A Tale of Two Cities exhibition highlights historic Sino-German partnership

From skin cream and cloth dye to metro trains and musical shows, a new exhibition at Shanghai History Museum, Shanghai — Hamburg: A Tale of Two Cities traces the relationship between China and Germany.

Running through Oct 18, the exhibition has been organized by the Shanghai History Museum in collaboration with the International Maritime Museum Hamburg, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Shanghai and Hamburg's sister-city relationship, which was established in 1986.

It brings together rare artifacts, historical documents, and interactive installations from both sides to tell a story rooted in shared identity as global port hubs.

Since then, Shanghai has developed with impressive dynamism. Today it ranks among the most high-performing and innovative cities in the world.

"Forty years ago, Hamburg-based companies were among the first to recognize the potential," Norbert Riedel, consul general of Germany in Shanghai, says. "They played a key role in making Shanghai the most important German business hub in China."

One of the earliest milestones in this relationship came in 1984, when Shanghai No 2 Daily Chemicals Factory partnered with Hamburg-based Beiersdorf in China's first foreign-invested daily chemicals project. By 1985, the product, Nivea-branded moisturizer, had returned to the dressing tables of Shanghai households and was being marketed in the city, half a century after it was first imported from Germany.

Today, the company operates a global innovation center in Shanghai's Caohejing Hi-Tech Park, where consumer insights from China inform product development worldwide, according to Xue Wei, managing director, North East Asia, Beiersdorf.

Among the exhibits at the new exhibition is a painting borrowed from the International Maritime Museum Hamburg. Dating to 1790, it shows a folly fort near Guangzhou in Guangdong province, demonstrating the direct trade relations between the two countries that were already established: In 1731, the first Chinese merchant vessel arrived in Hamburg carrying tea, silk and porcelain, inaugurating a commercial dialogue that would endure for centuries.

Located on Germany's North Sea coast at the mouth of the Elbe, Hamburg has been a historic center of shipping and trade since its days in the Hanseatic League, says Miaomiao Ye, deputy director of the Hamburg Liaison Office China.

Meanwhile, Shanghai was one of China's earliest treaty ports. "Both cities rose to prominence because of their ports and life by the sea," she says. "It is this shared character that truly connects us."

From then on, direct shipping routes were established between the two cities. Hamburg merchants set up trading houses, introducing German industrial products — from precision optical instruments to Faber-Castell pencils — into daily Shanghai life. By the 1930s, Nivea skin cream and Indanthrene-dyed blue qipao (cheongsam) were household names in the city.

Since the beginning of China's reform and opening-up in 1978, the logistics corridor linking Shanghai and Hamburg has witnessed a range of Sino-German cooperation, from the Santana sedan to metro trains.

In September 2021, the inaugural China-Europe Express freight train left Shanghai and arrived in Hamburg. Today, one in three containers handled at the Port of Hamburg is linked to China, and more than 550 Chinese-invested enterprises are registered in the city.

Cultural ties remain equally vibrant. In 2008, a replica of the mid-lake pavilion in Shanghai's Yuyuan Garden opened in Hamburg, complete with a zigzag bridge and a couplet celebrating the friendship between the two cities. In 2010, the Hamburg House at the Shanghai World Expo introduced the concept of passive-house energy efficiency. From football stars like Jorg Albertz — who famously wore both a Hamburg and a Shanghai Shenhua jersey in a 2005 friendly match — to touring productions of opera, theater and musical shows, the cities continue to share stages and stories.

"Hamburg is the gateway to Germany and Europe for Shanghai, just as Shanghai is the gateway to China for Hamburg," says Riedel, reflecting on four decades of partnership.

"Despite geopolitical uncertainties, our shared belief in mutual benefit remains constant."