French heritage, Chinese quintessence
When I was a young student, I took bus No. 864 home every day. As it passed by the intersection of Shaanxi Road S. and Jianguo Road W., where Cité Bourgogne is located, I looked in fascination at the elaborate old gate to the neighborhood and wondered what lay behind it. Only recently did I find out.
The gate that so mesmerized me at a young age is a traditional Chinese arch, or It is 8.5 meters high and 6 meters wide, decorated with gable-andhip roofs and bracket sets. It is the entry to a or traditional alleyway housing, neighborhood of preserved
(stone-gated) houses.
The enduring French name of the half-hectare area reminds me of its history: The neighborhood was designed by French merchants for residential use in 1930.
I entered Cité Bourgogne through the gateway on Shaanxi Road S., and the first place to greet me was a nameless hair salon. It was so dark and quiet that I felt a bit disconcerted. A middle-aged man suddenly emerged from a kitchen area that was once an electrical appliances repair shop some 10 years ago. He told me the hairdresser had gone out for a bit, so we chatted awhile.
He turned out to be a cleaner, surnamed Gu, who works in a nearby modern residential complex.
“The price of haircut is 15 yuan (US$2.38), while a perm might cost 50-60 yuan,” he informed me. “This place is always very busy because it’s popular with the elderly women living in the neighborhood.”
Gu pays 2,000 yuan a month to rent a 10-square-meter room in the neighborhood. He admitted it’s in a building badly need of some repair work.
Exiting the shop, I saw that some of the buildings in the lane look different.
They didn’t have the typical twin wooden doors painted black nor the facades of red brick. My interest was piqued and I pressed on to find answers.
(hi)!” is the local greeting. Residents cheerily ask, “Have you eaten lunch yet?” “Just came back?” “Where have you been?” “Such nice weather!” The conversations are natural and welcoming.
Walking along the lane, I saw clothes drying outside homes on cables. Shanghai people usually refer to clothes hanging outdoors as or “flags of ten thousand countries.” Although the practice was once frowned upon, the clothes flapping in a breeze somehow inject a personal vitality to the community.
“It is a golden area for drying clothes,” said a man surnamed Ma. “Though many poles have been installed between the buildings to hang clothes, little air or sun gets in there because the distance between buildings is so close.”
Ma is a construction team leader from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. I encountered him gardening in the lane. When he asked me to identify various plants, I flunked with every answer. The loquat, gardenias, orange trees and other plants don’t actually belong to Ma, but he tends them as if they were.
“When I am working outside or gone during Spring Festival, the elderly man living at No. 38 receives all my parcels, and all the couriers know that,” said Ma of the close ties in the neighborhood.
Ma said he decided to move to Cité Bourgogne four years ago because it was designated as a cultural heritage site in 1989 and wasn’t affected much by the fast urbanization.
“I had to move in the past due to urban redevelopment, and I didn’t want to do it again,” he explained. “What’s more, the transportation here is convenient.”
Sitting outside, Ma “chased” the sun, moving his chair up to three times a day to capture the warm rays.
Indeed, chairs are an omnipresent feature in a neighborhood. Sitting beside a disused well, a nonagenarian granny plucked pills from clothing as she watched her son tend the plants. To explore the indoor environment of
architecture, I peeped through a crack in one door. At the same time, a man, holding a cigarette and a lighter opened the door at No. 36.
The man, surnamed Xu, said he was visiting his 94-year-old mother, who was taking a nap. He lived in Cité Bourgogne before relocating to Minhang District 10 years ago. Now, he comes back frequently to take care of his mother, who refuses to leave the old house and move to a modern apartment.
“My parents bought the house in 1946,” said Xu. “I think it cost them two gold bars. My mother doesn’t want to live with us elsewhere because she is used to the life here. She likes to sit out in the lane on sunny days, talking with neighbors.”
Xu recalled the days of his youth, when boys in the neighborhood played marbles in the lane and girls skipped rope.
“There once was a football field opposite to Cité Bourgogne,” he said. “Everyone contributed 0.02 yuan in order to pool money for the entrance fee.”
I asked him about the buildings that differed from traditional style.
“Ah, you noticed that,” he said with smile. “The ground floor of the buildings was originally used for parking, while servants lived on the second and third floors. They looked after the household children during the daytime and slept there at night.”
Ba Jin, a famous 20th-century Chinese writer, once lived at No. 52, where he