During the winter vacation, he accompanied his granddaughter to complete a research project entitled "A Preliminary Study of Shanghai Alley Culture". Accompanied her to visit many lanes in Shanghai, and also consulted many lane materials with her. Her work was well received by her teachers and was also displayed in the hallway. At the time, she was happy and a little smug. After the incident, soon, the sense of accomplishment faded, and then it was forgotten. But there are many things that I can't let go of, but it seems to have put new "enzymes" into the raw materials of my memory cellar - because I have written some articles on the subject of the alley, which are also some "raw materials" stored in the depths of memory, and now they interact to convert the raw materials into ethanol-wine. In the end, it made me feel sad.
Some people say that Shanghainese people don't have nostalgia, which is not right! I would like to say that the alley is a unique "nostalgia" of Shanghainese. Nostalgia is a kind of unseen and untouchable melancholy, and the literati and inkers turn it into an image, a scene, and ordinary people turn it into an indelible symbol and mark in their hearts. The symbols and imprints that can represent the nostalgia of Shanghainese people are none other than the alleys.
Regarding the number of lanes in Shanghai, there is no authoritative statistics, some people say that the old Shanghai lanes have more than 10,000, but I have a set of information on the digital changes of Shanghai lanes, saying that there were about 9214 lanes in old Shanghai. By 2000, there were only 2,560 lanes left. Another 13 years have passed — by 2013, there are only 1,490 lanes left.
After decades of urban transformation, especially after the critical year of Shanghai's old reform battle in 2021, many plots below the second level have been erased on the map, and many lanes have disappeared, and with the end of the old reform, the number of lanes will continue to be subtracted. This may be the inevitable result of "what the people want and what the government wants, a good thing that concerns the people's livelihood, and an inevitable result of social development." But for the ancient and rare old man who was born in the alley and grew up in the alley, there is inevitably a touch of sentimentality and gloom.
Longtang, is the place where Shanghainese lived for more than 100 years, he gave birth to several generations, it is the witness of Shanghai's modern urban civilization, it is said that it is the root of Shanghainese - this is not an exaggeration, the famous local historian Xiong Yuezhi said: "It can be said that without lanes, there would be no Shanghai, let alone Shanghainese." The alleys constitute the most important architectural features of modern Shanghai; the alleys constitute the most common living spaces for tens of millions of ordinary Shanghainese; and the alleys constitute the most important components of the local culture of modern Shanghai. ”
Speaking of urban culture, Ban Gu's "Two Capitals" and Zhang Heng's "Erjing Fu" are the most famous, although they write about Beijing, but they are considered to be the leaders of urban culture. The ancients have always had the saying of "endowed, ancient poetry", and the above 2 are written as large-scale "poems", so the urban culture written by posterity is difficult to look back on, although I have seen too many articles about urban culture, it is difficult to surpass "Erjing" and "Two Capitals". I have seen someone write "Shanghai Fu", but the world does not pass on, there are regrets, but I have never seen anyone write "Lane Tang Fu", perhaps the lane hall was originally the place with the strongest pyrotechnic gas and the strongest taste of the city, only suitable for writing in the style of colloquial slang, gags, just like this: When the lane hall gradually passes away, it becomes a candle-like memory in the wind of the older generation of Shanghainese, fluttering and flickering, the stars are dotted, at any time the lights will be extinguished, no longer exist, then sing a sad "elegy" for it.
Elegy was originally a poem written to the dead, which was indiscriminately coveted in the Spring and Autumn Period, and in the Six Dynasties, singing elegy became a popular trend. Elegy also breaks through the shackles of mourning death, giving it a new meaning, elegy is no longer limited to mourning the dead, but through the meaning of the existence of things that are about to disappear and revealed - because people can only know and understand the importance of existence in the face of the disappearance of life and death. I think that in reality, the physical form of the alley is gradually disappearing, but I am worried that the spiritual form of the alley will gradually fade or even disappear, perhaps, I am worried about the sky, maybe the physical form of the alley will never disappear - just less and less, so few that it can even be ignored, but the spiritual level of the alley has ceased to exist.
Although we left a batch of classic lanes and red lanes. And we still have 64 roads that never move, and there will be some lanes left in between.
So the "elegy" still has to be sung, because the current lane is no longer our former lane, the lane we see now is either the old house and the old house do not exist, some new with the original architectural components and elements, the "fake antique", the bar is lined up, the neon flashes, here you can also see the green waves of the lake, the fountain of the mist, the shade of the umbrella covered by the trees of tourist attractions, there are also mixed commercial residences, shops side by side, crowded miscellaneous alleys, or children moved away, the elderly live in the silver age community, Small houses became rental accommodation for migrant workers...
We can no longer find the feeling of being in a knee-to-knee place, leisurely and reeling; we can no longer hear the long shouting and selling of various vendors in the alley, the sound of children jumping around and playing games, nor can we feel the feeling of neighborhood harmony, interspersed smelling each other, and the fireworks of meals and meals - because only this is the life of the Shanghainese people who are full of fireworks and the smell of the city - such a lane is "dead", and I want to sing a sad elegy for the alley!
Unconsciously, I thought of one of Tao Qian's "Elegy": There must be life and death, and it is not a fate to die early. Yesterday twilight is the same person, this day in the ghost record. Where is the soul dispersed? Dead-shaped parasitic wood. Jiao'er So's father cried, and my good friend touched me to cry. Gain or loss is not known, it is not safe to feel! Long live the thousands of years, who knows the glory and disgrace. But when hate is alive, "the poet assumes that his regret after death is" and "drinking is not enough." The regret of my generation is that "the lane no longer exists" - I hope to use the unique sad mood and poignant aesthetic effect of the elegy to express the aria of the disappearance of the lane culture.
Some people say that ecology determines culture, and this is true, the ecology of the former alleys no longer exists, so why did the former alley culture exist? What has disappeared has disappeared after all, cannot be resurrected, cannot be reproduced, and can only sing elegy.