As a warm-up to the International Business Leaders' Advisory Council meeting, members and guests took a tour along Suzhou Creek and visited historical buildings in downtown Jing'an District over the weekend.

They were amazed by the vibrancy of the city, and how history and future meet in one place.

At the Tianhou Temple in Jing'an District, a temple enshrining sea goddess Mazu, young performers dressed up and sang Peking Opera for the guests.

After that they visited Shen Yu Lane, a shikumen (stone-gate) community nearby which is a part of the city's urban restoration project which turned the area into a mixed-use complex two years ago.

As a highlight, they boarded a cruise boat of the iconic Suzhou Creek, which chronicles Shanghai's past and the present, with the final stop being the Bund.

Professor Hans Uszkoreit, a member of the European Academy of Sciences and scientific director of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, was impressed by the restored Suzhou Creek riverside area and the boat tour.

"It's important to keep the historical area alive for the young generation to learn about the heritage," he said during an interview after the tour.

Moving the temple and some of the historical sites to a new location still provides a historical reference, he said.

Uszkoreit said he's impressed many facades of old buildings have remained, with new restoration projects going on in neighborhood blocks.