[Shanghai Secrets] Super Cool, Shanghai-Style Antiques and Gifts at Old Park

Here's a peek inside a super neat, retro-chic little antique and curios store that stocks a real wealth of cool Shanghai-accented items, great for affordable gifts for friends overseas and/or to stylishly clutter up one's own life and living space in interesting ways. It's called Old Park, and they have two locations in Shanghai. They're both basically the same, so you can check out the one closest to you.

Here's the one we went to:

Upon entry, you're greeted by a busy but very well-organized shop-meets-art gallery kind of space, with carefully constructed poster displays mounted on walls, rows of souvenirs here and there, twinkling jewelry sections tucked around corners, badges, pins, magnets, coins, and accessories all over. Stacks of old magazines, postcards, photographs, stamps, books, and advertisements are neatly organized and put on show, with some surprisingly good accompanying documentation introducing the items and giving you the backstory. A J.G. Ballard book is propped up in reverence.

An old Shanghai guidebook from 1997 recommends Long Bar and Time Passage among many other long-gone favorites:

Manhattan bar is the only one still going...

Judy's had great burgers...

For source material, there is, of course, a heavy emphasis on the classic Old Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s, with lots of items emblematic of that gilded period of East (culture and aesthetic) meeting West (conquest and commercialism). They have things that capture Shanghai's rapid transformation, even before the city became what it is today, like this...

Through the standard relics of Old Shanghai, however, glimpses of postmodernity produced this century shine through. Along with the antiques, Old Park also stocks lines from independent contemporary Shanghai designers creating their own interpretations of retro style. For these, you have accessories like hats, shirts, and hand fans, variously offering tongue-in-cheek slogans and knowing winks to inherited fashion and art. It's very hip. And one gets swept up in the heart of it, which is very Shanghai – a celebration of style and leisure and a great opportunity to buy and collect things.

It is in the merging of these two viewpoints, the old and the new, interpreting the old, that makes Old Park such an interesting little platform for Shanghai-inspired expressions. Of course, we've seen the art deco prints, the propaganda posters, and the old soap ads with qipao-clad maidens, but Old Park brings it into the contemporary world by inviting it into conversation with contemporary design. In translating and resubmitting the meaning of artifacts from the last century for the fashion-forward generation of this century, Old Park has pulled off a very clever move; they've made everything really, really cool.

And we're very pleased with our new magnet! It's very much worth a visit if you're looking for interesting gifts for friends, or more importantly, yourself, or even just to browse and see the art and artifacts of old Shanghai through new eyes.

If you go...

Opening hours: 1pm-8pm

Address: 492, Lidi Apartment, Shaanxi Rd (1st Store); 49 Gao'an Rd (2nd Store)