By Zhang Yanli
The old-fashioned bicycles, briquette stoves and public telephone booths outside the house and the warmer, sewing machines, outdated mobile phones, aluminum rice boxes and tin biscuit boxes inside the house... Seeing these old objects, citizens returned to the old Shanghai. The place full of memories was the newly opened "Memory in Shanghai" community canteen in Hongkou.
The Community Canteen Could Also Be Fashionable
The community canteen in Chifeng Community, Quyang Road Sub-district, featured the "Memory in Shanghai". In the future, the residents can not only solve the problem of having food without leaving the community, but also look at the old things in old Shanghai and chat with old neighbors.
The modern and nostalgic decoration style permeates in the community canteen. The interior outlay and design adopts modern simple style, and the dining environment is clean and comfortable. The furniture outlay has restored the once popular decorative style in Shanghai. Many residents actively participated in the canteen decoration and donated old objects at home.
grain coupons, deposit forms, warmers, sewing machines and outdated mobile phones set on the walls recall the people’s memory, which makes them feel as if they were in Shanghai more than half a century ago. Many residents say that dining in such an ambience is nostalgic and fashionable.
Restoring the Dining Scene in the 20th Century
The community canteen also provides a lot of dishes. There are twenty to thirty kinds of breakfast foods, including noodles in different flavors, wonton, steamed buns, sesame balls and others. During lunch and dinner, there are more than 30 kinds of dishes available, including stuffed meat with shutters, braised pork chops and steamed bass in affordable prices. There are more than ten dishes below 10 yuan. The community canteen specially provides the workshop set meal. The aluminum-like meal boxes made of stainless steel, loaded with white-flour steamed bread or white rice, oily meat and fried green vegetables, restore the scene of workers having meals in the factory canteen in the 1950s and 1960s.
91-year-old Uncle Jin has already become a fanatic of the community canteen. He has three meals here. He says: "Because the community canteen with delicious dishes has opened in the residential area, it is quite convenient for me to dine. I am happy about that.”
The 5-minute Life Circle Debuts
It is reported that the canteen is the first community canteen opened in the residential community in Hongkou. More than 10,000 households in the whole Chifeng block (Chi 1, Chi 2 and Chi 3 residential quarters) can have fresh meals nearby. This is also the first landing project that Quyang Road Sub-district upgrades the 15-minute life circle to the 5-minute life circle in form of extension point of the public service station.
According to an official of the sub-district, the community canteen is also opened for residents free of charge in non-dining time. Nearby white-collars and community groups can work here. Residents and white-collars can read books and newspapers in the reading zone.