THE spectacular impact of urban construction in the past decade has ranked Shanghai among the top cities in the world for the number of its skyscrapers but it still looks small in other ways.

"Without culture inside, a city always looks poor," said Mayor Han Zheng at a meeting last month with local Congress deputies.

The cultural retrogression is not a new problem facing the city, but it has become really serious in the past 10 years, according to Gu Jun, a sociologist at Shanghai University.

The period when the city was China's - or even East Asia's - cultural centre in the 1930s now seems a long time ago. Nowadays only a few of the country's best-selling books have been written by Shanghai authors, even though many novelists give Shanghai an important role in their stories.

"For years the city hasn't had a film which could excite or convince an audience, and the situation is the same with TV dramas. More and more film stars, TV stars and producers are leaving Shanghai for other areas to find more opportunities," said Sun Huizhu, a professor with the Shanghai Theatre Academy.

Last year the city won only one prize out of a total of 58 "Five-One project" awards. This is a nationwide project for exemplary works in each of five cultural areas including essays, books, films and TV shows, songs and operas. In the past decade, Shanghai would always win many of the awards.

Newspapers are another sore point in any discussion about local culture. Xu Jilin, a professor from East China Normal University, who has made a survey of newspapers, said that Shanghai once had a proud history of being the country's media centre. The first newspaper advertisements and the first social news reports after Liberation in 1949 were published in Shanghai. The editorials of major newspapers in Shanghai were nationally influential and that situation lasted until the 1990s.

Retrogression?

But nowadays, among the city's biggest newspapers, only one makes the top-10 in terms of income - the Xinmin Evening News - and it is in seventh position. Ten years ago, three local newspapers were at the top of the list.

"Given the thriving economy here, it is surprising that advertising revenues in the newspapers of this East China metropolis are unable to match those of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing," Xu said.

Some experts said the city's current cultural situation can be compared with that of 1949, when the central government chose many famous artists and writers from Shanghai to help turn Beijing into a political and cultural centre. But afterwards, a new crop of creative people arose to enrich the city's cultural and artistic life.

"In this respect, the current round of cultural retrogression is more dangerous," said Gu Jun.

"The city has simply become an arena for performances from different parts of the world. Although so-called Shanghai culture was long known to be a mixture of different cultures, the current situation is that the city is more like a vase than a flower bed. Flowers displayed in the vase are beautiful, but they don't have any vitality."

It was different in the old days. Back then local artists, after digesting the many different cultures assembled in this great port city, brought forth a unique culture of their own. But now, first-class or long-lasting artistic endeavours created in Shanghai are few and far between.

Ye Xin, deputy leader of the city's Writers' Association, admitted that the city is lagging behind in some cultural fields. "Some lesser developed provinces like Shaanxi and Gansu have produced more good work than Shanghai, despite the large number of professional writers here," he said.

It seems to him that the excess of splendid distractions available in this humming city have diverted the attention of writers who need to be wholeheartedly focused on their work. "Being fidgety, a common problem among urban dwellers, has captured many writers and artists here," he said.

However, in the eyes of other experts, the government should also take some of the blame for the problem.

"The stronger a government becomes, the less room there is for creativity," Gu Jun said.

Echoing his words, Xu Jilin said in his latest article, "Thinking about Shanghai Culture", published in the China Youth Daily, that if the city continued on its present path it may become another Singapore.

"Locals can lead a rich life, but the cultural backdrop is thin and pale," he said.

Fortunately Shanghai's situation is much better than Singapore's in this respect. Shanghai had a very rich cultural tradition in its long history which could still have a positive effect on future developments.

Luxurious art

The lack of outside financial support is another problem facing cultural workers. It has priced many of the city's cultural activities out of the reach of locals.

Sun, who came back to Shanghai after five years of study overseas, said ticket prices for films and plays were too high considering the income of locals. The ratio between average income and tickets in Shanghai is substantially higher than in New York.

The government has begun to notice the problem. Last year the city's annual International Arts Festival, for the first time, received a government's subsidy. This was used to provide low-priced 50 yuan (US$6.00) tickets which sold out in a few hours.

One news story said that two elderly people who had queued for two days were not able to get tickets which showed how much locals needed the cheaper tickets for cultural activities, Sun said.

"Without enough money, the quality of the festival is affected. Some vulgar programmes were allowed in," he said.

There is no cultural foundation in the city to support low-profit artistic performances like operas and plays.

Scholars have complained saying that local dramas are too shallow and only meet the taste of white collared workers. "Yet as the audiences are mostly better-off white collar employees, it is hard to attach blame. First of all it is important to at least make such arts survive," Sun said.

"Too many expensive performances compared with the small number of cheaper shows has become a big problem in the city."

Cultural undertakings are "luxurious" and need a large investment without having to be too worried about an immediate return.

"Economic growth is something that can be achieved in a shorter period, while culture rejuvenation is a much more difficult task," experts said.