Can you stop progress? Should you?

In every Chinese City we have visited we see the progress.



The big projects in Shanghai where your map says a bit of `old town` should be are now giant construction zones.



In Kunming bits of old town have so far escaped the wrecking ball, although we saw one small house on a dirt track between two projects, one completed and one a huge multi block pit under construction. The house was on the old street grid which had been no grid at all, and through luck or destiny had turned out to be just off the path of both projects.

It makes you sad to see so much history disappearing, and at the Urban Planning musuem in Shanghai they called it refurbishment, the replacing of the old with more modern buildings.



There is no doubt about it, these streets are organic and alive. You see everything from an old lady sewing and watching the street,



to a kitten eating fish guts.



Yeah, that photo is kinda gross. But the streets and alleys of Shanghai offer it all. Kids learning to ride bikes to anything you need to buy.



How, we thought, can they let all of this be lost, replaced, refurbished? But, as with anything, it`s never as black and white as you think. On our last night in Shanghai instead of walking on the bund



or Nanjing street



we headed to some of the alleys left in Shangahi. Those not yet refurbished.





We didn`t even get many photos. It felt too much like an intrusion on peoples lives. The living was close, the smell of human waste was very strong and we saw many slop buckets being emptied into the collection doors on the sides of the public toilet buildings. Many of the homes have no indoor plumbing, and the kitchen at ground level is shared by the entire two or three story building.　The rooms at ground floor that we could see into were packed tight. A loft style bed would contain a child or two, a table and chair and tv underneath, laundry hanging everywhere, people brushing their teeth and washing their hair outside on the street.
This was a street where the people would perhaps welcome refurbishment? But can you refurbish and keep the sense of community that obviously exists. And at what point does my tourist desire to see a `real old Shanghai` street collide with the government desire and responsibility to provide clean and safe housing for their people. A fire in these streets would have been catastrophic.




The Urban Planing Musuem had interesting exhibits on the city, and how it will look in the future.



But it will certainly be a shame to lose every old street in the name of progress.

Now we are in Japan, currently loving Tokyo. Three weeks to home.