An Introduction to Shanghai's Alleyways

The city of Shanghai is like a living organism. From a high altitude overlooking: the longitudinal and horizontal roads are like arteries, the city is divided into a number of small districts; within each district, there are many small passages formed between the building and the building, which is densely covered with the whole city, like capillaries as small but full of vitality. These small passages, each era, each region, each ethnic group has a different name, the Shanghai people call it "lane".

The ancient name for "lane" was "langtang".

Tang was the main road in front of the ancient imperial court or inside the gate of a temple. This Chinese character appeared in the Book of Songs more than 2,000 years ago. It had many meanings in the ancient Chinese language, but the meaning as "big road" was gradually diluted by history. In modern times, people can no longer remember any connection between the word "Tang" and architecture, and it has been replaced by another architecturally interesting Chinese character, "堂". Originally, "tang" was the name of a room and had nothing to do with roads and alleys, but in modern Chinese, it is after all more closely related to architecture than "tang", and it also harmonizes with "tang", so that it has no connection with architecture. "

In fact, it is not a good idea to use the word "Tang" in the same way as the word "alleyway".

In fact, it's not just the Shanghainese who call it "Tang", it's what they call it in the southern part of China. But the fact that it's as famous as Beijing's hutongs is largely due to the rise of the city's large number of lane houses in modern times.

Cities were divided into neighborhoods by roads, which in ancient China were called liang. A liang was often a basic administrative unit, containing residential houses, monasteries and bureaucratic residences. Residential buildings were constructed at the expense of the family, so that the buildings within a liang varied, and the owner of the residence was usually the user, and ownership and use were often united. This was the case in China until the middle of the nineteenth century almost without exception. Lilong, like the ancient neighborhoods, is a complex of many buildings, which are also built in a small area divided by a city road. However, unlike the Li Fang, there is one or several Li Langs in each small area; the shape and structure of the single building in each Li Lang is basically the same, and in general, it adopts the British multi-block row style, a row is usually about ten blocks. The combination of rows and rows generally adopts the row-row style, and only a few of them are arranged according to the topography of the area. In this new type of lane, the space between the rows of buildings is called the lane.