Why is the old community in Shanghai called Lane? Why is Beijing called Hutong?

Lane is a unique residential form in Shanghai, which was once closely related to the lives of thousands of Shanghai residents in Qian Qian.

How many stories, how many allusions, how many celebrities and how many memories are closely linked with Shikumen and pavilions. It can be said that without alleys, there would be no Shanghai, let alone Shanghainese. Alleys constitute the most important architectural feature of modern Shanghai; Alleys constitute the most common living space for millions of ordinary Shanghainese; Alley is the most important part of modern Shanghai local culture.

Shanghainese call it alley, which is different from the traditional houses in the south of China and other western architectural forms. However, it always has more or less traces of China traditional architecture and more or less exotic architectural scenes.

It can best represent the characteristics of modern Shanghai urban culture and is also the most direct product of modern Shanghai history.

The city of Shanghai is like a living organism. Looking down from the air, the criss-crossing roads are like arteries, dividing the city into several communities; Within each residential area, there are many small passages between buildings, which are densely distributed all over the city, as small as capillaries but full of vitality. Different times, different regions and different nationalities have different names for these small passages, and Shanghainese call them "alley".

"Lane" ancient Chinese characters "Lane Tang".

"Tang" is the main road in front of the ancient court or ancestral temple. This Chinese character appeared in the Book of Songs more than two thousand years ago. It had many meanings in ancient Chinese. Later, as a "road", this meaning was gradually diluted by history. In modern times, people can't remember the connection between the word "Tang" and architecture, so they use another interesting Chinese character "Tang" instead. "Tang" used to be a name for a room, which had little to do with roads and alleys. However, in modern Chinese, it is more closely related to architecture than "Tang" and homophonic with "Tang", so "Lane" has evolved into "Lane".

In fact, it is not only Shanghainese who call it "Lane", but also the Jiangnan area of China. However, the alley can be as famous as the hutong in Beijing, mainly because of the rise of a large number of alley houses in modern Shanghai.

In ancient China, the area divided by roads in the city was called Li Fang. Li Fang is usually a basic administrative unit, including houses, temples and official residences. Residential buildings are built by themselves, so the buildings in a square are different. The owner of a house is usually the user, and the ownership and use right are often integrated. This situation was almost without exception in China until the middle of19th century.

Specific naming, alley is called ×× alley or square, garden, village, village and even new village, garden, other industries, villas, etc. Like ancient Li Fang, Lane is a complex of many buildings, which are also built in residential areas divided by urban roads. But unlike Li Fang, every community has one or several alleys. The shape and structure of the single building of each lane are basically the same, generally using English multi-row type, and one row is usually about ten buildings. The combination of rows generally adopts determinant, and only a few of them are arranged according to local conditions and topography. In this new type of alley, the space between rows of buildings is called alley.