Caojiadu, where I was born and lived for 44 years, is a downtown area in western Shanghai where the three districts of Changning, Jing'an and Putuo meet, full of fireworks. In addition to five or six storefronts and a tiger stove, there are silk mills and woolen mills on both sides, and most of the shops are in Changning on Tsushima Road and Jing'an on the left. Among them, the Changning store opposite the piece, my family benefited more.
The old appearance of Caojiadu Wujiaochang in the 1980s
In my memory, the closest to the alley is the Zhengda cigarette paper shop diagonally opposite, because this shop is located on the "island" (some people describe it as a boat), and because of its existence, it has become Wanhangdu Road and Wanhangdu Back Road. This island belongs to Changning District. The cigarette paper shop is a standard mom-and-pop shop, with a front shop and a back house. The boss has a smile on her chubby round face all day long, and the boss lady takes care of the back kitchen. Stores of less than 20 square meters should naturally be fully utilized, except for a road on the right that allows one person to pass, it is full of all kinds of goods. Along the street are of course large glass cabinets, the most eye-catching inside are various brands of cigarettes, under which are towels, soaps, toothpaste, toothbrushes, needles and threads, thimble hoops, wide tight bands, various colored buttons, paper buttons, small scissors, foreign candles, matches, wooden combs, shoelaces, petroleum jelly, hair growth oil, letter paper, envelopes...... Straw paper and laundry soap are arranged on the shelves by the wall because they occupy a large area. On one side of the large glass cabinet against the wall is a vertical glass bottle, which is full of children's favorite snacks, including plum, tangerine peel, salt-jin dates, peach petals, zongzi candy, spearmint candy, watermelon seeds, melon seeds, sweet olives, salted olives, five-spice beans, orchid beans, etc.
Among them, my favorite is Fuguo (commonly known as Baobian olive), because it is big, delicious, durable, and has a large core, which can be used to play games with friends.
After my father received his salary, he often asked me to buy cigarettes, and my mother also sent me to buy soap, straw paper, etc., and often patronized their business, and got acquainted with the boss. The deepest impression is that when a batch of Fuguo is purchased, I will carefully observe outside the glass bottle, pick the largest one, and ask the boss to take it out, and he will not tire of meeting my requirements.
The other major shops are across Wanhangdu Road at the exit of the alley. In my impression, there is a Renfeng Zhai pastry shop. On weekdays, the store serves dumplings, steamed buns, buns of various colors, as well as double stuffed dumplings and Dingsheng cakes. Every Chinese New Year and half a month away, my grandmother, who was wrapped in a three-inch golden lotus, would pull me up and bring her home-ground glutinous rice flour to order sugar rice cakes. My grandmother and the shopkeeper are very familiar with each other, because they are both from Wuxi, and they often come and go. There are two kinds of sugar rice cakes ordered by my grandmother, red and white, and the requirements are high sweetness and many osmanthus flowers, and the boss does it correctly.
There is a Liu Yuchang bowl shop (later changed to a hardware store) at the entrance of Wujiaochang, in which pots and pans, spoons and spoons, everything is complete. Due to the fact that the common people were generally diligent and thrifty at that time, they were reluctant to break the bowls and basins, and a corner of the store also set up a special bowl repair service. Bowls and basins are placed on one side of the cupboard, especially the rice bowls inlaid with gold edges, decorated with the words "Fu Shou Shuangquan" and "Long Life", which are more and more favored by consumers, so they are more and more precious. Those casseroles and coal stoves of different sizes are placed in the middle of the ground, and customers should be extra careful when walking, especially in the lunar month, when the flow of people buying bowls and pots is even more crowded. At the checkout of the counter, there are several masters who specialize in tying bowls and basins for customers, only to see them turn over and over with straw ropes, and divide them by two, and tie a long string of pots and bowls, so that customers can carry them home steadily, I have to say that this is a unique scenery in the bowl shop.
In the 1980s, the intersection of Changning Road and Wanhangdu Road, the street scene of Triangle Field
Next to it is a Changning Chinese medicine store, when I was young, I went to buy pagoda candy, honeysuckle dew, cough syrup, etc., but the Chinese medicine store has never been as noisy as the bowl shop next door.
The food and fruit store is next door, especially in summer, selling watermelons accounts for half of the country, especially when only selling watermelon naan, adults and children who come to buy steel pots will line up. It needs to be added that the sidewalk here is particularly wide, and before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the store uses the sidewalk at the door to set up a large iron pot and ask the staff to fry the chestnuts of Tianjin Liangxiang. The twilight closed, and under the illumination of a hundred light bulbs, the strong middle-aged man, operating shirtless, with a towel hanging around his neck, sweaty skin shiny, and a gourd poured with oil. He kept stir-frying in the large pot that was erected diagonally, the fire in the stove under him was blazing, and the green smoke was curling in the pot.
Trough Fang (oil sauce shop), is the place where the oil is made and the sauce is made, and the whole tall wall is inlaid with the four big characters of "Xinguan Sauce Garden". Walking into the door, you can smell a salty and umami smell, leaning against the right wall with a wooden board to erect a whole bag of salt, the porcelain basin by the counter, all kinds of pickles, there are Sichuan mustard, Pingwang kohlrabi, pickles, Yangzhou assorted vegetables, Rugao (there are also Jiangdu, Xiaoshan) dried radish, as well as red and white bean curd, etc. If you get stinky bean curd, there will be a long queue. The reason is that this item is favored by Ningbo, Shaoxing and some Shanghainese. At that time, Shanghainese people used to eat soaked rice in the morning, and these pickles were especially popular.
Next door to the Ding Hexiang (later changed to "Battle") stationery store, is a store that I love to go around since I was a primary school student, I often go to see pencils and erasers, buy oolong water small Kai brushes, etc. Along the street on the left is a glass counter of various fountain pens, and in the evening, the fluorescent lamps in the counter illuminate various grades of precious gold pens, such as Paramount, Longines, Guan Leming, etc., these pens are placed in delicately decorated boxes, I am very envious, I wonder, when can I have one. However, it is expensive and not suitable for elementary school students. When I entered middle school, my father bought me a Xinmin fountain pen, and I was already very happy. The right half of the stationery store is paper, and the shelves inside are full of all kinds of paper, and every time school starts, I go to buy new books wrapped in brown paper. In addition, in the glass case, there are table tennis rackets, chess, pachinko checkers, army chess, beast chess, etc., the first two of which are my favorites. It is worth writing that when I returned from the army, I was assigned to the factory, and later did propaganda work in the factory trade union, and those paper, paints, brushes and other supplies were still driven by this combat stationery store......
There are also laundry and dyeing shops, watch shops, leather shoe shops, etc., all of which belong to the scope of Changning District, and I have been to consume them, so I will not repeat them here. In short, there are many shops in Changning District opposite my alley, which brings convenience to my life, study and work, and leaves an indelible impression.
Coincidentally, I moved to Beixinjing when I was in my 40s, and after that, I lived a healthy and happy life for more than 30 years. The stars are moving, all the dust comes and goes, the days pass day by day, send a blessing auspicious words: health and longevity!
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Author: Chen Rixu
Editor: Zhang Li
Editor-in-charge: Liao and Wei
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