Shanghai alleys
Alleys, a unique form of residential housing in Shanghai, were once inseparable from the lives of millions of Shanghai citizens.
How many stories, how many allusions, how many celebrities, and how many memories are closely connected with the Shikumen and the pavilions. It can be said that without alleys, there would be no Shanghai and no Shanghainese. The lanes constitute the most important architectural feature of modern Shanghai; the lanes constitute the most common living space for millions of ordinary Shanghainese; and the lanes constitute the most important part of the local culture of modern Shanghai.
Longtang is what Shanghai people call lane. It is different from traditional Chinese Jiangnan houses and any kind of Western architectural form. However, it always bears more or less traces of traditional Chinese architecture and more or less foreign architectural influences.
It best represents the characteristics of modern Shanghai urban culture, and it is also the most direct product of modern Shanghai history.
The city of Shanghai is like a living body. Viewed from a high altitude: the criss-crossing roads are like arteries, dividing the city into several communities; within each community, there are many small passages formed between buildings, which are densely packed throughout the city, like capillaries. Small but full of life. Different eras, regions, and ethnic groups have different names for these small passages. Shanghainese call them "alleys."
"Nongtang" was written as "Nongtang" in ancient times.
"Tang" refers to the main road in front of the ancient court or inside the ancestral temple gate. This Chinese character appeared in the Book of Songs more than 2,000 years ago. It had many meanings in ancient Chinese. Later, its meaning as "big road" was gradually diluted by history. In modern times, people no longer remember the connection between the word "Tang" and architecture, so they replaced it with another Chinese character "Tang" that is interesting in architecture. "Tang" is originally a name for a room and has nothing to do with roads or alleys. However, in modern Chinese, its connection with architecture is closer than "Tang" after all, and it is also homophonic with "Tang". In this way "Nongtang" evolved into "Nongtang".
In fact, it’s not just Shanghainese who call it “alongtang”, it’s also called “alongtang” in the Jiangnan region of China. However, the reason why lanes are as famous as Beijing's hutongs is mainly due to the rise of a large number of lane houses in modern Shanghai.
The residential areas divided by roads in the city were called Lifang in ancient China. A village is often a basic administrative unit, including residential buildings, temples, bureaucratic mansions, etc. Residential buildings are all invested and built by the family, so the buildings within a building are different. The owner of the residence is usually the user, and ownership and use rights are often integrated. This situation was almost without exception in China until the mid-nineteenth century.
When the lanes are specifically named, they are called ×× lanes or squares, gardens, villages, villages, or even new villages, gardens, villas, villas, etc. Like the ancient lifang, a lane is also a complex of buildings composed of many buildings. They are also built in communities divided by urban roads. But what is different from Lifang is that each community has one or several lanes; the shape and structure of the individual buildings in each lane are basically the same, and generally adopt the British multi-building row style, with a row of Usually there are about ten buildings. The combination of rows and rows generally uses determinants, and only a few are arranged according to local conditions and terrain. In this new style of alley, the space between each row of buildings is called the alley