I have two hometowns: South Korea and the United States. It was fortunate for me to be able to get in touch with both American and Korean societies. There was a similarity in both countries being ruled by other countries. Since Shanghai and Korea are neighbors and share many ancient cultural aspects, I initially thought Shanghai and Korea would be similar. As it turned out, it was not true. Shanghai has been my home for a short period of time, so now I have three hometowns. I haven’t explored this city thoroughly because when I had time, I postponed it, saying, “I can go whenever.” However, the second semester began and I came to the new area without exploring the area where I lived last semester. I regretted not exploring Jinqiao, my last semester dorm, and Central Avenue, my last semester campus. Rather than regretting the past, I decided to explore my neighbor more, and the WAI class was a great opportunity for me at this point.
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Changshu road (常熟路) station is located near one of the populated shopping streets Huaihai road in Xuhui district. The station was very crowded and large. Changshu road station has the exit from 1 to 8, Shaun, Maia and I exited from the station through exit 8. As we stepped out of the station, bright yellow sunshine and cool fresh air welcomed us. Colorful flowers decorated the street, whereas gray and blue were the colors of the buildings and the street. Despite it being a famous area in Shanghai, people chose to walk instead of staying in the car so as not to miss the opportunity to look around.
The street was full of opposition, the small and antique houses were hidden between the tall and brand new buildings. It was a very narrow and old street, there were bumps on the road, and the color was faded. Even so, the area seemed very active due to the density of people on the small street. After passing Changle Road, we entered Wulumuqi Road. While walking, I noticed that there were so many restaurants and shops named in French, Spanish, and some East Asian languages. The mall right below the fancy apartment only had French cafes and restaurants, and had a Swiss butcher’s shop. Not too surprisingly, most people who were sitting on the terrace were foreigners.
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Once I exited the shopping district and entered the residential area, Wukang Road and Fuxing Road, the place was completely empty, there were no humans. My first impression of the area was that the houses were gigantic, similar to those in a residential area in the United States. As a whole, I felt as if I was in another country. By the time I started to lose interest, the architecture styles caught my attention. A few of the villas were heritage properties. There were three major heritages I saw: French, Spanish, and American. All of them were built around 100 years ago.
Shanghai was one of the first Chinese ports that were opened to Western, so a lot of places in Shanghai were influenced by Western culture, including architecture. As I mentioned above, we could see many foreign architecture style in Shanghai. After China was defeated by Great Britain in the first Opium War, they had to surrender Shanghai and sign the Treaty of Nanjing. Around a century, from 1849 (Qing Dynasty) to 1946 (Republic of China), Changshu Road was a French concession. Besides the history, Western influence was the big advantage for Shanghai to be one of the largest economies and foreign business industries in the world.
As I watched and guessed the patterns and styles of houses, I realized something that was out of place. Most doors were relatively small and short, about my height, in comparison to huge architectures. I was searching the reason for that and I only could find the small door inside of the house. The small door inside the house was for mostly delivering dishes from kitchen to dining rooms by butlers. I was wondering if the door outside was also for butlers or workers in that huge house. After looking at the door and windows, which were also small, we guessed why only those were built small, but when an elderly woman suddenly appeared from the small door, we figured the average height of people back then was very short.
