Another Culturist showed me to my room, explaining the property’s history and I mentioned that as a child my grandmother had lived in a shikumen; a Shanghainese-style townhouse. The Capella Shanghai, Jian Ye Li is located in a cultural preservation zone and consists of fifty-five elegantly refurbished townhouses set in one of the largest clusters of shikumen in the city. They are built closely together in rows and can only be accessed by narrow lanes. One shikumen typically accommodated three or more families. Each family inhabited one section of the house and the kitchen and bathroom were communal, the living conditions were often harsh as many of the tenants were poor migrant labourers. As a result, a shikumen was nearly always crowded and chaotic.
