Considering present-day Shanghai as a palimpsest，or a cityscape of a spectrum of diverse values and elements，this paper tries to understand how nostalgia works in the spatial fabric of Shanghai. In comparison with the ideas that assume that the local as a single end of the power relations in globalization，which is usually conceived as a victim or a tool in either nationalism and global capitalism，I argue that，rather than directly elicit nostalgia as a form of commodity fetishism，globalization provides a lens under which we observe that the historical tension between local and national dichotomies，or more precisely the rival understandings of Chinese modernity，is the intrinsic cause of Shanghai nostalgia.