As I've said, China is a land of contrasts and no more so than the neighbours that each and every person shares. Whilst walking through the streets of Shanghai, we took a turn and to my surprise, stumbled on an 'old' section of town. As you can see, the houses are small and for the most part really well maintained, with outside sinks and communal toilets, yes, I said it, communal toilets. Unlike the Hutong section of Beijing, in which each household shares one toilet, this section had a few homes, sharing one toilet, well, more like an ablution block, consisting of a mens and a women's, separated by of all things, the garbage cans(which I hasten to add, were neatly hidden behind doors with flaps).
Now this is were the contrast part comes in!!!
After a few more turns and a few more sights, we came to the main road, where as expected there were hundreds of cars, scooters and people, but also, there were these amazing brand new high rise apartment buildings, standing one after the other, almost like soldiers at attention!!! The intersections, modern day masterpieces of concrete, steel and glass, specifically designed for the mass transit of pedestrians needing to get across, in any given direction.
Back to the 'old'.....Here you find dumpling factories, as I did, which consisted of a young man in this case, rolling the dough into a sausage, swinging it like a skipping rope in front of him, allowing it to twist on itself, then repeating the proces, before ultimately pinching off quarter size pieces, to press into discs, ready for filling!
In another doorway, there was on old lady and man, eating soup and noodles, with the 'smallest of restaurants'(1 table & 4 chair), I guess, to sell whatever food they had left after they had eaten their fill, one way to pay for your 'daily bread'!!!
After roaming the streets for a few more hours, we stumbled once again on YaYuan(OooWan, phonetically), to indulge our newly found palate for XioLongBao!!!
Ades
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