China Palette

I have never lived in Italy or Japan for an extended period of time.

But every time I visit, I experience a very strange feeling.

It is not because I used to live there and therefore find them familiar.

It is because these cities seem to remember something.

I remember walking through Bologna, passing beneath its long stretches of porticoes and making my way toward the city center. Along the way were churches, fountains, old buildings, and one small piazza after another. None of these buildings seemed to be trying to hide their age.

The feeling was difficult to describe.

It was almost as if I wasn’t visiting a city at all, but walking backward into another era.

The porticoes of Bologna are not simply old architectural decorations. UNESCO describes them as an urban tradition that has continued from the 12th century to the present day. These porticoes once served—and still serve—as public spaces where people live, walk, and meet.

In other words, history has not been separated from everyday life and placed inside a museum.

People are still using it.

That is one of the things I find so fascinating about historic European cities.

When I walk through an old European neighborhood, I don’t always feel like I am “visiting history.”

Sometimes, I feel as though I am temporarily living in another time.

I also remember once looking for a restaurant with my family in Venice.

We walked through narrow alleys, followed the waterways, and searched for the Italian restaurant we wanted to try.

Eventually, we found it.

But looking back now, finding the restaurant was not actually the most important part.

What mattered was the journey.

You turn a corner and suddenly find a small bridge.

Walk a little farther and there is another canal.

Continue on and you see an old building that seems to have been there for longer than anyone can remember.

Then another narrow street.

What fascinates me most about Venice is the relationship that still exists between its urban form and everyday life—a relationship that reaches back centuries.

UNESCO also notes that Venice’s urban form has largely retained the structure that developed during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

I don’t want to describe Venice in the way a traditional tourist might.

I don’t want to simply say:

“This place has beautiful medieval architecture.”

What I want to say is something much simpler:

You are genuinely walking through a world that once belonged to another generation.

And somehow, that world is still functioning today.

That is what nostalgia means to me.

Nostalgia does not necessarily mean that you want to return to the past.

Sometimes, it simply means:

You are grateful that the past was not completely erased.

Japan: A Modern City That Still Remembers Its Past

When I think about Japan, I think of electronics, manga, food, fashion, and incredibly clean streets.

But Tokyo gives me a much more complicated feeling.

It is an intensely modern city, yet its history is constantly hiding within that modernity.

You might spend the morning surrounded by skyscrapers, department stores, and busy commercial streets, and then suddenly find yourself standing in front of a shrine or temple surrounded by trees.

If I want fashion, I can go to Harajuku.

If I want nightlife, I can go to Shinjuku.

If I want electronics and anime culture, I can go to Akihabara.

If I want museums, galleries, or a glimpse of a more traditional side of the city, I can go to Ueno.

Tokyo’s official tourism guide itself presents the city as a place of contrasts: modern skyscrapers and small shrines can exist side by side, while different neighborhoods have completely different cultural identities.

That is one of the things I love about Tokyo.

Modernization does not necessarily mean deleting everything that came before.

Sometimes, the new and the old simply live in the same city.

Take Harajuku, for example.

It represents fashion, youth culture, and the global influence of Japanese pop culture.

Then there is Shinjuku.

When people think of Shinjuku, they often think of neon lights, skyscrapers, and nightlife.

But walk a little farther and you can find tiny alleys, small restaurants, cafés, and independent shops.

Suddenly, you experience a completely different kind of nostalgia.

That is one of the reasons I have gradually come to appreciate Japanese cities.

Modernization does not necessarily mean erasing the past.

Sometimes, the future and the past simply live alongside each other.

The United States: Nostalgia Without Medieval Architecture

My relationship with the United States is different.

Because I actually lived there.

I experienced American cities, but I also experienced small-town America.

One place that has stayed with me is Bloomington, Indiana.

Bloomington is not Venice.

There are no medieval churches or centuries-old canals.

But it has another kind of nostalgia.

I remember slowly walking through downtown, passing places like Bluebird and Kilroy’s, seeing familiar little shops and buildings along the street.

I remember having a coffee at Soma in the afternoon.

I remember driving to a nearby gas station and stopping for a drive-through ice cream.

The ice cream shop had a circular, drive-in-style parking lot. Families would pull in and park beside neon lights that had been glowing for generations, spending summer evenings eating ice cream while birds sang in the night.

Then I would return to Main Street, walk past Kilroy’s, and continue a little farther.

You might suddenly find a Tibetan restaurant, an Indian restaurant, Japanese food, and other cuisines brought to the town through decades of immigration.

Bloomington’s official tourism materials describe downtown as a place that brings together shopping, nightlife, and dining, while 4th Street is known for its international restaurants.

I have always found that fascinating.

It is a small American town.

Yet somehow, the world slowly found its way there.

At the same time, the pace of life can still feel remarkably slow.

People go to work.

They meet friends.

They have a drink at a bar.

They have dinner.

They watch a game.

They walk down familiar streets.

And then they continue living a life that still has some connection to the generations before them.

That is another form of nostalgia.

It does not come from medieval architecture.

It comes from a sense of continuity.

A street has always been there.

A local bar has always been there.

A neighborhood has maintained its character.

A family continues to live in a town that feels familiar across generations.

Not everyone wants to move to New York, Los Angeles, or Silicon Valley.

Not everyone wants to maximize their income.

Sometimes, people simply want to continue living a life that feels right to them.

Maybe that, in itself, is a form of cultural preservation.

The Psychological Experience of Urban Space

So why do some cities make us feel nostalgic, while others make us feel completely disconnected from the past?

I think part of the answer lies in how we experience urban space.

A city is not simply a collection of buildings.

A city is also a collection of memories.

Imagine walking through a brand-new commercial district compared with walking through an old neighborhood.

What is the difference?

The first might be cleaner, more efficient, and more modern.

But the second might make you start asking questions:

Who used to live here?

What did this street look like fifty years ago?

What did people eat?

Where did they meet?

Which shop has been here for three generations?

Which temple did someone’s grandparents visit when they were young?

Which restaurant has remained in this neighborhood for decades?

These questions create a psychological connection between the present and the past.

That is why preserving a city is not simply about preserving the appearance of old buildings.

It can also mean preserving memory.

And memory changes the way we experience a city.

If an old building is preserved but has no connection to everyday life anymore, it may eventually become nothing more than a museum.

But if that building, that street, that restaurant, that temple, that market, or that neighborhood is still functioning as part of everyday life, then the past remains part of the present.

That is the kind of nostalgia I am really interested in.

How Urban Space Makes Us Feel

I think cities generally give us three different kinds of feelings.

A Sense of Speed

Some cities make you feel as though everything is constantly moving forward.

Skyscrapers.

Subways.

Advertisements.

Construction.

New restaurants.

New technology.

New neighborhoods.

Tokyo can make you feel this way.

Shenzhen certainly does.

Hong Kong does too.

These cities give you a certain kind of energy, making you feel that you should always be moving forward as well.

A Sense of Permanence

Other cities make you feel that some things were simply meant to remain.

A church has stood there for hundreds of years.

A stone street still leads to the same square.

A market has served the same community for generations.

A family restaurant is still operating in the same building.

This is a feeling I often experience in parts of Italy.

A Sense of Layers

And then there are cities that are even more interesting.

Different eras simply exist on top of one another.

A temple might stand next to a shopping mall.

A Qing-dynasty street might sit beside a modern office building.

A colonial-era building might stand next to an art gallery.

A traditional restaurant might be tucked underneath a newly built apartment building.

An old fishing village might be surrounded by skyscrapers.

These cities don’t force you to choose between the past and the future.

They let you experience both at the same time.

And that is one of the things I find especially interesting about China.

Looking at Cities: Macau

Macau is perhaps one of the places that has helped me understand this sense of urban layering the most.

If you think of Macau only as casinos and luxury resorts, you are missing an important part of the city.

Leave the large resorts behind and you will find narrow streets, Portuguese-style buildings, Chinese temples, old residences, churches, traditional shops, and small restaurants.

The Historic Centre of Macao is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered an important testimony to the long-term exchange between Chinese and Western cultures, architecture, and technology.

Its value does not come from the buildings alone.

It comes from the urban space created by the meeting of Chinese and Portuguese cultures over several centuries.

You can walk from a Chinese temple to a Catholic church.

You can see Portuguese-style paving alongside traditional Chinese neighborhoods.

You can eat food influenced by Portugal and then walk a few streets farther to have traditional Chinese food.

One thing I particularly like about Macau is that its nostalgia does not belong entirely to China, nor entirely to Portugal.

It belongs to what emerged from the meeting of the two.

Macau is not a reconstructed version of the past.

It is more like a place where the past is still embedded in the present.

Looking at Cities: Hong Kong

Hong Kong is more complicated.

At first glance, it can be difficult to associate Hong Kong with nostalgia.

Skyscrapers.

The MTR.

Shopping malls.

Financial districts.

Crowds.

Neon lights.

High-density housing.

Everything is constantly moving.

But if you don’t simply move from one attraction to another, and instead spend a whole day actually walking around, you will discover another Hong Kong.

Walk through Old Town Central.

Visit Man Mo Temple.

Pass through Sheung Wan.

Explore Sham Shui Po.

Visit an international gallery.

Sit down at a traditional cha chaan teng.

Walk through Temple Street at night.

Take the Star Ferry.

Or go to Lamma Island.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board also describes areas such as Old Town Central as places where traditional Hong Kong meets the modern city, while Sham Shui Po brings together history, food, local shops, and contemporary culture.

Sometimes, history does not appear in the form of a “tourist attraction.”

It might simply be a building from the 1940s.

An old sign.

A shop that has been open for decades.

A narrow staircase.

A traditional market.

A neighborhood restaurant.

Individually, these things may not seem particularly remarkable.

But when they exist together, they create memory.

Hong Kong’s history is also not represented by a single architectural style.

In some areas, you can see buildings from different periods existing side by side, from Victorian architecture to Art Deco, Neoclassical buildings, and modern architecture.

That is why I think Hong Kong has such a particular kind of nostalgia.

It is not a city that has stopped changing.

Quite the opposite.

Hong Kong is a city that changes incredibly quickly, while still retaining traces of what came before.

Looking at Cities: Shenzhen

Shenzhen may be the city on this list that is hardest to associate with nostalgia.

For many people, Shenzhen represents the future.

Technology.

Startups.

Factories.

High-speed rail.

Skyscrapers.

Artificial intelligence.

New urban districts.

The city seems to be permanently under construction.

But that is exactly what makes Shenzhen so interesting to me.

Because beneath its image as a “city of the future,” there is actually a much older place.

Take Nantou Ancient Town, for example.

The history of the Nantou area can be traced back to the Eastern Jin dynasty.

The walled town that exists today was rebuilt in 1394 during the Ming dynasty.

The Shenzhen government also describes Nantou Ancient Town as an important source of Shenzhen’s urban history and a cultural root connecting Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

When you look at modern Shenzhen, that is a remarkable thing to realize.

A city that looks as though it appeared only yesterday actually has more than a thousand years of history.

So I don’t think Shenzhen should simply be described as a “new city.”

More accurately, it is a city that underwent an extraordinarily rapid process of modernization on top of a much older regional history.

That contrast is fascinating.

You might just have been looking at skyscrapers representing the future of China’s economy.

Then you walk into Nantou Ancient Town.

Suddenly, you see old city gates, temples, traditional buildings, and community memories that existed long before the skyscrapers appeared.

The nostalgia here is completely different from Bologna.

In Bologna, history is directly visible in the urban landscape.

In Shenzhen, you have to actively search for it.

And I think that actually makes it more interesting.

Looking at Cities: Guangzhou

If Shenzhen represents China’s future, Guangzhou might be one of the best cities for understanding China’s relationship with the past.

Guangzhou does not need to look like an ancient city for you to feel its history.

Its history exists in its food, language, architecture, markets, family businesses, communities, and everyday life.

Take Xiguan, for example.

Today, Xiguan is part of Guangzhou’s Liwan District.

It developed outside the western gate of the old city and gradually became a distinctive part of Lingnan culture.

Here, you can find Xiguan mansions, arcades, temples, ancestral halls, and buildings influenced by Western architecture. Cantonese opera and Cantonese cuisine also remain important parts of the area’s cultural identity.

The nostalgia of a place like this can sometimes even be tasted.

You walk down an old street.

You see arcades.

You hear Cantonese.

You smell dim sum.

You walk into a restaurant.

You see an elderly man drinking tea.

Someone is talking about a neighborhood that existed before you were born.

Then you walk a little farther.

Suddenly, there is a café, an independent fashion shop, or a contemporary cultural space.

Yongqing Fang is an interesting example.

During its redevelopment, elements of traditional Xiguan architecture were preserved while cafés, shops, cultural spaces, and contemporary activities were introduced.

That is what I mean by living alongside nostalgia.

The old does not necessarily have to defeat the new.

And the new does not necessarily have to destroy the old.

They can exist together.

China Has Its Own Kind of Nostalgia

This is perhaps the conclusion I have gradually arrived at after living in China while also spending time abroad.

For a long time, when I thought about “nostalgia,” I thought about Europe.

Italy had medieval streets.

Japan had ancient temples and historic neighborhoods.

The United States had small towns, cowboy culture, old bars, and Main Streets.

I used to think that if I wanted to find nostalgia, I had to go somewhere else.

I don’t think that anymore.

China has its own kind of nostalgia.

It just doesn’t always look the way you expect it to.

It might be a Cantonese restaurant that has been operating for decades.

It might be an old neighborhood in Guangzhou.

It might be a temple hidden between modern buildings.

It might be a row of arcades built to shelter pedestrians from the rain.

It might be an old tong lau in Hong Kong.

It might be an elderly man drinking tea in a cha chaan teng.

It might be an old street in Macau carrying both Chinese and Portuguese history.

Or it might be Nantou Ancient Town—a historic town quietly existing within the enormous urban transformation of Shenzhen.

So I don’t think we should understand “searching for China’s past” as searching for some imagined version of “ancient China.”

China’s past does not exist only in ancient villages and famous historical sites.

Sometimes, it is much closer than we think.

It exists in food.

In language.

In architecture.

In streets.

In the small businesses that have managed to keep going for decades.

In rituals that people still practice.

In the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.

And in the things a city has chosen not to tear down.

Nostalgia Does Not Mean Rejecting the Future

I don’t think living with a sense of nostalgia means rejecting progress.

I don’t want every city to remain unchanged forever.

I like Tokyo’s technology.

I like Shenzhen’s energy.

I like Hong Kong’s international character.

I also like modern museums, contemporary architecture, high-speed rail, and new restaurants.

But I still believe that allowing a city to retain some ability to remember its past is incredibly valuable.

Maybe that is what I was really feeling when I walked through the streets of Bologna.

Maybe that is what remained with me from that afternoon when I was looking for Italian food with my parents in Venice.

Maybe that is why an ordinary American college town like Bloomington, Indiana, still remains so vivid in my memory.

And maybe that is also why I now look at Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou differently.

A city does not become culturally rich simply because it has old buildings.

What truly makes a city culturally rich is whether its past still maintains some kind of relationship with the people who live there today.

That relationship can be architectural.

It can be culinary.

It can be religious.

It can be linguistic.

It can be familial.

Or it can be as simple as this:

Walking down the same street your parents once walked.

That is what nostalgia means to me.

If you are lucky enough to live in a city where the past has not completely disappeared, perhaps you don’t need to rush away from it.

Slow down.

Walk a little farther.

Turn into the alley beside you.

Look at that old building.

Eat at a restaurant that has been there for decades.

Talk to someone who remembers what this neighborhood looked like before you were born.

Because sometimes, the most interesting thing about a city is not what it has become.

It is:

what it still remembers.