Visitors to Shanghai are often impressed by the glitz and the glamour of the new skyscrapers and booming economy. Yet still, just behind the main big money shopping malls, 5 star hotels and Ferrari showrooms lies old Shanghai, largely unaffected and still much as it ever was. Taking a walk just one street behind the JW Marriott Hotel at Tomorrow Square just off Nanjing Xi Lu, you immediately enter a Shanghai living as it has done for much of the past 100 years….

Shanghai’s lane houses are known as Shikumen, dating mainly from the mid 1920’s to the late 1930’s. The architectural style is quite unique and borrows from both Japanese and Western influences as well as maintaining the classic ‘courtyard’ design of traditional Chinese. Houses here are a mixture of some occasional large mansions, in addition to smaller, cramped units. However the lanes offer a peaceful and well ordered lifestyle.

Maintaining a sense of style is important in when living in fairly dense populations such as the courtyard lanes, and street side hairdressers and beauty salons abound. This small salon also offers such massage delights as ‘foot sticking’ and ‘foot pinching’ all designed to improve the circulation.

Vendors will cycle around the lanes, with their cycle carts laden up with goods. This one is selling pomelos, oranges, and sugar cane. Sugar cane can be eaten raw with the bark cut off to chew the stem, or can be pulped to extract the sweet juices.

Pets such as cats and dogs were illegal for many years as China’s poverty made it unseemly to own such a luxury. But people still needed company, and inexpensive and easy to maintain creatures such as goldfish and even insects became and remain very popular. This man is selling an array of different exotic fish from the back of his bicycle.

Where there are pet fish, there is a need for waterweeds, and this woman specializes on providing aquatic plants for fish tanks.

In contrast to the three-four storey Shikumen lane houses, the JW Marriott Hotel just behind them rises hundreds of feet into the air.

The love of smaller pets thrives amongst the crowded conditions. This shop specializes in turtles and lizards.

Even on a busy Saturday, a lull in the market brings out an impromptu game of playing cards – illegal until just a few years ago due to clampdowns on gambling.

The Lanes are narrow and can get crowded – deliveries are made on bicycle carts such as these.

While the Marriott Hotel, rather like Paris’s Eiffel Tower, peers down into the tiny lanes from high above.

Small local restaurants provide much of the food – cooking at home can be cramped and these back street eateries offer delicious and inexpensive meals. A three course meal including soup, a combined dish of chicken or pork, and several different vegetables and a large bowl of rice is as little as RMB 6 (USD0.8 cents).

Other locals ply their trade on the street as well. This is a cobbler, who will mend shoes and resole and re-stitch. In the poorer or more thrifty areas, such ancient skills are kept alive via economic necessity.

For sport, as well as for pets, the Chinese have long kept fighting crickets, and pamper them to get them up to fight standard. Two male crickets when introduced will fight and attempt to bite off the others legs and wings. Betting and much individual pride rests on the outcome, and the sport is still highly popular in areas such as these. The going price of a good fighting cricket is about RMB100 (USD15).

Choose your cricket…

And give him a home. This man is selling hand made cricket boxes (actually cylindrical containers) in which the cricket is fed, watered, and feels at home.

But amongst these small lanes are Mansions, such as this one owned by a wealthy Shanghainese American.

The Lanes are divided up into smaller lanes, and often secured by heavy wrought iron gates, leaving the interior courtyards peaceful and safe for children.

Wrapped up against Shanghai’s winter, kids play with plastic dinosaurs outside.