This is Shanghai--part two

The city's smaller streets, especially in the downtown area, are a maze of lilongs--row houses with storefronts on the ground floor, a single entrance leading onto an outdoor alleyway and the building's multiple units. They're criss-crossed with laundry lines and power lines; people, bicycles, garbage and miscellany. In some, the gutters double as miniature open sewers. Grimy, but they're also the most organic, community-oriented streetscapes I've seen so far.

During the day, these mini-neighbourhoods are hives of small-scale commercial activity. I'm not sure if the people living here own the stores, which sell everything from bean cakes to bicycle equipment, but I think they live above them. At night, they gather to watch TV in the stores, or sit outside and gamble (I'm trying to figure out what the games are but am failing--some play mah jong, but the most popular is a weird one with round tiles and what looks like a checkerboard). There are water spigots on the sidewalk people use to wash dishes or to bathe; I'm not sure if there's running water inside.

As far as I can tell, these neighbourhoods are endangered species in this city: They get rezoned, bulldozed and replaced by towering skyscrapers to feed the urban development craze; their inhabitants get unilaterally relocated, lately to the outskirts of Pudong near the airport.