WHEN 67-year-old Lu Weining and her cousin walked into the Minhang Museum's exhibition of Old Shanghai photos and artifacts, the pair were filled with a wave of nostalgia.

"See! I once used the same coiling plate winding thread!" said one. "Look at this iron! Do you have one at home?" asked the other.

The same sense of excitement about revisiting childhood memories also struck Zhang Lifang, who is in her 60s, when she visited the exhibition with her grandson. She told him stories of the past evoked by the artifacts and pictures.

"Look at this bamboo carving basket," she said. "It was used to hold food. Girls from rich families carried these baskets when they visited temples."

The exhibition, which runs through April 12, is a kaleidoscope of Shanghai's past.

There are a multitude of old photos and exhibits of cheongsams (qipao) and menswear popular in the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) and during the Republic of China era (1912-49).

After Shanghai opened its port to the world in 1843, a boom in industry and commerce brought improvements to daily life in the city. Shanghai eventually came to be known as "the Paris of the East."

In a sense, the city grew as a melting pot of people and customs from across China and around the globe. The exhibition spans the urban society, including clothing, food, accommodation, transport, entertainment and folk customs.

The journey starts with a collection of old photos featuring some landmark structures. You can see what Waibaidu Bridge on the Bund looked like before it was refurbished. There are photos of Nanjing Road, then called "Nanking Road," which was a bustling place of commerce even back then.

There are photos of sophisticated women who lived in the city, and exhibits of the pigeon dialect called yangjingbang English, which was a mixture of the Shanghai dialect and English.

With the establishment of foreign concessions in Shanghai and the introduction of imported goods from all parts of the globe, the city formed a cultural style drawn from East and West. People drove cars from foreign lands, wore Western styles of clothing, enjoyed jazz, played golf and learned the waltz and tango.

The exhibit includes dance tickets from Ciros, one of the biggest dance halls in Shanghai in the 1930s. Social dancing had become a fad during that era.

Ciros was built by the legendary British tycoon Victor Sassoon, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the city in the 1920s and 30s. It is said that Sassoon, who was lame, once tried to enter the Paramont, one of the most popular dance halls in Shanghai, but was rebuffed by a doorman who didn't recognize him. Enraged by the slight, Sassoon vowed to build an even more grandiose dance hall on the best site along Nanjing Road. Thus was Ciros founded.

Also on display is an English brochure introducing the Hollywood film "Kiss and Make-up," which was screened at the Grand Cinema in 1934. The cinema, built in 1928, was the work of Hungarian architect Laszlo Hudec.

Modern publishing house

Program leaflets from theaters, publications from 1907 and 1918 and old textbooks are also included in the display. There is also a bibliography from the Commercial Press, which was established in 1897 and became China's first modern publishing house.

The exhibit also includes a 1940s poster from the Shanghai Dashijie (Big World), once the most famous stage entertainment venue in Shanghai, and a menu from Xinghualou Restaurant, written in 1936.

A phonograph from the Republic of China era is among the exhibits. The phonograph was not only a device to enjoy music in Old Shanghai, but also a status symbol.

Prior to the 20th century, girls born into wealthy families were not allowed to venture out by themselves socially. They were ferried about in private sedans and walked on bound feet. That began to change as Shanghai urbanized, giving many women their first taste of freedom.

Their liberation is reflected in their marcel bob hairdos and in their appearances in nightclubs, where they smoked with abandon. The photos show a certain reticence to adopt the shorter skirts of their Western counterparts. For the most part, well-to-do women stuck to traditional silk trousers, and the side slash in their cheongsams rarely went above the knees.

But a sense of Western-style beauty and fashion was awakened.

The exhibition includes elegant cheongsams in exquisite flower patterns, a pair of white high-heeled shoes popular at that time, an exquisite dressing case in a beautiful floral design, a sleek handbag and delicate small bottles and boxes containing cosmetics. The boxes have English labels and instructions for use.

One custom that was slow to change was the grandeur of a traditional wedding.

A woman about to be married sat in decorated bridal sedan chair to travel to the groom's home. Folk music was played on the way.

The wedding ritual itself was time-honored. There were to ceremonial bows to sky and earth, bows to the couple's parents and the bows to one another. One of the most amusing parts of the traditional ceremony was the bridal chamber pranks.

The display includes a red paper calligraphy containing a marriage proposal from the late Qing Dynasty, a wedding souvenir badge and a collection needlework items that girls brought with them when they moved into the homes of their husbands' families.

Also in the exhibit are needles, scissors, bamboo rulers and more than 10 coiling plates used to wind thread, which were made of redwood and featured exquisitely carved patterns. The earliest piece dates back to the Qing Dynasty.

Lu, who has lived in Minhang's Xinzhuang area since her childhood, said she still has coils similar to those on exhibit.

"Many exhibits, like the coils, are very commonly seen in families who came to Shanghai from neighboring Ningbo city," Lu said. People from Ningbo, Guangdong and areas north of the Yangtze River formed the majority of out-of-towners who settled in Shanghai, she recalled.

Most Ningbo and Guangdong natives opened small businesses, while those from areas north of the Yangtze River did manual labor, like barbering and rickshaw-pulling, she said.

In 1874, the rickshaw first appeared on Nanjing Road, a new mode of transport amid the sedans and carriages of the time. In 1908, the trolley was introduced to the streets.