Old town sketches capture a way of life fast disappearing
Tõnis Kimmel and his Drawing Shanghai group members have recorded a vanishing aspect of Shanghai's urban life as the city strives to carry out its urban renewal project to improve living conditions.
A woman in an old town household hangs her clothes using a long pole, while her husband rests on the sofa.
In the lanes of Shanghai's old town, people grew grapes and cucumbers above their heads.
Tõnis Kimmel, an Estonian architect who has been working in Shanghai since 2010, has spent eight years sketching the city's old town with his "Drawing Shanghai" group members.
"One night around 2015 or 2016, I was on my way home on foot from Pudong to Puxi (Shanghai is divided into Pudong and Puxi areas by its Huangpu River). Then I passed a kind of urban village and felt an immediate attachment to it. The windows of the houses were set low, so I had a chance to peek through them into the interior life of the dwellers. Back in Estonia, people always drew their curtains at night. I visited the place later frequently because it was so fun," said Kimmel.
The architect invited a group of friends to sketch scenes. Later it dawned on him that the "village" was part of Shanghai's old town. Many Shanghainese used to live there.
People in the "village" were also more willing to start a conversation with him.
"There was an estate called Shuyinlou (书隐楼), or the Hermit's Library, around Xiaonanmen (小南门) in Huangpu District. We found the place on an online digital map among geographical names such as the Bund and the People's Square," said Kimmel.
Then a member of Drawing Shanghai made a phone call asking for entry. A granny surnamed Guo allowed the group in.
"The lane which connected the estate was so narrow. As we walked in, then all of a sudden we were in a garden and saw those Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) houses with sculptures and wooden carvings inside," said Kimmel.
The granny still lived in the estate during the group's visit. She was the last generation of a former wealthy family.
"And there was a man who lived in a four-story house in West Tangjia Lane. On the ground floor he offered shampooing service for pet dogs and put up his bathing hut. On the second and third floors he was probably living, and on the roof he raised pigeons," said Kimmel.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s when entertainment facilities such as shopping malls or cinemas did not exist or were rare, men of the old town in Shanghai would raise pigeons in a rooftop cage for fun. Then they competed.
They would take their pigeons to a faraway place, such as Hefei in Anhui Province or Datong in Shanxi Province, then set them free. Whose pigeons returned to their homes in the old town in Shanghai the quickest would be the winner.
The tradition has been preserved till now and in some households in the old town in Shanghai we may still have opportunities to see pigeons cooing, fluttering their wings or bursting their way suddenly into the sky.
Some of the house owners in Shanghai's old town raised racing pigeons on their rooftops.
A vacant pigeon loft after dwellers in the old town were relocated to better living conditions.
"In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s the old town dwellers started to mend their houses. They built an additional kitchen here or a storage room there. They planted climbing sponge gourds and raised cocks and hens. As an architect, I am thrilled by the way how ordinary people in China made their houses when they had a freedom to do this, and especially when their budgets were limited," said Kimmel.
The owners of homes in Shanghai's old town often used poetry to decorate their entrances, so that a walk in the old town would easily become a Chinese poetry trip, Kimmel said.
Grandpa and the poem he forgot, at 96 Daochuan Lane. The characters on the arch are actually Yi Wulu 亦吾庐.
Drawing Shanghai group members once visited No.96 Daochuan Lane (倒川弄96号) where two elderly people inhabited one of those elegant houses.
There was a grandpa who always welcomed the group. He told them that the archaic typeface used to write the three characters above his back portal was tricky and the rightmost character was not 夹 (jia meaning "in-between" in Chinese), although it looked like it.
A Tongji University professor, the grandpa recalled, had once told him what it actually meant, but his memory was playing hide and seek with him.
The group later found out that the line might come from the tail of the poem "Late Spring 暮春" by Song Dynasty poet Lu You (1125-1209) that roughly translates as "several straw-thatched huts also serve as my home(亦吾庐)."
Tõnis Kimmel (left) and his Drawing Shanghai members.
Shanghai old town and its status quo
When Drawing Shanghai visited Daochuan Lane around June, 2021, eight families that used to live there had been relocated. By early December last year, the lane was demolished for an urban renewal and relocation project.
Historically, the lane was another river reclamation road. And its name 倒川, part of a Chinese phrase 倒川横四 (make a quarter turn of 川 and maintain 四 in its current shape), is said to derive hieroglyphically from merchants' secret bargain of the number 三十四, or 34, in the past.
Shuyinlou, or the Hermit's Library estate, which had weathered 258 years of vicissitudes, became state-owned in 2020 and went through rescue maintenance by November 2021.
The mansion, first constructed in the Ming Dynasty, is set back from the narrow Tiandeng Lane 天灯弄 and hidden behind a wall 10 meters high. It has over forty rooms and three interior courtyards. Being one of the oldest residences in Shanghai, its last inhabitant a woman named Guo Yuwen.
Shanghai rose from a county town (xian 县) in 1291 in the Yuan Dynasty to the most populous county in all of China by the end of the 15th century, according to Katya Knyazeva, a Russian scholar on the old town.
By the 16th century, periodic bans on marine trade imposed by the Ming court hindered Shanghai's port business and gave rise to a rogue economy of coastal plundering. And Shanghai too suffered from repeat pirate raids. The assault, however, mobilized landowners to raise funds to build a defensive wall against invaders. An earthen rampart, about four kilometers in circumference, was erected in just three months, surrounded by a wide moat. That formed Shanghai's old town, which is circled half by the Renmin Road 人民路 and half by the Zhonghua Road 中华路 now, according to Knyazeva's book "Shanghai Old Town: The Walled City," which had inspired Kimmel's later adventures in the first place.
The citywide urban renewal project, which had also put the old town in its demolition plan, is drawing to an end now. The last section of the old town, which a visitor still has a chance to witness, is around Mianjin Lane 面筋弄 in Huangpu District.
In February last year, Kimmel and his Drawing Shanghai members held an exhibition at Urbancross Gallery in downtown Xuhui District displaying their portrayals of the old town they had ventured into.
"Each time I sent out an advertisement calling on people to join the sketching event, I was afraid that few people might care and were willing to come. But each time the event proved to be quite popular and bustling with drawing members," said Kimmel.
"Shanghai's old town lies under the shadow of tall buildings and is split by highways, but its street life reflects an environment that is centuries old. The network of lanes formed slowly, chaotically, following the contours of garden estates and creeks, and many neighborhoods here still express the free-spirited, entrepreneurial and resilient character of the old port," wrote Knyazeva.
A grandpa who lives in the old town explains that living space in his home is very limited.
A map of the walled city as it was in the 1870s.
A current map of Shanghai old town.
