The restaurants and shops on the street have resumed work one after another, but some of them have not been able to survive and have been closed.
Quite a few, are open for many years of old shops, are used to it, usually do not feel how. But one day, when the power went out at home, I went to the convenience store in the community to buy candles, and saw the empty shops and reflective glass.
These humble little shops, like the various capillaries in life, have also given people an indescribable sense of security.
BBC has produced a new documentary this year, which also tells the story of a small street shop on the corner.
Back in time for... is a documentary series that BBC began producing back in March 2015, and each episode covers a nostalgic theme.
The latest issue released this year is "Back in Time for the Corner Shop", which takes everyone back to the childhood shop in their memories.
The show presents life topics in a situational way, tracing their changes over the past few decades.
You can think of it as a microcosm of a particular period, a family life; you can zoom in on a historical timeline, pretend to be an anthropologist, and begin to study the evolution of a particular way of life; or you can even make associations to see if there are similar stories happening in your old photo albums.
Although it is a popular science documentary, in the passage of time, as a bystander, I reflect on those familiar daily processes, in addition to the heavy sense of history, but also with the nostalgia and companionship of time itself.
Season 4 "Back in Time for Tea"
In this issue, the production team spent months renovating the shop at the corner of Derbyshire Lane in England, starting from this small shop and looking back at the small shop life that began in the Victoria era with the owner Ardern.
Here, father David (dave), 57, and mother Joe (jo), 50, will take over the small shop (meersbrook in the south-west suburb of Sheffield, England) with their three children, Sam, Olivia and Ben (the youngest son).
They will relearn the "business economy" of grocery stores, led by host Sara Cox and social historian Polly Russell.
The BBC host said: "The Allen family will embark on an extraordinary time-space adventure. Through nearly 100 years of store operations, we have discovered changing sales methods to reflect the ever-changing background of the times outside the small store. ”
The family of five will live and work in the shop, "witnessing" the birth of the refrigerator and the farming machine, handcrafting food, and trying to meet the daily needs of the community residents, regaining the intimacy of neighborhood life.
"From the Victorian era onwards, they needed to bake their own counter goods for the store, hand weigh and measure loose goods (such as tea, flour and sugar) and deliver them in horse-drawn carriages. In the years to come, they will also discover the enormous impact of the industrial age on Sheffield. Another moderator added.
Modern people accustomed to self-selected supermarkets may have a hard time imagining that small street shops could have played the role of "food vanes" in the last century, and everything new has flowed out of there to become part of the neighborhood's culture.
Polly explained that in the era of scarcity of supplies, [small shopkeepers] have a more or less responsibility to tell everyone what to eat, and they are also responsible for everyone's diet.
BBC host Babita Sharma grew up almost entirely in the grocery store, where the family ate, slept, worked and made a living by buying and selling goods and making friends.
"In the Victorian era, rows of grid-like houses were designed to cope with a booming urban population. Small shops on the corners are becoming a way to serve these communities, and it's important: any family that opens a shop on the corner is immediately pushed to the forefront of community life. Sharma preached.
She said that customers will not be bored by the old and dirty floors of the small shop, but on the contrary, all the outdated furnishings are like medals given by time, proving that this is an old shop that has been in business for a long time and has been recognized by customers, which is reassuring.
Any change outside the counter will not escape the eyes of the shopkeeper, who needs to make changes and try in order to retain customers.
"Crossing" back in 1920, the Alden family began to challenge homemade ice cream without freezing equipment.
Prior to this, ice cubes had been expensive commodities to be cut from distant Norwegian ice lakes and transported back to Britain. Subsequently, the invention of the refrigerator allowed ice cubes to be produced in factories, which greatly reduced the cost and gradually flowed into the homes of ordinary people.
Large ice bricks were delivered directly to the corner store, and the Ardens needed to use them as soon as possible before the ice melted.
Knocking on the ice, grinding it, and mixing it with butter and egg powder, the final ice cream takes hours to make through a complex stirring device, and chocolate flakes can be added to it if preferred.
There may be nothing new about the ancient French ice, but I guess you must not have heard of carrots and lollipops.
The Allen family returned to 1942, and due to the influence of World War II, candy was a shortage of supplies in the 1940s. At that time, because the farmers planted too many carrots, resulting in a large amount of surplus, these brightly colored and hard fruits immediately attracted the attention of the factory, peeled and processed, placed on wooden sticks, "pretended" into strange healthy candies, and became the favorite of children.
During the production process, the younger son Ben issued his own doubts: "Carrot lollipops are carrots inserted into the stick, I can't figure out why everyone doesn't eat carrots directly?" ”
Due to a shortage of pork during World War II, the shop also introduced bacon-like lamb bacon. The dark cuisine in the eyes of modern people, but the dishes that everyone relieved at that time.
The small street corner shop is like a radio station of the times, reflecting the progress of industrial technology into the goods, and if you pay close attention, you will find that every new product in the store has traces to follow.
However, with the rapid pace of modern life, hypermarkets and online delivery are indeed tempting options. In the new edition of the Traversal series, the Alden family also experienced the convenience of smart delivery.
Customers only need to place an order on the mobile phone software, wait for the store owner to match the order, and the task of delivery is handed over to the robot.
These small boxes will deliver the goods on time according to the address where the order was placed.
With the development of urban planning, a series of old-fashioned buildings, including tobacco hotels and food stalls, have been re-planned, and only a few old streets can still be sporadically seen in the corner hair salons hidden in the building area, or street corner convenience stores.
In the eyes of the younger generation, small shops are outdated and backward, and it is difficult for them to appreciate the long-established complex from snacks to large ones.
Instead, similar chain stores — similar decorations, similar layouts, trendy objects almost irrelevant, but all ironically telling the brand story.
Convenient and efficient chain stores expose the regret of the instrumental era: the personal color is getting less and less, no one has time to stop, and shopping is only shopping itself.
At the end of the new series, host Sarah said: "Our previous generation had a crazy time, they drove huge diesel cars all the way to Magala, and now we need to be more careful in everything. “
Convenience shops play an important role in street culture, blurring the distinction between reality and artistic fantasy.
The 80s punk band the jam sang in the song: "Hanging up the 'Close The Door' sign, what is the guy in the shop on the corner doing?" The last time, and then he said goodbye to him, he knew it was a hard life, but it was really nice to be his own boss. ”
Small shops are different from large supermarket chains: the few shelves do not get lost, nor do they give people a sense of oppression, although the goods are few, they can solve the urgent needs and take care of the living preferences of the community residents.
It seems to be in the corner all the time, still dusty, but can magically interact with shoppers, giving special meaning to the economic behavior of buying and selling.
Scenes from "Reality Bites."
During the filming of "The Corner Shop Through Time", host Sarah confessed that the corner shop has a very personal connection to her life, and there is never simply a purchase of food.
She explains: "The corner shop was the first place I was allowed to go alone. That's my independent beginning – your mother is making tea, she needs eggs, or order milk to make tea, or whatever. ”
"I was only six or seven years old, and I was allowed to walk alone through a path to the little shop at the end of the road. I remember the storefront was small but absolutely stuffed with food. I went inside to buy a quarter of the sugar, and what my mother had told me about. They also asked me to buy cigarettes for Grandma. I used to go in with a little note, and [the shopkeeper] would hand me the cigarette my grandmother had asked for. ”
She remembers buying her first lottery ticket there and being sure she would win the £2 million jackpot, but she didn't expect to get the last point, and the disappointment is still unforgettable.
Artist Dawinder Bansal has done an immersive art exhibition in London called Jambo Cinema, piecing together scenes from his life 30 years ago.
According to Bansar, her parents had set up shop on Harrow Street, and after the store closed in 1989, she left a lot of inventory behind, accidentally exploring the warehouse, which made her realize that these old objects were an important symbol of Southeast Asian immigrant culture, which inspired her to create.
Corner of the exhibition: videotapes full of walls
Bansel also found that memories help build common bridges, and recreating places of memory is more likely to evoke empathy: Familiar scenes and past experiences often draw on a particular memory, allowing people to briefly withdraw from the uncertainty of reality and regain a sense of stability.
Corner of the exhibition: Childhood bedroom
Even, sometimes just thinking of a specific smell can build a scene of memories.
Kitajima said in "City Gate Open" that about Beijing, the first thing he thought of was the smell, smelling the smell of winter storage cabbage, and his mind flashed: "Before and after the establishment of winter, a temporary vegetable station was set up in front of the grocery store, and the cabbage was piled up, and there was a long queue from morning to night. Each family has to buy at least a few hundred pounds, use various tools such as flat three-wheelers, bicycles, and strollers to go home, and take care of the neighbors, especially for those widows and widows who do not move. ”
The side food store is a Chinese experience exclusive to old Beijing, and as early as the last century, meeting the corner shops was also an important way for Sheffield residents to move.
People celebrate important days there, connect with neighbors, make charitable donations, and in times of economic crisis, organize volunteers to work in the store and get through difficult times together.
"In the local store we have a special sense of intimacy that we don't have in the supermarket. When you enter a local store, there's a good chance you'll recognize the person behind the job and be more likely to know their name, which has a sense of familiarity and a sense of security. Polly, a social historian, added.
Many old-fashioned small shops are family-run, and the owner will personally "sit in line", he can see the regular customers coming in and out, find their changes, and share the ups and downs of their lives, this kind of intimacy is incomparable to any large supermarket.
Stephen King's novella The Mist was adapted into a film centered on a small-town shop
It's a touch of retro land.
Memories of food and goods fade over time, but the shop building itself is associated with stories of too many memories, and the family shop that once shackled Sharma is now the whole of her childhood memories.
It grows up with you, mixed with the sweetness of candy and the spice of spices, and the city atmosphere of the corner convenience store mixed with the twisting experience of growing up, and it remains in the memory.
The small shop may have changed hands several times, and the owner has changed a few rounds, but no matter how the times have changed, it has always stood on the street corner, becoming the reassuring, unchanging old guy.
Perhaps, this is also the reason why the street corner sentiment is fascinating.
Key References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/back_in_time_for...
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/people/when-sheffield-filmed-back-time-corner-shop-will-be-tv-1748685
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200325-a-cultural-history-of-the-beloved-corner-shop
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/19/counter-culture-my-life-growing-up-in-a-corner-shop-babita-sharma
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/corner_shop
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/sara-cox-my-family-ran-21668326