一张照片，一个故事—业余摄影师眼中的石库门生活 - 2017年03月10日

URBAN development is viewed by some people as a predator swallowing up old streets, old houses and old ways of life in the name of progress.

In the 18 months ending in the spring of 2016, two old blocks of century-old shikumen (stone-gate) buildings and a web of back lanes in the downtown Jiangning Neighborhood of Jing’an District were demolished.

More than 4,000 Shanghai families who had lived there for generations were, happily or reluctantly, relocated from the city center to the suburbs to make way for modern redevelopment.

A team of 17 amateur photographers, including a retired reporter, a policeman, a doctor, a professor and a headmaster, volunteered to capture scenes of daily life before the demolition and then record the work of the bulldozers.

“We captured history truthfully through our lenses,” says Jing’an native Ding Fangjie, 70, one of the team members. “We might not be able to change the world, but we can preserve the memories of the past. We were born, raised and worked here. It was our duty to make sure this place was not forgotten.”

The volunteer project lasted almost 400 days, following each step of the relocation — from the tense community meetings to fights within families and final farewells among old neighbors who had been living next door to one another for decades.

The photos have been compiled into an album that was released recently to the public.

Every photo tells a story, be it happy or sad.

A traditional shikumen house was home to multiple families, squeezed together. First-floor living rooms were often full of dirty, oily kitchenware shared among different families, and the backyard usually had a toilet. It was not rare for three generations of a family to share no more than 10 square meters of living space.

Though life was hard in a shikumen house, inhabitants made the best of a bad situation and most of them managed to stay positive.

In one picture taken by Ding, a street barber takes a nap, his legs stretched out across an upturned washbasin. The barber had been cutting hair in the back alleyway for more than 30 years.

“He probably had no license, but shikumen people loved him,” Ding says. “No matter how the world changed around him, the barber enjoyed an afternoon snooze. That was his pace of life, and it was quite carefree.”

Above street level in shikumen blocks, lines were strung to cure meats, dry chickens and sausages, and hang laundry.

“It was a scene that you aren’t likely to see today in modern neighborhoods,” says Zhang Chuanda, a retired policeman. “Perhaps it looks backward to some people, but that’s the way life was.”

Zhang focused his lens on back-lane “uncles.” In his pictures, they are either portrayed as docile husbands cooking dinners in the lane, or as louts with slicked-back hair and bold checkered shirts engaged in loud discussions.

“Shanghai uncles” were also photographed taking outdoor showers in the lanes on hot summer days and then strutting back home to get dressed.

“People had no privacy, but they had no other choice,” says Ding. “The living spaces were so small that they had to bathe outside.”

Retired journalist Zheng Zhengshu, also a Jing’an native, used his reporting skills to relax subjects whom he wanted to photograph. He sat down and chatted with them in small, dimly-lit shikumen rooms.

“Not demolish?” asked an old granny sharing an 8-square-meter home with three generations. “Look around you. How can anyone live a place like this?”

Another photo series recorded an ordinary morning in the life of resident Lao Zhang and his wife. The couple lived in six square meters, comprising two rooms on two levels. Each morning, Zhang, who slept on one level, called down to his wife on the level below, “Is it time to get up?”

The couple had to navigate a steep, narrow staircase in a home built by Jews in the 1930s. They nailed lines of hooks along the sides of the staircase, to hang plastic bags filled with clothing, towels, toothbrushes and other daily items.

“I sincerely want to get out of this place and have a decent apartment,” Zhang told Zheng.

Some residents were overjoyed at the prospects of moving to new apartments in the suburbs; others approached their imminent relocation with great sadness and said they would have preferred to stay put.

One morning as Zheng was bicycling to an eatery for breakfast, he passed by the neighborhood and saw 15 buses lined up along the front entrance. A group of 500 residents was about to be transported to various suburbs to see what their future apartments looked like.

“Why take us to those remote places that don’t have good bus service or local food markets?” shouted a resident named Wang Sufen, who always had a cigarette dangling from her lips and was called “the trumpet” by locals. Zheng captured the moment of her anger.

“The relocation process was very difficult because many buildings were still under construction and some residents had to live in temporary accommodation for up to two years,” Zheng said.

As news of the relocation settled into the neighborhood, rumors flew wild and some residents said they were determined to squeeze as much compensation as they could.

Zheng photographed a government mediator was sat with an old resident until midnight, patiently trying to explain the process.

“The woman told him she wouldn’t move unless she was given six apartments as compensation,” Zheng says.

At one community meeting, Zheng hid behind a copy machine to photograph how families sometimes fell out over the relocation. He captured two brothers fighting, sisters pulling each other’s hair and ugly faces distorted by verbal abuse.

Once he happened to stumble across an underground gambling room, and one of the participants went into a rage about his presence. Zheng says he pretended to know nothing and remained cool. He later printed the photos and sent them to the gamblers, promising they wouldn’t be published.

“To demolish or not to demolish? Everyone has his own view. It’s very complicated,” Zheng says. “I’m neutral. I don’t make judgments. All I wanted to do was capturing life as it existed.”

At the year end of 2015, the residents in the two old blocks held a street party to bid farewell to the neighborhood and to each other. Liu Peijun, 85, who had been living in the area since age 19, sobbed at the party.

“I don’t know if I will ever see my old friends again,” she said as the lens captured her tears.

In March of 2016, bulldozers, cranes and other heavy equipment moved in to begin demolition work. An era ended.

“Those shikumen back lanes and the lives they harbored have become history,” Ding says. “Maybe someday we will tell our grandchildren about a home we once knew.”