Not far from the Hailun Road metro stop rests the concrete skeleton of the Old Millfun slaughterhouse (confusingly also known as Laochangfang, according to Google Maps), a vestige of the Art Deco period whose interior has been repurposed into cafes, studios, beauty salons, shops and event spaces while retaining the original cattle ramps and narrow passages presumably intended for humans. The very neighborhood radiates with yuppie industrial chic; on the way there I passed through a stretch of cement-tiled road lined with tea houses, galleries and coffee shops that would not have felt out of place in Brooklyn. The street itself is not incongruous with cosmopolitan Shanghai, but the proximity to "real" China (clotheslines barely high enough to keep blankets from skimming the sidewalk, folding tables for mahjong, tiny markets with cardboard boxes of produce spilling out toward the street), merely ten paces away across the pedestrian bridge, surprised me. But, thinking of how my inner-city high school in Seattle's Central District was adjacent to the affluent Madrona neighborhood, cities often seem paradoxical in layout.
See more of the slaughterhouse and Shanghai here.