Zen and the art of old-style living

The cozy interiors of some of the bed-and-breakfast facilities in Shanghai.[Gao ErqiangI/China Daily]

As harried mothers coax their children from bed, there is a clinking of milk bottles outside as the delivery man does his daily rounds, and for Barnybas Covey this is as reliable a guide as the finest Swiss watch that it is 7 am.

He zigzags through quilts and mops that dangle from clothes-lines hanging above the alley, and around the corner he grabs a few dabing, baked pancakes that are a breakfast staple in Shanghai. A new day lies ahead.

Covey, from Hawaii, was in Shanghai for two weeks this summer for a field study, and he chose to stay in a renovated abode hidden in a square of red-roofed terrace houses that once formed the city's most typical residences, shikumen, or stone-framed gate house. On the hottest days of summer the sprawling, rickety branches of phoenix trees offer shady respite to the housing complex, which stands on a street more than 100 years old. Keeping them company all year round are the nearby luxury shops and five-star hotels of the city center.

When he was looking for a place to stay on the online lodging rental site Airbnb, he says, a key factor for him was that it represent the old Shanghai.

The place he eventually chose is one of many bed-and-breakfast facilities that have emerged in the city. More than 2,000 such lodgings are now available for rent on the likes of Airbnb and its Chinese counterparts tujia.com and mayi.com, and about 70 percent of the popular ones are in the shikumen houses downtown, says Chen Ning, head of mayi.com in Shanghai.