Coming Down Alert – Yulin Road

The pace of destruction throughout Hongkou, Tilanqiao and Yangpu is ferocious and shows absolutely no signs of abating – indeed it is intensifying. Just recently on listing several roads I rather like for ex-pat rag Time Out Shanghai (sorry, for some reason they don’t have a website) I noted the architectural mix that is the few hundred yards of Yulin Road (formerly Yuuin Road) between Dalian Road (Dalny Road) and Lintong Road (Macgregor Road).

However, the portion of Yulin Road to the east of Dalian Road is a lot less lucky – several blocks of perfectly serviceable lilong housing went in the last few years – one nice block was replaced by the traffic police!! Now a decent enough block on the corner of Yulin and Dalian is going as you can see below – too late now to save it if anybody could anyway. This block was actually one of Shanghai’s very real communities, most of the residents worked their whole lives in the nearby Shanghai Watch Company factory which remains on the street. The poor Shanghai Watch Company has fallen rather severely from grace in the last 20 years but remains. That short stretch of Yulin Road must be, or at least was, home to more knowledgeable horologists than anywhere else. They used to gather, and still do in very limited numbers, to sell, trade, barter and just admire and chat about watches every weekend.

No idea what is slated for the site – maybe more offices for the traffic police!