Modern Shanghai’s best
example of the
architectural as political is
surely the shikumen. The
word literally translates to
“stone gate,” but references
a type of laneway housing
here that in its lifespan has
hosted a cultural and
economic rollercoaster of
residents, depending on
the political winds. If
you’ve been to Shanghai,
you’ve probably strolled
the best-known shikumen
revitalization projects, the fancy shopping and
eating district Xintiandi and its aspiring-
hipster cousin Tianzifang. On a leafy street in
the former French Concession is an
unassuming stone archway cut into a brick
façade that leads to a different kind of shikumen
compound, this one a tourist-traic-free haven
that has settled serenely its latest role: the plush,
homey Capella Shanghai, Jian Ye Li.
The architectural style was pioneered in the
mid-1800s in Shanghai’s foreign concessions, amix of European and American factory towns
and rural Chinese country homes. Oriented
south and organized according to other feng
shui principles, two- and three-story shikumen
appealed to wealthy expats and locals, who
lived in them and bought them as investments
to rent to the masses of Chinese workers then
streaming into the city. Set along a series of
narrow lanes (called “longtang” or “lilong”), the
townhouses shared walls but each had its own
front garden cocooned behind an often ornate
shikumen—giving the neighborhoods their
name. The result was a cozy inner sanctum
surrounded by a lively outer ecosystem.
But chaos is hard to contain. Renters began
subletting rooms to students, artists and
scholars—including dissident Communists
who had found among the increasingly
warren-like neighborhoods safe places to
convene. When the Western powers left China
in the 1940s, the Party packed the shikumen
further, installing multiple families into each
unit, sometimes in the same room, sometimes
adding new floors between the original ones.
It’s not hard to imagine how quality of life
deteriorated in such tight quarters.CAPELLA
SHANGHAI,
JIAN YE LI