What does it mean that there is a "long" on the house number in Shanghai?

Lane is a unique residential form in Shanghai, which was once closely related to the lives of thousands of Shanghai residents in Qian Qian.

Shanghainese call it alley, which is different from the traditional houses in the south of China and other western architectural forms. However, it always has more or less traces of China traditional architecture and more or less exotic architectural scenes.

It can best represent the characteristics of modern Shanghai urban culture and is also the most direct product of modern Shanghai history.

The city of Shanghai is like a living organism. Looking down from the air, the criss-crossing roads are like arteries, dividing the city into several communities; Within each residential area, there are many small passages between buildings, which are densely distributed all over the city, as small as capillaries but full of vitality. Different times, different regions and different nationalities have different names for these small passages, and Shanghainese call them "alley".

"Lane" ancient Chinese characters "Lane Tang".

"Tang" is the main road in front of the ancient court or ancestral temple. This Chinese character appeared in the Book of Songs more than two thousand years ago. It had many meanings in ancient Chinese. Later, as a "road", this meaning was gradually diluted by history. In modern times, people can't remember the connection between the word "Tang" and architecture, so they use another interesting Chinese character "Tang" instead. "Tang" used to be a name for a room, which had little to do with roads and alleys. However, in modern Chinese, it is more closely related to architecture than "Tang" and homophonic with "Tang", so "Lane" has evolved into "Lane".

In fact, it is not only Shanghainese who call it "Lane", but also the Jiangnan area of China. However, the alley can be as famous as the hutong in Beijing, mainly because of the rise of a large number of alley houses in modern Shanghai.