I
In the fall of 2014, I moved from Minhang to Yangpu, where I lived next to Dinghai Road. Shanghainese call Dinghai Road the "lower corner", meaning the poor neighborhood. There is some self-deprecating meaning, there was a store here, the name is called "lower corner of the grocery store".
Dinghai Road is famous in Shanghai, and its fame is also related to poverty. In the 1980s, Shanghai writer Cheng Naisan wrote a novel called "Poor Street", which was adapted into a TV series of the same name, and the location of the TV series was chosen on this side of Dinghai Road. After the TV series was aired, it was a sensation in Shanghai, and Dinghai Road became famous for being poor and synonymous with "poor street".
It is often said that Dinghai Road is the most unlike Shanghai. The 890-meter-long Dinghai Road starts from the Dinghai Bridge on the Huangpu River in the south and ends at the intersection of Pingliang Road and Aiguo Road in the north. The houses on both sides of the street, low and shabby, uneven, crowded, all set up as a small store, store by store, from the street has been connected to the end of the street, full of poor streets and alleys of the face, and the surrounding high-rise buildings form a huge contrast, so that it is difficult to believe that this is in downtown Shanghai, as if this entire Dinghai Road, and the roadside of the I-beam type cement poles, as the same, the time is frozen in forever! The first time I've seen this is in 1922, and it's been a long time coming.
Early in the morning every day, is the most lively time Dinghai Road. The street is bustling with people, bicycles, electric cars, delivery of yellow fish car, in the flow of people slowly through. Stores on the street, each with its own business, the sound of hawking one after another, South and North, a busy scene. A breakfast store, all opened on the left side of the street, each family's breakfast is different, biscuits and doughnuts, buns and steamed buns, wontons and dumplings, a piece of hot air. A long-established shengjian store, a small facade is very inconspicuous, but business is very hot, buy fried bread need to wait in line. Occasionally, when you walk slowly through the door, the smell of fried dumplings is so strong that it gives you a kind of cozy life in the city.
Living in the Dinghai Road neighborhood, it is most convenient to buy small vegetables. The street is full of fresh vegetables, seasonal fruits, aquatic products and meat, so it is known as the road vegetable market. Dinghai Road, the price of food, but also cheaper than elsewhere, the street merchants warm and simple, because the business is doing repeat business, the sale of real prices, will not be short of catty, reputation has always been very good. Even so, the meticulous Shanghai people, is always to bargain, which seems to have become a habit of the locals. Those vendors, although small profits, but sometimes will erase a little bit of change, in order to customers to come back. If you are a Shanghai resident, they will dislike you and say, "It's so cheap, why do you still want to bargain?"
Residents of the neighborhood come to Dinghai Road not only to buy small dishes, but also to find some bargains. Pot pots and pans, sheets, underwear, underwear, price Tin cheap to surprise. 30 yuan a pair of jeans, 50 yuan a line velvet suit, compared to the supermarket one or two hundred things, workmanship texture is not bad at all. If you stroll to the old shoes store on Boyang Road, 100 dollars to the hands of the shoes, completely handmade, the style is not out of date, or authentic first layer of cowhide.
In the eyes of outsiders, Dinghai Road shantytown, as if some mystery. From the darkness of the entrance to the alleyway, there are other places inside. Narrow alley, only one person cart through, on both sides of the low-slung shacks, these dilapidated shacks, most of them are pre-liberation private houses. The gray cement wall, printed with dense small ads, as a piece of moss on the human body.
In Shanghai, the area of each shanty is small, so the space outside the house is fully utilized. Many people's doors are built with a sink, which is used for washing dishes and laundry, and also for washing mops, which are hung outside the window. On the other side of the entrance door, bicycles and electric carts are parked, or a washing machine is placed. The slightly wider corners of the lane are also used for stacking sundries, while those with a sense of humor will plant some flowers and pots to brighten up their dull lives. Looking up, there are air-conditioning units under the eaves, and the wires overhead are cluttered. Between the parallel shacks, there is a bright line of sky, and a clothesline sticking out from the house, drying the clothes and bedding of each family, and the drying materials fluttering with the wind, like colorful flags of nations. As you go further in, the alleys twist and turn, and the lanes are connected to each other, as if you were entering a maze, and you can't tell what's going on in the area.
Two
Lane 449, Dinghai Road, is a legendary old neighborhood.
In the 1920s, when the Japanese-owned Yufeng Yarn Factory was expanding its labor force, many underage girls left their hometowns and came to Shanghai from the rural areas of northern Jiangsu Province to make a living and work as bonded laborers in the factory. In order to address the expanding demand for housing, the factory built dozens of dormitories for bonded laborers on farmland along Dinghai Road, collectively known as the Yufeng Workhouse, which became the dormitory of the 17th National Cotton Factory after liberation.
From Pingliang Road into Lane 449, the road on both sides of the sky, one side of the high-rise new neighborhoods, on the other side of the decline of the dilapidated compound. There are numerous workshops, horizontally distributed in rows and columns, and two main lanes with different orientations leading to Dinghai Road and Pingliang Road, stringing together fifteen narrow side lanes, forming a pattern of big lanes over small ones, and main lanes over side lanes. The width of the lanes between the front and rear workshops is only two meters, which makes the spacing between them a bit unsympathetic. The spacious main lane has become a parking lot for the residents, and it is very troublesome for small cars to make a U-turn inside.
The housing density of the compound, crowded with more than 1600 households. Each house is not big, some people living area, only a mere 9 square meters. The cramped indoor space, beds, beds on the ground, screw shells in the dojo, men, women and children living in a snail's room, almost no personal privacy. In order to expand the living space, we had to build illegal structures, so a variety of creative ideas came into being. In front of the house, behind the house, on both sides of the lane, is a family of private construction of the kitchen. The building is obviously illegal, but the mouth is said to be a good idea, saying that it is for safety, lest the elderly forget to turn off the gas, making a tragedy to the human life. There are also some people, the child is older to get married, parents and can not afford to buy a house, so they are poor, take an attic to do the wedding room.
These past quarters for bonded laborers had very poor living conditions, and the lighting and ventilation were extremely poor. People who live upstairs will naturally feel more fortunate, but if they live downstairs, they will have a miserable state of mind. On the ground floor of the workshop, the ground was very wet, and in the yellow plum days of June and July, the room was gloomy and damp, emitting a musty odor. If there was a rainstorm, the sewers did not drain well, and the water came into the room. Whether you live upstairs or downstairs, there is no bathroom in the house, eating, drinking, pooping and spoiling in the inside, the residents get up every day, the first thing, is to carry a "red lantern", to go to the outside of the queue to pour the toilet.
The residents of 449 Lane are looking forward to the demolition every day. On the street of Pingliang Road, there is a banner hanging all year round, with black letters on a white background and the words "Demolition and relocation" written on the banner. Demolition of the problem, the delay is not resolved, the old aunts will be in the neighborhood banging drums, in order to attract the attention of the above.
The residents of Lane 449 live in a different kind of Shanghai. The main alley of the compound, became a community public **** living room, after tea and dinner in the free time, the right and left neighbors coincidentally, gathered in the alley on the side of the Gashanhu. The old neighborhood old colleagues, like a family, the relationship between each other warm, unrestrained. Sitting and chatting with the ladies, crossing their slender legs, playing with their cell phones and laughing at the same time, the unkempt men and uncles, wearing tank tops and shorts and slippers, stood aside and gulped down clouds and fog. They chat loudly and atmospherically, as if no one else is there, what parents, gossip, funny paragraph, the loss of the poker table, anything can be used as a talking point, completely without the kind of reserved and implicit Shanghainese people speak.
It's more like a small community of folks than any other neighborhood in Shanghai. Many of the residents here, if you count up to three generations, their forefathers came from the rural areas in northern Jiangsu Province, so for more than half a century, the common language of the Dinghai Bridge area has not been authentic Shanghainese, but the northern Jiangsu dialect of Yancheng and Huai'an, and even some of the local old Shanghainese people can speak a few phrases of the northern Jiangsu dialect. Many of them have sons and daughters who have inherited their father's or mother's business, and some of them have been textile workers for several generations. They seem to have a tradition of intermarriage within the industry, and many employees of the neighboring textile enterprises are more or less related to the 449 Lane. They have lived together for decades, with the same similar lifestyle, mahjong rubbing good, old wine eating good, cricket fighting good, that in Yangpu District is known far and wide.
In the mind of the old Shanghai people, what people can not afford to mess with 449弄. They have the body of the industrial workers, with the north of Jiangsu people bold genes, with the city life cultivated out of the gangster, more external a heart of the traditional cohesion. They live in the poor streets and alleys, they regard themselves as "barefoot and not afraid of shoes", and they are used to using their fists to settle things, and fights are notorious for not wanting to die. Rumor has it that Shanghai hooligans look at Yangpu, Yangpu hooligans look at Dinghai, Dinghai hooligans look at Lane 449. Hooligans in old Shanghai would flee in fear when they heard that they were from Dinghai Bridge. Even the Hongzhen old streets of the ah, also dare not in front of them wild.
Don't underestimate Lane 449 just because of these bad things, it used to be full of celebrities. This is such a small place, not only out of the loud national model, famous soccer star, but also out of the Cultural Revolution, the rebel commander, the outbreak of the Shanghai tycoon, tycoon tycoon. Life is unpredictable, the history of the great waves of sand, those who were once celebrities, the scenery after a while, everything is back to silence, silence is rarely mentioned, because we all feel that they have nothing to do with their own lives.
Three
The Dinghai Bridge at the southern end of Dinghai Road is a landmark here. It is customary to refer to Dinghai Road, as well as the neighboring Boyang Road and Guiyang Road, as Dinghai Bridge. Less than a hundred meters, Dinghai Bridge was the first bridge over the Huangpu River in Shanghai, and the Chinese and English nameplates on the bridge show the words "built in 1927". The mottled old bridge spans the Fuxing Island Canal, connecting Dinghai Road and Fuxing Island, with the Huangpu River on the outside of the bridge.
The area around Dinghai Bridge is the cradle of modern Chinese industry. The excellent geographical location, convenient water transportation, and the golden waterway leading to the river and the sea made this place a good place to invest and run factories. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the influx of foreign capital, a set of investment and development boom, in this land, more than ten kilometers of the riverfront, dotted with a variety of factories, making it the birthplace of China's industrial civilization. Here, not only was born the first batch of foreign-funded enterprises in China, but also the earliest waterworks, power plants and gas plants in China, creating a number of firsts in the national industry, and thus the face of modern Chinese life unfolded. Standing on the Dinghai Bridge, you can see the Yangshupu Power Plant, which was once the largest thermal power plant in Asia, with its tall chimneys still standing, like a milestone of the times.
Yangshupu Road, No. 2866, is the former site of Shanghai Cotton Seventeen Factory. This is the largest textile enterprise in Shanghai, the heyday of tens of thousands of workers, the factory produces the leading fine cloth, with excellent texture famous at home and abroad. In the wave of reform and opening up, the textile industry bore the brunt of the glory of half a century of the old factory, was eliminated in the industrial restructuring, the workshop shut down the car stopped production, the workers were laid off and shunted to the north of Jiangsu Province, the equipment was transferred. Once a hot labor scene, deafening roar of the machine, as well as the busy figure of the textile workers, has long become a historical memory.
The former site of the 17th National Cotton Factory was transformed into the Shanghai International Fashion Center. The jagged factory building with clear water and red bricks has been completely preserved, and the inside is completely modern and fashionable kernel, where history and fashion are contrasted and fused, contrasting the unique artistry and accomplishing its avant-garde nature even more. It is home to Asia's number one showroom, the world's tallest glass runway, Shanghai Fashion Week, large-scale music festivals, fashion carnivals, brand launches, and large-scale international auto shows. The former riverside wharf, which used to transport raw materials for cotton yarn, has also been transformed into a waterfront platform for leisure and fun. The old factory, a phoenix rising from the ashes, is being transformed into the new global fashion capital.
Walking across the Dinghai Bridge from the north end, it is the **** Qing Road of Fuxing Island. At the end of the bridge at the intersection, there is the Dinghai Road Ferry Terminal, where ferries still run day and night, directly to Jinqiao in Pudong. Next to the ferry terminal is the Dinghai Road Street Office, not far from the Street Office, is the famous China Shipyard. Along the camphor-covered **** Qing Road, you can walk to the Fuxing Island Park, a small park, is the only Japanese-style garden in Shanghai, the garden trees, peaceful and quiet, from time to time you can hear the birds chirping. The park's White Lodge Villa, once Chiang Kai-shek's palace, in the rumble of Shanghai's liberation, Chiang's father and son are from here, fleeing the mainland by boat in fear.
Four
Years of anticipation have finally become a reality. A large-scale planning for the old reform, has been launched, Dinghai Road around the old community, are included in the scope of the old reform, mobilization of demolition of the red banners, hanging all over the streets and alleys.
Into the countdown to demolition of Dinghai Road, the old houses on both sides of the street, written on the eye-catching "demolition" of the word. A lot of stores on the street, has pulled the shutter, one after another, closed down. The once bustling old street has gradually become cold and quiet. In the past, those who shopped for food, I do not know where they went, a reduction of many. The business is not as good as before, and they are making preparations to retreat.
With the Dinghai Road connected to the Boyang Road, demolition teams have entered the field, dust everywhere on the road, a block of old houses, some have lifted off the roof, some doors and windows were removed, leaving only a broken shell. The last poor streets and alleys are about to disappear by the Dinghai Bridge.
The news of Dinghai Road's demolition quickly spread throughout Shanghai. A set of self-media people, from all directions to here, they take the camera, walk the streets and alleys interview, claiming to be the last poor street, salvage shooting. An on-the-spot report was seen on the self-media platform. Some people even suggested that Dinghai Road should stop demolition and be preserved in its original flavor, leaving Shanghai with the most authentic and natural style of the city. For this point, Dinghai Road's uncles and aunts, but to carry the old fresh, this is not the Huangpu District Shikumen, completely no value to retain.
At this moment, those who are clamoring to demolish the people, but they have become a loss. Because they know, the demolition is only two programs: either monetary compensation, according to the certificate area to pay money; or give you a house, relocation to the suburbs. For them, Dinghai Road is their heart of the homeland, we have a kind of homeland is difficult to leave the emotion. What's more, it's an old and good location, whether it's for working life, children's study, or living at home, it's all very convenient. However, they have no more choices: to live more spacious, can only be replaced to the suburbs. Want to stay in the old place, your house is so small, get a little compensation, simply can't take the city's house.
The poor street is about to become history, after the reconstruction of Dinghai Road, certainly no longer the next only corner. I look forward to the old look for a new look, but also miss to give me the convenience of life on the poor street, back to its real people, back to its rich city flavor.