【Editor's Note】
When it comes to Shanghai, the "trend" in recent years is to go back to the 1930s. The prosperity of the "Lonely Island" period left a lot of historical buildings and celebrity anecdotes, but when the aura faded, these aging buildings and neighborhoods remained, and what remained was like a bunch of trivial daily routines. Some people are stuck in the historical legacy of housing property rights, some people need to fight against old facilities, there is no elevator, garbage removal, noise, rat infestation, and even the use of public spaces... Who will identify these needs? How to fix it? But this is often a rupture link in top-down social governance.
This year, the School of Social and Public Administration of East China University of Science and Technology cooperated with the Huangpu District Government of Shanghai to launch the "Community Talent" program. When people think that residents do not have the enthusiasm to participate in community affairs, they found in the survey that each community has some activists to a greater or lesser extent, some based on personal feelings of home and country, some from professional inertia, some based on interests and interests, and some are simply "nosy". These over-aged "community masters" are still trying to weave the daily life of the old community. This series consists of 4 articles.
Located at 1060 East Yan'an Road, Shanghai, Yan'an Apartment was built in 1932 and has an eight-story elevator tower funded by Belgian Foreign Firm. The building was close to the "Racecourse" at that time, so it was called the "Racecourse Apartment". Later, the racecourse hall was changed to People's Square, Aidoa Road was renamed Yan'an East Road, and Yan'an Apartment had its current name. When it comes to the "eight floors" of People's Square, old Shanghai people can still think of it.
At the beginning of its birth, the Yan'an apartment was enviable, and celebrities lived here, and people were even willing to exchange gold bars for the right to move in. The interior of the building is exquisite, with each unit consisting of three rooms with separate bathrooms and kitchens, as well as a dedicated nanny room. For more than eighty years, it has witnessed historical changes.
But the octogenarian building is difficult to beat time. The occupancy of the merchants on the ground floor and the elevated works have exacerbated its dilapidation, and the old residents recall the Yan'an apartment at the turn of the century, which looks gorgeous and tall on the outside, but when they enter the patio, the dirty sewer mouth emits a stink, and rats sneak in and out, and can even climb up to the fourth floor to nibble on furniture. In 1995, the construction of Shanghai Elevated Road was in full swing, and it almost passed by the Yan'an apartment, which also brought huge noise pollution.
In the face of chaos, residents set up the "Yan'an Apartment Autonomous Group" to actively coordinate and strive to improve life in the octogenarian building.
The initiator of the autonomous group is Wang Lingling, an old resident here, a retired cadre of the Shanghai Broadcasting Equipment Factory who has lived here for more than forty years. The old residents of the building used to call her "Sister Ling". After retiring, she began to deal with community affairs.
While chatting with neighbors, Ling Jie found that there were many elderly people living alone in the building who lacked care. Some elderly people suffer from chronic diseases, have been "used to it" for many years, and are unwilling to wait in line at the hospital if they have health problems.
Ling Jie took a lead and cooperated with Hongguang Hospital (merged into the current Huangpu District Central Hospital in 1998), which happened to have a plan for party members to serve the community and opened a "family clinic" in the Yan'an apartment building. Sister Ling provides the venue, and the hospital provides medical services.
The family clinic is opened in a room on the sixth floor of Yan'an apartment, more than 20 square meters, which is an idle room in Lingjie's family. On the morning of the 10th of every month, more than thirty elderly people in the building can see a doctor here for free and deliver medicine in the afternoon. It's been more than a decade since it opened.
Ling jie introduced that the family outpatient conditions are limited, mainly tracking common geriatric diseases such as hypertension and hyperglycemia, if the indicators are found to be abnormal, they will notify the children of the elderly and remind them to pay attention to the health of the elderly. Sometimes there are too many elderly people who come to see the doctor, the room can't sit down at once, and the Ling sisters have also activated the numbering system.
Encounter some elderly people living alone suddenly unwell, no matter how late, Lingjie will send them to the hospital, and doctors mistakenly think that Lingjie is the daughter of the old man.
Family Clinic (first left is Wang Lingling) The pictures in this article are provided by the author
Yan'an apartment is close to the elevated highway, and the noise of vehicles has greatly affected the lives of residents. In order to prove the seriousness of the noise, Ling Jie took a lot of effort. At that time, there were many foreigners renting the building, and Lingjie borrowed a decibel meter from a French neighbor to start her own "measurement work". For a week in a row, she recorded noise at different times of the day, collated the data and compared it to national standards. With this set of data, they reflect problems with relevant departments such as environmental protection and seek solutions. In the end, every household in Yan'an Apartment was fitted with double-glazed soundproof windows.
In 2012, under the impetus of the Street Comprehensive Autonomous Office, the neighborhood committee found a bow tie that was enthusiastic about community affairs and asked her to lead the formation of the autonomous group.
Soon after its establishment, they sorted out the fourteen major problems of Yan'an apartment, including commercial and residential conflicts, garbage disposal and so on. Since then, they have also set up a platform called the "Zero Distance Home Council", where residents, merchants, properties, and industry committees have consulted.
The first hurdle for the autonomous group to break through is the pollution caused by the entry of restaurants. The contradiction between the commercial and residential buildings in the Yan'an apartment was once serious, and the two sides were full of gunpowder.
"Merchants are passers-by, may open today and tomorrow to leave, can make money on the line, the rest will not consider too much", Ling Jie said, for more than a decade, some restaurant owners directly poured kitchen waste into their own random gutters, and gradually "raised" many rats. The building's patio was originally a public space and one of the passages for residents to go downstairs, but the management was disorderly, the merchants changed, and the patio was always chaotic and dirty.
Ling Jie believes that to improve the environment, we must first straighten out the relationship between the two, "we are not wrongdoers, we are friends." Manhole covers can avoid rodents entering and leaving, but because the sewer mouth is chiseled by merchants who settle in front of and after, which does not match the size of the standard manhole cover on the market, the property cannot be bought, and it is logical to find an excuse to shirk.
Lingjie's husband is an engineer, the two of them did it themselves, measured the size of the sewer one by one, and customized nine non-standard manhole covers at their own expense of more than 1,000 yuan, which were installed in the patio and the kitchen of some merchants. She also visited each merchant to draw up relevant agreements on food safety.
Manhole covers purchased by Wang Lingling at her own expense
Garbage from the Yan'an apartment was transported out of the back alley, but the telecommunications company canteen next to the building did not consult the building's residents and built a large chimney to block the garbage passage. Every day, garbage can only pass through the living area of the residents on the ground floor, making the smell of the lower floors pervasive. The autonomous group coordinated repeatedly with the telecommunications company and eventually restored access to the back alley.
There are always people who can't understand Sister Ling and think that she is "nosy". Sister Ling also told us that there are still many difficulties in the work of the council and the autonomous group, such as insufficient personnel. Whether it is a merchant or a neighborhood committee, in fact, they are all "passers-by", one dial away from another, and then the sustainability of the building is inseparable from the work of the neighborhood committee, but it is even more inseparable from the residents themselves.
(Shang Ye'er, Department of Sociology, East China University of Science and Technology)