Wujiang Lu vendors start packing

For eighty years, people have come to one cobbled alley in the center of the city for cheap, tasty food. It was called "Love Lane" in the twenties, "Diagonal Bridge Road" during liberation, and now "Wujiang Snack Street." The fun was for locals, and the profits benefited local vendors; evidently, this could not stand. In 2005, the lane was peremptorily truncated by the construction of "New" Wujiang Lu, a corporate strip mall. In 2009, the last restaurants, stalls and adjacent historical lane houses will be demolished to make way for an upscale shopping street and luxury apartments. Banners strung across the lane proclaim "Speed the greater international Jing'an," a euphemism for the removal of poor people from the city center. So, where will the residents of Wujiang Lu go and cook?

The long-time owner of Xiao Hei Hao Qing says the post-renovation rent will push him out to Changning where he'll bake oysters at his other restaurant at 794 Dingxi Lu, while the cooks at Zhou Shi Malatang, Sichuan natives, say we'll see them again in Hongkou's Wujiaochang at 60 Guoji Lu. Yang's Fried Dumplings and Sheng Ji have already branched across town,but the family that cooks distinctive down-home Sichuan cuisine at Hua Hua has no fall-back plan–they will try another trade. For others, relocation means retirement.

Mr. Zhu, a round man with wary eyes, has lived (and grilled) on the alley since childhood. He does not know where his new house will be or how he will resume a living. "I'll stay until the bulldozers come, then decide what to do," he says. For duck shop manager Ms. Zhang, demolition started in 2004 when half of her turn-of-the-century lilong was flattened into Orient Center's parking lot. After the new year, Zhang's home will be gone. She will retire to a grim one-bedroom in Jing'an and live off her savings.

The official manning the lunch boxes at the "Snack Street Run Committee" confirmed that his office would wrap up operation in January, then the "developers will take the lead," he says. These include Shanghai Zhongyi Real Estate which operates the exclusive Crystal Pavilion compound and the Four Seasons Corporation whose hotel looms over north Weihai Lu.

Wujiang Lu was never heavenly, but for anybody on a budget (say, all working Chinese), it offered a fantastic variety of hand-cooked delicacies for tiny money. In 20 years the government, developers and foreign corporations will search in vain to replicate the vibrant street life that originally made Shanghai commercial and distinctive. They might have simply let it flourish, tasty squalor and all.

Katya Knyazeva