Shanghai is currently doing a feasibility study of the city's application to have the building complexes on the Bund included on the UNESO's World Cultural Heritage List.

　　The Bund would be the first big area in Shanghai to be included in the list, if finally applied for and accepted. The move, especially as it affects the Bund, was seen by some people as an important contribution to the protection of the cultural and historic heritage of Shanghai.

　　The idea also attracted immediate criticism. Of course, not all the criticism was pointless. One can benefit from criticism such as that heritage protection and cultural education should be a continuing effort rather than a sudden impulse and that the possibility of the deterioration of a site into another image project rather than becoming a real contribution to the city should be minimized.

　　But the main attack centred on something else - What? Colonial sins as cultural symbols? Are you mad?

　　China's Youth Daily published a signed article doubting the appropriateness of the application because the Bund is an unpleasant symbol of the colonization period in terms of its "historic or cultural value".

　　Featuring the Gothic, Baroque, Classic, Romanesque and the Renaissance styles and rich in artistic beauty, the Bund complex provides a beautiful skyline for the city.

　　As "groups of buildings of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science", this architectural feast can be said to be sufficiently in accordance to the "Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage" to be considered as "cultural heritage".

　　Although when viewed separately, each style of architecture is also abundant in their original places around the world, their concentration in one place is "unique and irreplaceable" within the meaning of the preamble of the above-mentioned convention.

　　It is true that the Bund was part of the historical period of "Chinese people and the dog". But is there any inexorable or logical relationship between that evil and art? Isn't it insensible, if not absurd, to view the building complex as a crystallization of the insult, the evil and the agony of the colonization period. Is the promotion of its artistic beauty an eraser of that history or is the inclusion request a reopening of an old wound?

　　Now do not think that I am merely talking about what we should do about all those buildings - after all, they are just buildings. Heritage or not, our concern over them has limits. What I want to find fault with is the underlying mentality of some people - a labeling mindset.

　　This mentality likes the following idea: once something or someone can be associated with a bad name, never let go the chance to label it. And such a label, most of the time politically motivated, tends to be one that sticks permanently and is pervasively influential and powerfully contaminating.

　　For example, a heroic effort and a long time will be needed to clear Suzhou Creek of the reputation is has been stuck with.

　　Once some people become interested in labeling, whether it is heaps of stones or a group of people, there is no escape. And once a thing or a person is labeled politically "doubtful" or vulnerable, they will be put under scrutiny and then suffer groundless and endless associations that tend to have such a magnifying and stigmatizing effect as to eclipse all their other features.

　　Of course we do not like this. We like to enjoy architectural beauty. We like to live a free life. We like to reap the benefits of a civil society. If so, then political labels had better not be over-reaching.

　　Finally it all comes down to this question: whether a golden opportunity, a healthy mindset or an open culture, once lost, how is it regained?