Focusing the lens on transformed cultural heritages
A photo competition themed on Shanghai's industrial heritage started on Saturday in Songnan Town in Baoshan District, a vibrant industrial center in the 1990s.
The township government opened its former factories and industrial sites to photographers from both home and abroad during the five-day event through Wednesday.
They include the former factory houses of the city's earliest glassware plant, a motorcycle factory, an iron alloy plant, gas plant as well as a warehouse for China's early exports.
Most of them have been converted into museums and creative parks. The Shanghai Museum of Glass, for instance, renovated from the former No. 1 Plant of the Shanghai Glassware Company, has been listed as one of the top three recommended museums in China by a website owned by CNN.
"The town aims to showcase the transformation of these industrial heritages in recent years through the lens of the photographers," an official with the township government said.
A large swathe of iron-steel and chemical factories as well as container warehouses were built in Songnan in early 1990s under the concept to develop the historical town with steel and port industries.
However, the traditional industries entered bottleneck periods since 2000 with the shortage of resources and pollution problems. Many of the factories have been redeveloped into high-tech parks or makerspaces since 2008.
During the event launched on Saturday, photographers are invited to enter the former site of Shanghai No.1 Iron Steel Factory and the former Wusong gas plant, which are open to public for the first time.
They are also invited to take photos at the former site of the Shanghai Iron Alloy Plant, once a major pollution source to the north downtown which has become a park featuring steel sculptures made of iron and steel materials left over by the plant.
Other industrial heritages along the recommended tour route for the photographers include the China Industrial Design Museum was renovated from the former plant of Shanghai Happiness Motorcycles, once a popular form of transport for citizens.
The import and export warehouse named Zhongcheng was built in 1959. Many made-in-China goods were exported across the world from there in the last century. The warehouse has been developed into an innovative park named Elite Valley, home to over 60 startups.
A well-preserved section of Songhu Railway, China's first railway, is also open for visiting and photo taking, along with an old train carriage.
The remaining rail section of the Songhu Railway runs across the Elite Valley park. The railway mainly once stretching for 16 kilometers in north Shanghai was built by a British firm Jardine Matheson and began operating in July 1876. The Qing Dynasty government later bought the railway. It was demolished in 1997 for the construction of Metro Line 3.