Published by Swiss James on 08 Jan 2008
Huangputangjiawan lu
This made me laugh although I’m not really sure why.
HuangPuTangJiaWan Lu (South) is the longest street name I’ve ever seen, beating out Urumuqi Lu with embarassing ease. And yet the street itself was just a tiny little back alley down near the Lupu bridge.
As far as I know, the street names in Shanghai downtown work like this: East to West roads are named after cities (Nanjing Lu, Beijing Lu) and the ones that run North to South are named after provinces (Shaanxi Lu, Tibet Lu). Since most place names in China are two syllables, that keeps the size of the street names to a pretty manageable level. So this one must be pretty unusual.
Just before I took this photo, some woman leaned out of the second floor window on the left there and threw a bag full of rubbish onto the street. So that was nice too.