Friday, October 8, 2010

My neighborhood

Here is a pre-breakfast walking tour of the working-class neighborhood near my apartment.

The gate of my apartment complex, facing Huangpi South Road (黄陂南路). At the start of the National Day holiday, the apartment managers had red lanterns strung up at the gate. The lanterns light up amber in the evenings, lending the entrance of the complex some much-needed warmth.

The view of the street outside of the front gate.

Junjun Xiaochi (骏骏小吃), a literal hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from my apartment. The food is prepared on the sidewalk stove and sold either as take-out or delivery. The woman in the green apron handles delivery duty using the pictured bike and styrofoam crate. Out on deliveries, she is always wearing the same bashful smile. She kind of reminds me of hobbits.

The intersection of Huangpi South Road and Hefei Road (合肥路), just north of my apartment. As far as I can tell, it is continuously occupied by traffic going in every cardinal direction. The stoplight here is more of a non-symbolic ornament than a means of organizing traffic. The reason why nobody dies is that nobody is driving quite fast enough.

Walking eastward down Hefei Road.

I feel as if my pictures don't quite do justice to the commotion and bustle of the street in the morning. These are streets in the classic sense of Jane Jacobs's Life and Death of the Great American Cities, wherein the activity of one's daily life is open and visible to the public.

The sidewalks are for business; if you want to move from point A to point B, you will often need to share the road with the cars and bicycles. What appears at first glance to be a disorganized and chaotic space actually operates on the rather civilized notion that cars aren't any more important than people.

A view into an old longtang (弄堂) neighborhood off of Hefei Road. These cramped lane houses are to Shanghai what the hutong (胡同) are to Beijing: a cramped, traditional form of housing whose rapid disappearance is emblematic of the pace of urban development.

A sight nearly unseen in the US: people relaxing in the street.

More street traffic on Hefei Road.

This clothing store was especially busy as I walked by, but I couldn't tell why.


No pants.

A scooter repair shop.

This fellow sold produce from a wheeled cart. He was very popular, which I assumed was because his prices were good.

A fruit seller and patron.

Crispy-looking pastries.

A noodle merchant.

The noodle merchant's factory, exposed to the street.

Fresh seafood and other water-borne slimy things.

Crabs, eels, and clams.

Breakfast options almost always involve some kind of fried or grilled dough. The above merchant sold baked pies filled with egg, meat, or chives.

I opted for the quintessential Chinese breakfast: fried youtiao (油条) and sweet soy milk.

Youtiao are a lot like doughnuts: fried, greasy, and best when dipped. The combination with soy milk is squishy, crispy, warm, and slightly sweet.

This meal is nostalgic for me. I insisted on having it on one of my last mornings in Shanghai, even though I'm allergic to sweet soy milk. This is kind of a mystery to me, because I have no allergic response to edamame, tofu, or xian doujiang (咸豆浆), which are all basically various solid or liquid forms of the same thing.


  1. Wow time has gone by fast. I can't believe you're almost done with Shanghai!

  2. Damn. Where can I get me some Youtiao in the States?

  3. Ben: you can get youtiao wherever there's a sizable Chinese population. You could make the weekend excursion to NYC and find any number of places that have it, e.g. this: