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Longtang symphony
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One morning I was invited to give a talk to a group of Western friends about He Youzhi (Shanghai’s top illustrator). I mainly introduced the pictures he had drawn of the people living in shikumen houses.
In his vivid drawings, viewers can see what the residents in those houses were doing: lighting a charcoal stove, bringing hot water in thermos flasks from a nearby laohu zao (literally tiger stove 鑰佽檸鐏), queuing to use the only water tap in the whole house shared by at least eight families, hawkers selling different kinds of food for breakfast and a child crying for a bowl of wontons (dumplings with soup).
Before entering a longtang (alleyway), different sounds were audible. There were babies crying and hawkers shouting. When people cleaned their teeth under the only water tap, they would rattle their toothbrushes in enamel mugs.
However, these were not the only sounds visitors would hear in the morning from about 7am to 8am. These sounds served only as the strings and woodwinds in the first or second movement.
Some hawkers would not come to this long tang every day. However, there was one person who had to visit every morning. Sometimes twice or even three times.
The minute this hardworking man sang one simple sentence loudly, “Ling ce lai!” (“Bring out!”), many women — only women — would rush out of the narrow back doors of each house. Each of them would carry something in her right hand and try to cover her nose with her left hand. They were doing a very important job; otherwise the members of their families might have trouble for the rest of the day.
What did those women carry in their hands? Chamber pots.
The most important part of this longtang symphony would begin the minute all of them had emptied their pots into the cart that important gentleman had brought with him. At that moment he took on the function of a “conductor.”
The noise made by those housewives was really loud — just like the triumphant fourth movement of a symphony. In order to make their chamber pots cleaner, some of them even put seashells into the pots and used bamboo brushes to swish the shells around. Percussion!
One can imagine how loud this longtang symphony was, especially as it echoed down the lane. Even at a distance, people could “enjoy” this symphony every morning.
Sometimes I read articles with titles like “Shanghai is disappearing.” I do miss these sounds.
Fortunately, however, He, who is now 91 years old, has preserved some of this in his drawings.
(George Wang, 89, is co-author of the English-language book “Shanghai Boy, Shanghai Girl.”)
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