The journey to the origins of the oldest communist party in the world begins behind a wooden door.
A 18-square-meter room with a replica of a table with 13 teacups where Mao sat a hundred years ago.
A few quick photos with the smartphone, a few steps past barrier tapes, then China's pilgrims are back on the street.
Hendrik Ankenbrand
Business correspondent for China based in Shanghai.
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The Ferrari dealer is a stone's throw to the west, and Lamborghini's showroom to the east.
Twenty meters to the south, a gallery offers exclusive tea tasting for top managers of Chinese technology companies.
Across the street, the French beauty salon Fillmed charges the equivalent of 390 euros for a quick tightening of the skin.
When Xi Jinping, state leader and party general secretary, visits the founding site of his organization based on the teachings of Karl Marx in the coming days, as expected, he will be in a symbol of inequality.
More billionaires than in New York
Nowhere else in China is life as expensive as in Xintiandi, the former working-class district where Mao Tse-tung and twelve comrades founded the Chinese Communist Party on July 23, 1921. Up until the end of the 1990s, the “Shikumen” built in the 19th century lined the narrow streets, two-story stone houses in which the Chinese lived at a time when the colonial powers of Europe, America and Japan had divided Shanghai among themselves. At the beginning of the late 1990s, an investor from Hong Kong began to build a shopping and entertainment district for wealthy foreigners and the Chinese who made money during the economic boom here for 170 million dollars. Today real estate prices are higher than in Manhattan and London.
Today almost only the Chinese are rich in Xintiandi, foreigners are seldom seen in the streets of the 30,000 square meter district. When Mao died in 1976, his successor Deng Xiaoping opened the impoverished country to capitalism with the words: "Let some get rich first." Nowhere in China is the result of this policy as clear as it is here.
According to the Hurun rich list, there are more billionaires in Shanghai than in New York. In China as a whole, there are already five million dollar millionaires, writes the Credit Suisse bank in a report published on Tuesday. By 2025, more people would exceed the million dollar fortune here than in America. It took 80 years to create as much wealth as the People's Republic in 20. It is a success that the Communist Party can write on its red flag.
But does she want that too? As early as April, an advance detachment from party leader Xi Jinping had scoured the business districts in Xintiandi for symbols of wealth. There, a dummy stone wall made of cardboard is now covering an advertising panel for Tiffany. The American jewelry chain recently opened a café in its branch in Xintiandi. Since the first pictures of the cocktails and desserts circulated millions of times on China's social media, it has hardly been possible to get a table. There are young professionals in their mid-twenties who pay an average of 800 yuan (105 euros) for their lunch.