The quest for new perspectives on the city takes many forms. Its heroes are people like Matt Mayer (who, a year or so ago, visited all of the then-147 subway stations in a single day -- try doing it now, champ), Song Tao and Lin Yu (who explored every surviving ferry route across the Huangpu), Jenming (who walked home from the airport), and even Jian Shuo Wang (who once made it to every Starbucks inside 24 hours).
Fame-hungry urban explorers still have at least one route to glory open to them: as of this writing no one's managed a local version of the "Eight-Thousanders", that rarefied club of super-mountains which only 18 people in the history of the world have climbed. Apparently, there are only 12 buildings in Shanghai taller than 800 feet.
Rules are simple: Unaided ascents only. No elevators. No oxygen. No sherpas.
In the end though, finding a new angle on the city doesn’t require nearly so much effort. This is Shanghai, friends: like good beer, love, and a toasty-warm apartment, you can always just pay for it. Climb in a cab, point at random, and let the meter dictate where you end up. Call it 50:50. Fifty kuai there, fifty kuai back, an even chance you'll find something interesting.
Fifty south of the river -- a straight shot over Lupu -- spits you out just beyond the A20 ring road, about half-way along Shangnan Lu, into a kind of garden center gone wild. Forget the French Concession or the Forest Park -- the southern stretch of Shangnan is, by some distance, the most heavily wooded spot in the city.
It takes the best part of an hour to walk along, and almost every plot of land is piled high with wood and wood derivatives. Desks, dressers, doors, drawers. Drawers, doors, dressers, desks. (Try repeating that after a couple of pints of polyurethane varnish.) Imagine unraveling the infernal, intestinal pathway that runs through an IKEA outlet, and then taking the roof off. The place is flat-pack heaven and eco-hell. A shrine to the circular saw. Planks and pallets and sharpened logs stacked to the sky like some cut-price siege engine. Even some of the houses are made of wood. Pity the few trees still standing.
Of course, all we're talking about here is a slightly more dramatic, rather more ragged version of the city's specialist streets (Changle Lu for maternity wear that'll stop your computer from cooking your unborn child, Fuzhou Lu if you work in the kind of office where nothing says 'Good Work Team!' like a squat glass replica of the Pearl Tower): in this case, it's a one-stop outdoor warehouse for custom-made furniture.
Expat families from the nearby Tiziano compound, who shuttle here in their SUVs to buy rabbit hutches and playpens, refer to it affectionately as "The Wood Village." One Dutch kid even has his own hook-up with a supplier: on Saturdays, he bikes door-to-door taking orders for custom-built loft ladders.
Life in The Village isn't nearly so quaint. The air reeks of solvents, the sound of screaming metal and splintering wood evokes a cheap horror flick, and the children scratching around in the dirt are almost as skinny as the chickens. In front of the Telecoms Park at the far southern end, one lady uses a pair of over-sized silver scissors to gather grass to eat.
So unless you're actually in need of a new bookshelf, or get off on watching bamboo scaffolding being slotted together, it's hardly the most worthwhile destination. Few of the finished products are on show outside, and you're unlikely to be invited backstage if you're not brandishing a set of measurements. Still, you can be there and back inside an afternoon. Try hiking up and down the Jinmao that fast.
If you like inhaling sawdust, the best place to start is at the intersection of Shangnan Lu and the Chenxing Highway (上南路近陈行公路); the Wood Village runs south along Shangnan to the intersection with Yanggao Nan Lu. Map here. If 100rmb (to get you there and back) is a little rich for you, Shangnan Lu Metro station (Line 6) is a twenty minute walk to the north.
