page_title: Shipai Village
section_title: Evolution of culture during urbanization
hierarchical_section_title: Shipai Village / Culture / Evolution of culture during urbanization
caption_attribution_description: English: an outlet of Shipai Village, Guangzhou, China
context_page_description: Shipai Village is the largest urban village in Guangzhou, China. It is situated in the middle of Tianhe District in Guangzhou, with dense multi-story dwelling houses building in and lands for collective use. The village is supported by 170 narrow alleys yet surrounded by tall buildings and busy commercial streets. There are many shopping and entertaining centers as well as several institutions of higher education such as Jinan University nearby.
  With an area of only one square kilometer, it has over 50,000 people who come from the rural areas staying at Shipai Village.
  Shipai Village have a variety of traditional cultural relics and some examples of historic architecture. It mixes the elements of tradition and modernization and it serves as a "bridge" between rural areas and the city.
context_section_description: As the village becomes urbanized, cultural environment has changed profoundly. Shipai is indeed part of the city, but it also secludes itself from the city; it embraces city culture and exotic customs and yet it stands as a rock for local traditions.
  Inside the village, a sense of clutter, tolerance, contrast, multi-culture is felt everywhere: a porter with pushcart, a cobbler, a little flower seller, erectors, ragpickers, writers, men with business suit, men with doctorate…people from all walks of life live here and a variety of services are available, such as restaurants of different kinds, barbers’ shops, sauna, make-up, hospitals. There are different people, different dialects, different living styles, as a reporter who once lived in Shipai stated:"one who’d never lived in urban villages does not truly understand Guangzhou."
  For villagers, they get used to urban life on one hand, adherent to the traditional customs on the other. Especially when Chinese festivals come, annual activities will be held, such as dragon-boats race, tomb sweeping, and lion dance. But even for such traditions, those old notions related to clan dictatorship have lessoned and the elements like celebration, fellowship and commerciality have deepened.
  Shipai Village is also famous for its countless confusing alleys and denseness inside the village. What we call “street” or “alley” nowadays was called “li” or “fang” in the past. In the face of the 20 main streets there are gate towers carved with names of relevant streets, such as”朝阳”, “凤凰”, ”长盛”, ”迎龙”, ”龙跃”, ”笃行”, ”绿荷”, ”逢源”, ”青云”, ”河阳”, ”上谷”, ”天仁”…all bring with them a sense of poetry and auspice. At the same time, there are many modern shops available along the streets, making it a perfect pandemonium and showing the vicissitudes of the village.
caption: outlet of Shipai Village, in 2010
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