What's Shaoxing Lu, you may be wondering?

"Shaoxing" is the name of possibly the prettiest street in Shanghai. "Lu" is the Chinese word for "road". It's in the part of town that used to be the French Concession, so the architecture is typically European, the streets spacious and leafy, and the atmosphere not very Chinese at first sight. You might as well be in the Old Continent until you look inside the lanes with their hanging laundry and communal living, hear the bell of the junk collector riding his bicycle before 7am, or risk being run over by a scooter on the sidewalk or knocked over by a turning bicycle with 5 metres of bamboo sticks tied to it.

Shaoxing Lu is the old publishers row. In the old days, this street was home to many publishing houses. Today only two or three survive. In the short time I've been here, art galleries have made room for bars and cafes, the "Bureau of Censorship" has disappeared, and most other shops have undergone multiple transformations. Thankfully, Shaoxing Park, a little pocket of green filled with beautifully landscaped gardens, grandpas playing majong, grandmas exercising and toddlers playing is still unchanged.

Shaoxing Lu

Lane Life

Shaoxing Park

Bamboo on the move