Longtang & Lane Houses — Everyday Life in the Real Shanghai

Longtang (弄堂 — lòngtáng — the Shanghai term for the lilong (里弄) lane house neighbourhood, the form of dense urban housing that housed the majority of Shanghai's population from the 1870s through the 1940s and still houses millions of Shanghai residents today): the longtang neighbourhood (the block of terraced houses organized around a system of private alleys (弄堂) branching off the public street) is the defining form of Shanghai's ordinary urban landscape, quite distinct from both the grand colonial buildings of the Bund and the shikumen of the French Concession.