Remembering Shantou’s Nansheng Department Store

This is a great video about the old Nansheng Department Store in Shantou, built in the 1930s and now sadly derelict and decaying after decades of neglect. It’s obviously not going to last much longer, despite being a beautiful building and well constructed originally. Strangely this fascinating video, by Peter Lin and DJ Clark, is released by the China Daily, not a newspaper who’s editors (all good Communist-Nationalists) or sponsors (the Communist Party of China) have ever cared one jot about heritage or preservation in China. It also happens to pop up on the China Daily’s Youtube channel – again strange that a Communist Party newspaper that presumably supports the Party’s ban on Youtube in China itself should have a Youtube channel!! Still, terrific video and let’s hope the building can survive somehow….

Every city has areas that shine for a few decades and then fade away but none so visible as Shantou. In the 1930’s a new commercial district was built with a new shinny department store at its heart. Streets radiated in every direction full of shops and small markets. It stayed the epicenter of this thriving port city until the local government rebuilt the central business district in the 1990s to the west, leaving the store and the streets around it to slowly decay.