How China looks to the future to forget the past
It is easy to be put off by the bureaucratic name, but one of the most interesting tourist trips in Shanghai is to go around the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall.
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When I recommend it to visitors I often get strange looks. But my guests appreciate the advice, even if they sometimes come back with a quizzical look on their faces, unsure if they should be impressed or intimidated by what they have just seen.
The urban planning museum is Shanghai's monument to its future. The centrepiece is a 600 sq m model - the size of two tennis courts - that shows what Shanghai will look like in 2020. The city already has about 3,000 high-rise buildings, which are each represented in the model, while the many other towers it intends to build are left white and transparent.
All the dizzying ambition is there in one room - the skyscrapers that western architects could not get built in their home cities, the planned eco-city on a nearby island and the train lines that levitate on magnets. And not a sign of air pollution or traffic jams.
Success has attracted imitators. Chongqing, a city on the Yangtze river 2,000km inland from Shanghai, recently opened its own planning museum, although Chongqing boasts that its city model is larger at 892 sq m. If Shanghai was the Chinese urban phenomenon of the 1990s, when it built a whole new city on the largely unused Pudong side of the river, Chongqing is going through the most spectacular construction boom of this decade.
Shanghai's Pudong district was the first example of the "build it and the people will come model", where the government invests huge amounts in construction in the hope that residents will occupy the flats - which, by and large, they have. Now Chongqing is benefiting from massive Beijing largesse to remake an entire metropolis.
The population is about 6m nowbut the city is adding some 300,000 inhabitants a year. Officials believe Chongqing could be the fastest growing city on the planet and the museum charts that progress. In most countries, museums explain the past: in China, they map out the future.
There is a fairly obvious propaganda function to all this. The Chinese Communist party no longer has a set of ideas to give it legitimacy but what it does offer is economic progress. There has been a relentless quality to the country's growth over the past two decades and the museums try to project a relentless advance for the next two decades. China long ago abandoned Marxist economic planning for the market, but it has not discarded planning as an expression of political power. The museums have a clear message from the party: we are still in charge.
Government is a top-down process in China, which the city models also reflect. It is part of the folklore of the Shanghai museum that when it opened in 2000, many local visitors discovered for the first time that their neighbourhood was to be razed to make way for some new high-rise.
Chongqing is now going through the same process, with the museum taking the place of a public inquiry. "China handles these situations differently from other countries," says Liu Jing, a guide at the Chongqing museum. "In Europe there would be an exchange of ideas. In China, people see the government plans and then react."
In Chongqing there is an added sensitivity. The city is close to the area of the Yangtze that is being abandoned as the river rises to fill the Three Gorges Dam and some of the residents are being relocated to Chongqing. The planning museum has a section on traditional villages in the region, the best preserved of which is called Gong Tan. But it will be "overwhelmed" by the river, as the guide puts it.
Talking about the future can also be a way of ignoring the past and the museums are another symptom of China's historical amnesia. The 40th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution passed recently without official comment and with a ban on media discussion. Two weeks ago it was the turn of the Tiananmen massacre anniversary to go unremarked.
China has a large backlog of difficult historical events, often involving the role of the party, that have never been properly digested. Instead, the party hopes that economic advances will simply wash away all the accumulated grievances. As a result, the planning museums are a better mirror of the society than their designers intended. They are the symbol of an economy that sometimes seems lighter than air, but also of a country running as fast as it can from a past that one day will catch it up.
The writer is the FT's Shanghai correspondent
到博物馆看中国未来
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有官僚色彩的名称往往令人厌烦，但在上海，最有意思的景点之一，却是上海城市规划展示馆。
当我向来访者推荐这个地方的时候，他们的表情总是很奇怪。但我的客人会听从我的建议，但参观过后，有些人的脸上会带着迷惑的神情，不知道自己应该被展示内容打动还是吓倒。
这个城市规划展示馆是上海为它的未来建造的纪念碑。展厅中心是一具占地600平米的模型――相当于2个网球场那么大――展示了2020年上海的面貌。这座城市已经有大约3000幢高层建筑，这些建筑被一一复制在这个模型上。模型上还有一些白色或透明的建筑，那是上海计划建造的高楼。
一间展厅里展示了令人眩目的全部雄心――西方建筑师无法在自己的城市中建造的摩天大楼、计划在邻近的岛上建造的生态城市，以及磁悬浮列车的轨道。当然，模型上看不到任何空气污染或者交通拥挤的迹象。
成功引来仿效者。距离上海2000公里，长江沿岸城市重庆的规划展示馆近日开放。这座展示馆拥有占地892平米的城市模型，比上海更大。如果说上海体现了中国90年代的城市现象，在黄浦江浦东一侧基本上荒芜的土地上建起一座崭新的城市，那么重庆将在本世纪最初的10年经历最为壮观的建设热潮。
上海浦东新区是“楼造起来，总会有人来住”模式的第一个样本。政府在那里投入了巨额资金，希望居民住进那些公寓――他们在很大程度上已经这么做了。现在，中央政府正对重庆进行大规模的慷慨投资，以重建整座城市。
重庆现在大约有600万人口，但这座城市每年新增的居民多达30万人。官员们认为，重庆将成为这个星球上发展最快的城市，而展示馆中的模型，正描绘着未来的发展。在多数国家，博物馆用来解释历史，而在中国，它们却被用来展示未来。
这一切明显带有宣传功能。中国共产党已拿不出一套使其具有合法性的理念，但它确实提供了经济发展。中国在过去20年的发展带有一种“坚决”的特性，而这些博物馆正向人们展示未来20年的“坚决”进展。中国早就放弃了马克思主义的计划经济做法，但它并未放弃将“规划”当作一种政治权力的宣示。这些博物馆传递着党的一个明确信息：我们仍然大权在握。
在中国，行政是一个自上而下的程序，就连城市模型也体现出这一点。有关上海城市规划展示馆的一个传闻是：2000年开馆时，许多前去参观的上海居民第一次发现，他们的小区即将被夷为平地，为一些新建的高楼大厦腾出空间。
重庆目前也在经历同样的过程，以展览馆来代替公开质询程序。“与其它国家相比，中国处理这些情况的方法不同，”重庆城市规划展览馆讲解员刘静（音译）表示。“在欧洲会有思想交流。而在中国，人们看到政府规划后，才能反映意见。”
在重庆，还有一层额外的敏感。长江一块区域，因三峡大坝蓄水而被淹没，居民被迁至重庆。规划展览馆中，有一片展示该地区传统村庄的区域，其中保存最完好的一处被称为龚滩。但是，正如讲解员所言，龚滩将被长江“淹没”。
此外，谈论未来也可能是忽视历史的方法之一，而博物馆是中国的历史健忘症的又一个症状。文革爆发40周年的日子刚刚过去，而中国未发表任何官方评论，还禁止媒体讨论。两周之前，是“天安门事件”的纪念日，同样也未得到提及。
中国积压着大量令人尴尬的历史事件，往往涉及党的角色，这些事件从未得到恰当的评价。相反，党希望经济发展洗刷所有积累起来的不满。其结果是，规划展览馆成为一面反映社会的镜子，在这方面超越了设计意图。它们不仅象征着一个发展极快的经济体，也代表着这样一个国家：这个国家正向前飞奔，以求把过去甩在后面，但终有一天，历史会追上来。
本文作者是英国《金融时报》驻上海记者。
