Shanghai nocturne

You can tell a lot about a city by what happens to it at night.

Does it shrivel up, snail-style, pulling googly antenna eyes with it?

Does it come alive with crowds of partiers who dance until dawn and piss on their neighbours lawns?

Shanghai can't seem to decide.

Of course there are the omnipresent construction sites that never seem to shut down for the night. Most workers camp out on-site and take breaks or naps periodically, but these mazes of cranes and skeleton buildings are lit and crawling with activity when the rest of the city lies dormant. This partly explains both how the city can erect ginormous structures in the space of a few months and why the gaping maw of Shanghai's growth needs all the migrant workers it can get (or at least why it did until the financial crisis came along to cramp its style).

Most useful places (*cough*the public transit system*cough*) close at ridiculously early hours. I learned this the hard way one night, when I was stranded while transferring stations and was forced out of the subway into then-unfamiliar territory in search of a cab driver with a high tolerance for disoriented foreigners. I'm still very bitter about the often puritanical closing hours of necessities like subways, stores and the gates to apartment complexes (no, seriously--whose idea was that?). The message here is very old-school in nature: Why are you up late? You should be sleeping so you can work hard making steel in the morning, dammit.

Because of this deterrent attitude, and because it's so expensive, most locals don't really go out partying very late. Sure, there are plenty of clubs, etcetera, but they cater primarily to expats and a very select group of well-heeled Shanghairen.

But night time is when Shanghai's shikumen and lilongs come alive. These narrow alleyway housing complexes-cum-mini neighbourhoods become outdoor living rooms at night: People wash dishes, bathe, eat and play cards or mah jong in pools of street lights and hanging bulbs, obscured by clouds of steam emanating from vats of noodles or baskets of dumplings. Past 3 a.m., labourers load miscellaneous crates and cardboard boxes on and off of trucks several times too large for the narrow lanes they lumber through.



This is the part of Shanghai I love, which is saying quite a bit because this is a far-from-loveable city (no one I've met so far, save for especially h-core Shanghairen, actually likes this place at all as an urban entity: They're just here for the cash). It makes one feel as though this surreal, space-age money-making cyborg actually has a beating human heart. Even if that human heart smells a little like fermenting garbage and duck carcasses, and although it serves more than anything else as a reminder of the city's income gap is growing as quickly as its economy, it's pretty fun to wander through after hours.