Not that all of Shanghai was beautiful in the past. Still, even its old, most dilapidated Hutongs (Chinese neighborhoods) had a fascination about them that for those of us, who have a deeper knowledge of the city, found charming. True, some of the old western buildings and a few of the better Hutongs are being preserved, but there is something almost Disneyesque about them. But, this is not what these two exhibits are about.

Shanghai 1860 - 1949: Historical Photographs provides a sepia vision of the city as it carried on its life, with East and West 'seemingly' comfortably mixing. All in all this exhibit contains about 80 images. There are photos of the early Bund and then shows how it slowly changed to offer an ever grander, imposing view to those arriving by ship on the Huangpu River. The Bund, once a towing road, became the most famous and spectacular street in all of Asia. It represented the power of finance and trade, as many of the buildings housed financial institutions from many parts of the world, or the headquarters of major firms trading in China, besides custom houses.

While we think of the Bund as Shanghai's most visible feature of the past, this exhibit offers the visitor far more. It takes a look at the lives lived by its Chinese population in a section of photographs from the 1870s to '80s. Of course, there is the Bund with its western buildings, but most are images taken by Chinese photographers whose viewfinders looked at peddlers offering their wares, at convicts in chain gangs who now find an echo in modern China's human rights violations, or fine Chinese ladies in formal portraits whose echo may be found in the suddenly rich and stylish women of this city of the 21^st century, and just simple folk in daily life.

One of the photographs from 1875, showing a teahouse near the entrance of the French Concession, reminds very much of buildings still standing along several streets that lead to the famous Nine-Bend Bridge and Yu Yuan Gardens. This is part of the Chinese City of Shanghai and even today one can still feel the essence of old China as reflected back to the viewer by this more than 100-year-old photograph.

The next section offers up photos from a collection owned by the Canadian family and firm of Edward Evans & Sons, Bookseller and Stationer, who lived in Shanghai from 1890 to 1945. This is a depiction of how westerners experienced the city. It is a historical record of great importance. These images record not only daily life, but also events of turmoil. Shanghai had been—and to some extend still is—a place where Chinese intellectual, artistic and political life unfolded that had a great impact on this cosmopolitan city's colonial expatriates' society, as well on China as a whole.

There are many images worth mentioning, but one in particular that can be reproduced here, shows a building that was replaced eventually by building No. 22, the Bank of China, in 1937. Before then it consisted of a colonial style building with two towers not visible here, named the Concordia Club, founded in 1865 by German residents of the city. The picture in question, taken on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, features a banner on the building. It portrays a German soldier in the pose of surrender to Allied forces. A closer look will reveal that the passers-by who are local Chinese, have little interested in this victory display. After WWI this building became the property of the Chinese government as part of German war reparations.

Because the Bund played such a big role in Shanghai's life in the pre-Communist revolution days, this collection also features two long folding panoramas taken by commercial photographers at the turn of the 19^th to the 20^th centuries. Today many of the buildings have either changed or are overshadowed by much higher buildings behind them. But the Bund remains a small, but important image of the city even today. Finance and commerce have regained a hold there as have some of the city's better hotels, and one reveals this with a sense of irony, Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The images in the first two sections of the exhibit were donated to the ROM and are now part of its large photographic collection. The third section of this exhibit contains images of the events that took place during the Chinese Civil War that ended in 1949. There are images of the capture of Shanghai by the now ruling Communists. Taken by Canadian photojournalist Sam Tata (1911-2005), these photos are now part of the collection of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. On loan to the ROM, these photos chronicle what might be called 'the end of the international city of Shanghai'. These images capture the last stand and subsequent flight of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Revolutionary Army), the arrival of the PLA (People's Liberation Army), the eventual evacuation of foreigners, and vivid street scenes during this change of regime.

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The second exhibit, Shanghai Kaleidoscope, is presented by the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the ROM. Its guest curator is Christopher Phillips of New York's International Center for Photography. This show offers a view of the work of an emerging generation of Chinese artists, architects and fashion designers, two of whom happen to be Westerners, Olivo Barbieri, an Italian who spends much time in the Far East, and Vancouver-born Greg Girard, who has been living in Asia since 1983, and Shanghai since 1998.

It is interesting to note that the current description of Shanghai contains an oft-repeated phrase, "vibrant culture." In a city of now more than 20-million, there is, no doubt, a sizeable segment of the population involved in the pursuit of modern culture. But an even greater segment is barely touched by this "vibrant" development other than being squeezed into congested high-rises, overpowered by the automobile, and overburdened by long hours of work or travel to live up to the demands of not 'losing face', of living up to the expectations of the state to outdo the West at all cost, including the sacrifice of family life.

The artists featured in this exhibit are talented, many have a sense of humor, and all take a slightly askance view of this modern Shanghai. Yet that view also strikes me as somewhat santized as if the artists do not want to arouse too much attention lest there be another crackdown in the not too distant future along the famous "let a 100 flowers bloom" in which artists were invited to express their views only to be persecuted by Mao for doing so. Shanghai is a city that in just a decade-and-a-half has transformed itself so fast that 60 per cent of its old neighborhoods have been razed—most of them forcibly—and replaced with so many skyscrapers that Shanghai can now boast to have twice as many as New York City. I am not sure that this is something to boast about for these changes have come at a high cost.

Shanghai sits for the most part on marshland and many of the skyscrapers are slowly sinking or tilting. On Monday, May 12, when Szechuan, more than a 1,000 km away, was hit by a magnitude 7.9/8 earthquake at 2:28:01 PM local time, a friend attended a business meeting on the 17^th floor of one of these new Shanghai skyscrapers. The building swayed eratically, but as is typical of China, the news of why did not reveal itself until many hours later. Such is the fragility of Shanghai's modern architecture and the ground it sits on.

When you get to this exhibit, take some time to view Shi Yong's Gravity: Shanghai Night Sky (2004). He shows the city of his birth in 56 light-box-mounted photographic transparencies. For him Shanghai takes on a virtual reality that is populated by buildings that seem mirages rather than concreate structures. Although seemingly shimmering images, on closer inspection there is a darker side to the Shanghai Night Sky. All those lights vibrating in the sky are incongruous in a country suffering from chronic energy shortages.

Song Dong, a native of Beijing, sees in Shanghai an example of the illusory nature of China's rapid modernization. He presents a short video, Crumpling Shanghai (2000), which shows the artist as he abruptly crumples sheets of paper that feature contemporary Shanghai street scenes. Through this he suggests the fragility and transience of urban life. To the visitor Shanghai may seem a modern marvel, but to residents the urban landscape changes far too frequently and is far too impermanent. In reality, the bulldozer and the crane are masters of the urban landscape.

Those familiar with the brush strokes of traditional Chinese paintings will find the unlit neon tube scrawls in a work by Shen Fan, created as a homage to the late brush painter Huang Binhong, both amusing and intriguing. Unlit because of some technical difficulties, the work still makes an impact because it reflects an uncanny sense of Shanghai's contemporary streetscapes that sometimes lead to nowhere.

No one can surely resist a smile while watching Yang Zhenshong's short video loop, Light and and Easy 2. Here the artist tries to balance an upside-down image of the Pudong development, specifically the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, on his fingertips. Probably one of the most ungraceful TV towers in the world, it is symbolic of the rapid changes in the city. The video reflects on the seeming ease with which Shanghai residents have adapted to their new world, but also makes reference to the topsy-turvy quality of its landscape.

Almost opposite this installation is another work by the same artist. Called Let's Puff, it presents two screens facing each other. A metaphor for the changes that have swept Chinese cities in the past decade, it shows a woman inhaling and exhaling with great force on one screen. With each exhalation, a central Shanghai street scene suddenly materializes on the opposite screen.

A macabre fascination held me to watch the silent film, Site Specific_SHANGHAI 04 by Italian artist Olivo Barbieri. He photographed the changing cityscape from a helicopter, but excluded the most famous sites of the city and instead showed Shanghai through the tops of anonymous 30- and 40-story-high buildings. It is a claustrophobic sight that reveals how quickly old neighborhoods have been razed to make room for these buildings. It is here that the once graceful Paris of the East has changed into a monstrosity of urban sprawl far beyond anything known in the West.

There are several other works worthy of viewing, but the list is too long. The fashions on display are no different from any of the quirky designs created in Paris, Milan or New York. There is nothing particularly Chinese about these fashions, except that they are created solely for the Chinese market.

One more installation to mention is the film installation created by Yang Fudong. He presents a number of films from the 1930s to French New Wave cinema. It shows how both East and West viewed Shanghai in cinema. But, this installation needs time because the films are full-length. For film buffs this section is an especially worthwhile cinematic adventure to discover.

Almost every famous city in the world has a clichéd image that is hard to erase. In the case of Shanghai, the artists do their best to show what has and is happening in and to this city. Their images do not always conform to promotional images and propaganda, nor to firmly held perceptions. As for that vibrancy, Shanghai may be vibrating with change, but the perceived vibrancy of cultural life is mostly a mirage represented by flashy neon lights on its main roads and in a small artistic circle, tacky nightspots and a few flashy malls. Vibrancy implies good health, but beneath the surface and in the polluted air, Shanghai is a sick patient. Still, Shanghai has its charms. They are not, however, to be found in the violent architectural upheaval that has completely transformed this city in just 15 years from a city of bicycles to one of a city of cars where bicycles are already banned from many streets.

Thom Thomson at the AGO moved to Archives