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Kitchens and coal
For decades, many Shanghai households cooked on small stoves burning 煤球 or 蜂窝煤, coal briquettes, which had to be lit each morning and tended all day. In shared houses, several stoves stood together in one kitchen or along a passage, and cooking was a public activity: smells, quarrels and borrowed salt included. From the 1980s and 1990s, piped gas and later electricity reached the old lanes, house by house, often after long waits. The change saved hours of work every day and made homes cleaner and safer, and few people who lived through the coal years want them back. At the same time, many residents describe missing what came with crowding: knowing everyone, eating together when the power failed. 顾阿婆 and 老陈's mixed feelings — glad of the gas, fond of the noise — are the same mixture Alex hears about the expropriation.