 1938, this 16-house complex was designed and constructed by Japanese. The front courtyards, windows and even fireplace are still in their original states when we entered the houses in December 2009.

Text Kindly provided by XieQiang Li

This is the factory building of Anderson Meyer and Company, the sole agent of GE in China. In 1921, the company chose the current site, a large area of 220,000 sqm, to build this factory where they manufactured electric fans, refridgerators, watches and other hardware.

Now known as Long Chang Apartments and featured in the a Steven Chow film "Kung Fu Hustle", this was once a police office built by the British.

It is cleaner than I expected, probably because it’s a winter day, but I was not able to take a good shot of the building.

A 5-storey structure (or 6?), it’s been occupied by hundreds of families after liberation, the long corridors are the place neighbours do household chores like clothes washing and drying, cooking, and chit-chat. There is no private bathrooms, and in fact, the tenants are mostly old people now, who used to work for state own enterprises. We met a couple of them and had a good chat with them; although our conversation was a bit ridiculous; they wondered what I was saying and me trying to figure out what they say.

More information here: www.chinasmack.com/pictures/shanghai-pig-cage-stronghold-…

A combination of neo-Chinese and art moderne architecture, it’s also referred to as the Airplane-Shaped Building. Right!