This week in Shanghaiist
We received this email today from a friend (and frequent eater of shengjian mantou):
A friend was just walking through the Wujiang Lu food street, which was like a ghost town today, and a little old guy told him that it’s about to be torn down… end of April, apparently. Have you heard about this?Desperate tragedy for me… I think I will need to walk at least 5 blocks for XiaoYang dumplings now…
We haven't been to Wujiang Lu in a while — but we figured perhaps a Shanghaiist reader had the scoop. Anyone have anything to share?
Last December, the Shanghai Daily translated a story from the Shanghai Morning Post that discusses the future of Wujiang Lu. We'll reproduce it in full here, since you have to subscribe to the Shanghai Daily to access it (here's the original Chinese version):
Snack road to facelift to fashion streetBy Li Xinran 2006-12-1
THE city's Wujiang Road, which is famous for its snack vendors, will receive a facelift and become a fashion street in the near future, Shanghai Morning Post reported today.
Part of the vendors will open again in March after nearly two years of renovations. The bid for the operation right of the vendors will be held in January.
Most of them will become fashion boutiques or restaurants, the newspaper said.
Old vendors, which are mainly concentrated on the street between Shimen Road and Qinghai Road, will also be renovated in the middle of next year.
The construction of two residential projects neighboring the 562-meter street kicked off renovation since the ground and second floors of the new buildings were designed for commercial use.
Jing'an Four Seasons, one of the two new residences, plans to introduce about 60 fashion boutiques or restaurants on its ground and second floors, whose total area is 11,000 square meters, said Zhu Feng, a project manager from Savills China, a properties service provider.
Wujiang Road, which is in the southeast of Jing'an district, starts from Shimen No. 1 Road and ends at Maoming Road N. It became a vendor street, especially known as a snack street, in September 2000, several months after the neighboring Shimen No. 1 Station of Metro Line No. 2 opened to the public.
The renovation of the street, which is considered as one of the city's scenic sites, kicked off last March, according to the report.
The story isn't exactly clear on what the future holds for the street's current occupants, but the fact that the Four Seasons is involved doesn't fill us with optimism about the fate of street food on the "fashion street." If that is the case, it's a shame — Wujiang Lu was full of life.
On the other hand, Shanghai's millionaires desperately needed a new place to hang out. You can't expect them to walk all the way to Plaza 66, can you?
Photo from tigerpink.
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It is sad to see that the appears sterilisation of inner city culture has finally hit this great feature of Shanghai. Upscale retail strikes again.
I was there last night with a Chinese friend. He wanted to visit because he had seen on the TV news an item about it being closed down. Its really sad because the place is now deserted and hardly packed full of people and vendors as it usually is at around dinner time. Overnight they have built a concrete gate at the entry of Wu Jian at the Shimen side and there were police everywhere.
Aparently, it is all because of the neighbouring new development and the developers wanting to have a more "modern" appearnce. Doesn't Nanjing Road have enough ghost malls (Plaza 66, Citic, West Gate) already?
The sad thing is that not only have all the street vendors had to move away / lose their business, but the pernament restaurants are quite empty as well. At the one I was eating at a girl came in towards the end of the night asking if they had any positions opened -- she'd just been fired from her job across the street. I'm guessing because the owners know that buiness won't be so strong in the future.
If there's one thing shanghai needs, its another fashion street!
I wonder how the regional planning departments are divided in the city center - it wouldn;t be surprising if Wujiang Lu is in a section which currently doesn't have a "fashion street" and with the white elephant loving mentality of mid level officials they decided they needed one as well . .
Since when did the powers that be know what fashion is?
@ Steve
"If there's one thing shanghai needs, its another fashion street!"
Prey tell: where are the other fashion streets? I've been looking for fashion in this city for years and all I can find are over-priced imports and crap-quality copies. Aside from Huai Hai Rd and pockets of Nanchang, Changle and Fuxing ... there really isn't much to choose from for a city this size.
Kinda sad to see it go... but then if such sentiments had been rife in Shanghai from the late 90s, most of us wouldn't be here as it's be an even bigger dump than it is now.
I had friends visiting from the UK this past week and walking down WuJiang Lu was one of the things they enjoyed the most. Kebabs, stinky tofu, monkeys- it's got it the lot.
Are there any other places similar to this?
I've been reading some Chinese articles on this from Google News:
http://www.google.cn/news?hl=zh-CN&ned=ccn&q=%E5%90%B4%E6%B1%9F%E8%B7%AF&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E8%B5%84%E8%AE%AF
Looks like, concretely, they're shutting down and "remodelling" the section between Taixing Rd, where the WB store is, and Shimen No 1 Rd, where the "real" Wujiang Rd starts. The rest of the street, they're performing a "purification" on, bringing things up to building and health codes. The tone of the articles is the usual resignation, a "what can you do" kind of attitude.
There's some irony there too. In this article, a city rep claims that the new street will attract office workers and high-income local residents, but in another section a white-collar women who works at a Pudong financial institution laments that the once-busy street has grown shorter while a man taking his wheelchair-bound mother on a walk praises the streets newfound walkability. Telling, if you ask me.
Rumors say that many of the stands that clogged the old Wujiang Rd have moved to the Yunnan Food Street, south of People's Square. Baidu Maps:
http://tinyurl.com/39bxo5
(It seems like I remember another food street south of the walking portion of Nanjing East Rd, on the way to the Bund.)
Also, the city will set up a branch of the police that patrols Nanjing East Rd to patrol Wujiang Rd in the future in order to assure that the present cleaning-up lasts into the future. Also, a mounted bicycle patrol.
The reports say that cleaners had to bring in high pressure hoses and laundry detergent to wash off the layers of oil that had accumulated on the road's brick surface over the years. Store owners commented that people often fell on rainy days because of the oil slick that appeared on the road. They were outside taking advantage of the street's emptiness to give their stores' face a good scrubbing. "Unlicensed stand" owners (as the articles all standardized on calling them) stood in the shadows discretely watching the janitorial work. They ask that the city government develop a supervised licensing system so they can legally work their trade.
Good article here:
http://web.xwwb.com/wbnews.php?db=9&thisid=90205
The saddest thing is that if you tolerate the um, flavor of these streets, you can get a pretty decent meal or snack for ultra cheap and the staff is also much friendlier since they are often the owners.
In due time, pan fried dumplings and ma la tang will only be a memory.
This is the worst news I have seen since I've been living in Shanghai. I really like that street and its atmosphere, and it sickens me to think that the main winners now would be the usual: developers and politicians. And what bugs me more is the "Mei ban fa" attitude, really...