Lady bosses of SH: Tina Kanagaratnam, historian

Real talk: just existing in this world with XX chromosomes is some kind of victory. But then there are those unstoppable wonder women blazing trails and changing the game who have us all awestruck. Our column ‘Lady bosses of Shanghai’ looks at a few of the many brilliant women totally killing it in the city we call home. Take notes on general female badassery with: Tina Kanagaratnam.

If you've got a question about Shanghai's rich, dynamic and oft-confusing past, then you'll want to speak to Tina Kanagaratnam, co-founder of heritage society Historic Shanghai. Alongside raising children and co-running her PR and marketing company AsiaMedia Ltd, for the past two decades Kanagaratnam - with her husband Patrick Cranley and friend Tess Johnston - has been piecing together and passing on stories from Shanghai's Golden Age and beyond with Historic Shanghai's talks and walks that sprawl all over the city.

An authentic taxi dancer clutch from the 1930s Paramount club which Kanagaratnam found in a market. The Paramount would give these branded clutches to its taxi dancers who would use them to hold tips from patrons who needed their ballroom-dance-partner-for-rent services. Note the clutch's Art Deco style and official Paramount branding in gold leaf.

Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, Kanagaratnam muses that, 'one reason Historic Shanghai has been such a great interest is that, unlike New York or London, information on these buildings and people is not easy to come by. There is no continuous history' - she's referring to the years following the founding of the People's Republic of China, when Shanghai's pre-1949 history was 'deliberately forgotten or ereased'. And, of course, there's the city's constant need for development. 'It's a place where you go on vacation and there's a chance something on your streeet will have changed by the time you come back,' Kanagaratnam laughs. But with all the knocking down and rebuilding, what does the future hold for Shanghai?

'Well, it's always been about progress,' she continues. It's a battle between balancing historic preservation with commercial interests. But whatever the future holds for the city, we know Kanagaratnam won't let us forget its past.

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