A cozy lifestyle.

The project is led by Wu Meisen, planning director of the Taikang Road Creative Industry Center. He described his organization as a private company with "indirect" support from district government.

After surmounting the 2004 crisis, Wu's next worry was how to satisfy growing demand. There were 114 studios and boutiques in the area, and Lane 210 was almost fully occupied. Wu's company was receiving constant calls from artists asking for space.

The creative park gradually expanded to neighboring lanes. At the end of 2004, a resident named Zhou Xinliang became the first to rent his 33-square-meter room to a fashion designer specializing in leather. Today Tianzifang is home to around 200 shops, cafes and galleries, run by people from some 20 countries. In 2006, it was named the country's best creative park by the China Guanghua Sciences and Technology Foundation and China Youth Daily, and the best in Shanghai in 2007 by the Shanghai Creative Industry Center.

On weekends as many as 6,000 people walk Taikang Road's crowded lanes.

"I love this place because it is not a fiction like so many other creative parks in Shanghai," said Liu Xie, an editor who visits almost every week.

"Here, I can feel the real nongtang [lane] life of my childhood."

Building interiors have been renovated and given a new coat of paint, but the old brick facades are much as they were decades ago. Middle-aged housewives carrying bags of vegetables squeeze past expats sipping cappuccino at outdoor cafes. Wash hangs from balconies while new-age music spills through boutique windows.