What shikumen actually are

Shikumen means "stone gate", and it describes a particular kind of Shanghai lane house that appeared from the 1860s onwards. Rows of narrow terraced homes, entered through a carved stone doorway, arranged around a shared alley. Whole neighbourhoods were built this way, and by the early twentieth century most of working Shanghai lived in them.

Two of those neighbourhoods survived redevelopment by being turned into commercial districts. They are ten minutes apart by metro and about as different as two places with the same origin can be.

Tianzifang: narrow, tangled, still a bit real

Tianzifang sits off Taikang Road in the French Concession. The lanes are genuinely narrow, sometimes barely a metre and a half wide, and the buildings are the original shikumen stock, patched and repainted rather than rebuilt.

What is in them now is a mix of small design shops, galleries, cafes and studios. It is touristy but not oppressively so, and on a weekday morning you can still find a quiet corner where someone is actually working.

Come here for browsing, for small gifts, for coffee in a courtyard. Do not come here expecting a museum piece. It is a working commercial district that happens to be old.

Xintiandi: polished, wider, easier

Xintiandi is the version with money behind it. The lanes are wider, the stone gates are restored to a shine, and the tenants are international brands, wine bars and restaurants with tablecloths. There is a museum in one of the buildings about the founding of the Communist Party, which took place in this block in 1921.

It is pleasant. It is also expensive, and it feels a bit like a stage set, because in part it is. Some of the buildings were reconstructed using original bricks. That is not a criticism exactly. It is just what you are looking at.

Which should you choose?

If you have one afternoon, and you want to see how an old lane district actually feels, go to Tianzifang. If you want a comfortable dinner, air conditioning and no squeezing past strangers, go to Xintiandi.

If you have both afternoons, do them in that order. Tianzifang first, while your expectations are still calibrated to reality, then Xintiandi for dinner.

Practical bits

• Tianzifang: metro Dapuqiao on Line 9. Go before 11am on a weekday for the quietest lanes.
• Xintiandi: metro South Huangpi Road on Line 1. Best after dark, when the lighting does a lot of work.
• Neither is a substitute for a proper old neighbourhood. If you want that, walk the lanes around Jianguo Road West early in the morning and watch people hang laundry and buy breakfast.

One thing I would tell a friend

Do not treat either place as the "real Shanghai". They are not, and the city is better than that. Treat them as what they are: two pleasant hours in a city that has plenty of other things going on. Then go eat xiaolongbao somewhere ordinary and cheap, and you will have had a better day than most people manage.

What the lanes were like before

It helps to know what was lost. Until the 1990s these shikumen blocks were ordinary housing, sometimes with a dozen families sharing a single courtyard, a shared tap and a shared toilet at the end of the alley. Cooking happened in the lane. So did haircuts, arguments and children's homework.

Almost all of that housing has gone. What remains has been converted, prettified and priced accordingly. I am not nostalgic enough to pretend the old conditions were romantic, because they were not. But it is worth remembering, as you walk past a candle shop selling scented diffusers, that this was somebody's kitchen.

Where to eat nearby

Tianzifang has plenty of cafes and a few decent restaurants, but the better move is to walk ten minutes south towards Taikang Road's quieter end and eat at whatever small noodle shop has a queue of locals. Xintiandi has good restaurants at prices to match; if you want the atmosphere without the bill, go for a drink instead of a meal.

For something in between, the streets around Danshui Road have a mix of small kitchens that serve excellent shengjianbao, the pan-fried soup dumpling, for the price of a coffee back home.

Originally published on 71Asia Tours blog.