In the past, as one of the programs for Shanghai Week in Sino-France Cultural Exchange Year, a Picture Exhibition entitled ”Sino-France Cultural Exchange in Shanghai ” was held in Marseilles, a friendly city of Shanghai. Once arrival in Marseilles, a similar feeling that existing in Shanghai as well is surrounding the city; this is also a harbor city like Shanghai, many chinars are planted on both sides of the streets or roads for people to shelter from the fervidity. Obviously, in the west area of Shanghai, the Huai-hai Road, Heng-shan Road, Si-nan Road, there are also many old chinars. These trees were planted by the Frenchmen in Shanghai Concession. Nowadays, Shanghai people call this tree to be French Phoenix Tree

Shanghai is one of the important centers for Sino-France cultural exchange. Besides, such an exchange became more in modern times. Chinese product became less, at most was Confucianism and Zhang-family Bean-curd and so on. In Contrast, French products entered China more and more. The picture exhibition held in Shanghai also indicates that Frenchmen brought the modern scientific and technological knowledge including the roadside tree-planting. For instance, the first new-style school in Shanghai, the first library and the first astronomical observatory are all up-built by Frenchmen in Concession. The masterpieces of French modern ideologists in Enlightenment Movement and the famous works are mostly translated and published in Shanghai. These works are also passed to other zones. A large number of Chinese young volunteers rushed to France for practice. To the commoners, the thick chinars and the elegant French-style villas and the attractive French fashions as well as the French banquets are the core in Chinese people’s memory.

In 1846, Frenchmen opened the Tushanwan Painting Hall in Shanghai was the birthplace of Chinese western-style painting techniques. Chinese earliest western-style painters were from this place. In Shanghai, many buildings are characterized of the French style besides they are well preserved at present. Such as the brief French Gothic style had shown in Xujiahui Church; the bank-building of the oriental Huili is featured by the neoclassicism. Today the French architects are strutting their stuff. The establishment of Shanghai Grand Theater, Pudong International Airport and so on is under their influence of art and culture in Shanghai.