Hongqiao Road
May 7, 2026
Hongqiao Rd starts at the big nexus in Xujiahui where the very 90s-feeling massive orb mall Metro City (美罗城) is at. It stretches to another massive intersection with Gubei Rd and West Yanan Rd, which has an elevated highway over it that one could follow to the end of the universe if they so desired. In my mind, that’s where Hongqiao Rd ends. When I’m jogging along it, I almost always turn right onto West Yanan Rd. I’ve always known intellectually that there’s more beyond the intersection — I’ve even run along those more distant sections before when I’d jogged around different routes — but I’d never felt the need to connect that other Hongqiao Rd to my usual running route. Doing so requires a double crossing past both West Yanan Rd and Gubei Rd, and any time I spend standing still during my runs feels like time wasted. Momentum inevitably carries me elsewhere.
You can read about the exact moment when I first started formulating this running route here. I was trying to run every day and write about it in hopes that this would compel me to explore more. It worked for about ten days — I still find myself recalling some of the marvelous runs during that first week and a half — but I quickly found myself too tired each day to go on long runs, and got stuck running to the end of Fahuazhen Rd (where I lived at the time) and back every time, which is just over a mile. This didn’t give me very much to write about — my mind was mostly blank during those rote runs that were done purely to fulfill an obligation.
But on day 6, when I went on the run in the piece linked above, I was stilled filled with a sense of adventure. A few months before that I’d run all the way to Hongqiao airport, mostly along West Yanan Rd, and in that state of intense fatigue on the way back I’d witnessed all kinds of architecture that felt hazy and confused. I wanted to revisit the intersection with Hongqiao Rd and Gubei Rd while less exhausted so I could soak it all in. This is a common pattern I’ve noticed in my years running — I can really only make sense of geography the second time I run through somewhere, otherwise it just exists as images floating in memory, placeless. So the route I took went down Hongqiao Rd to the intersection with Gubei Rd, down Gubei Rd for a while, then I looped back to the intersection and returned home along West Yanan Rd. During this revisitation, I discovered that the intersection was closer than I thought it was, and came to appreciate the massive buildings on the south side of Hongqiao Rd in contrast to the park(s) on the north side, the took up the space between it and West Yanan Rd. Of course, when running, those parks mostly existed as leaves sticking out from between the gaps in fences — but that alone was enough to stimulate my imagination.
I kept coming back again and again after that, running more or less the same route except with the diversion up Gubei Rd cut out, since there was too much chaos happening on its sidewalks — every block was a mall or shopping center of some kind. Hongqiao Rd and West Yanan Rd were the “relaxing” parts of that run and they didn’t have very many stoplights. Usually I’d only get caught at a red light where West Yanan Rd met West Zhongshan Rd, which has another highway over it, the “Inner Ring Road”. This forms a mental border between Shanghai “proper” and its suburbs, and when I’m running, it marks the beginning of the sprint home.
The particulars of the beginning and end of my running route have changed as I’ve moved around, but I’ve always been within five minutes of where West Yanan Rd hits Kaixuan Rd, about half a kilometer away from West Zhongshan Rd. Lines 3 and 4 of the metro are elevated above the middle of Kaixuan Rd. Whenever I can snap myself out of my desensitization, I find myself marveling at the overlapping cement structures, perpendicular to each other. There’s also an elevated pedestrian crosswalk (or 天桥 in Chinese, literally “skybridge”) that one can stand in the middle of and daydream on while staring at the cars below and the pillars supporting the ceiling-like highway above. When I’m running though, I dash up the steps of the skybridge, pushing past whoever’s in my way — usually I’m too tired at that point to marvel at the wonders of modern engineering or the quaintness of the West Yanan Rd metro station’s dilapidated exterior (which was redone a few months ago, taking away a lot of the charm).
Today (actually more than a week ago by the time I’m publishing this) I set out on my usual running route, but I tried something I’d somehow never considered before. When I reached West Yanan Road from Hongqiao Rd, I didn’t turned left. I crossed the street once to Gubei Rd, then I crossed it again to continue on Hongqiao, beyond what I’d mentally labelled as its terminus.
The Hongqiao Rd on the other side of West Yanan Rd had a thick forest of foliage separating the sidewalk from the massive walls that inevitably accompany most major roads in Shanghai. Occasionally that wall transformed into the gates to massive hotels or country clubs, guarded by men standing perfectly straight in ornate uniforms. It was a completely different feeling, making a relatively short distance feel massive. I’d entered a world of big black cars driven by chauffeurs, and valets opening rear doors and helping ladies in high heels onto the cobblestone pavement.
It was gradually getting darker and darker, so I started noticing the orange lights all around, illuminating the leaves. Before I knew it, I reached Longxi Rd — a familiar name. I turned right and found myself even deeper in the (completely artificial) forest. I passed by a massive brick structure which turned out to be Yeye Boddhisattva, an expensive vegetarian restaurant, which seemed like the epitome of a trend in vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai that try to impress a feeling of otherworldliness. From the outside, one could already see fountains and waterfalls in this castle-like building, so one can only wonder what other marvels it might contain, if only I were wearing a suit and had my hair combed back, instead of being in shorts and covered in sweat.
To get here, I must have crossed Beihong Rd, the Middle Ring Road, though it was such an underwhelming experience that I didn’t even notice until I was thinking about my route after the fact and looked at a map. I’d often run along Beihong Rd south of West Yanan Rd, since a frequent variation I do on my usual running route is turn left at one road or another intersecting with Hongqiao Rd, going south. I can get lost as much as I want down there, crossing bridges and running down hidden garden paths along streams, because I know if I just go west, I’ll find Beihong Rd sooner or later and be able to follow it north to West Yanan Rd and head home. I have many memories of hot summer days, in that state of exhaustion that pushes one beyond full consciousness, my body automatically pushing itself forward, not fully able to recognize my surroundings except in a dreamlike haze, passing by what purport to be horse stables along Beihong Rd. One time a lady on a moped tried to give me a business card of some kind. I brushed her off, but continued to awkwardly run behind her since she was going the same speed as me, and I didn’t have the energy to speed up and pass her.
After running up Longxi Rd, I looped back around to Beihong Rd, and now it really did feel like the immense highway that I remembered. There was a pedestrian walkway that went over it, so of course I crossed it, returning to the world inside the Middle Ring:
"The cars on the highway can’t hurt me up here, so high above them, so close to the sun."
I followed Beihong Rd north and hit Tianshan Rd, familiar territory. Before settling on my little loop along Hongqiao Rd and West Yanan Rd, I used to run down Tianshan Rd as far as I could, then turn back. When it goes beyond Beihong Rd, there start to be lots of little crossing over streams. Each crossing feels like a mini adventure. The sidewalk is raised up or descends downward, and when I look over the railing I see pulsating strings of algae and other marine vegetative life. However, in the ten minutes between crossing Beihong Rd and reaching Tianshan Rd, the sun had already set, so I figured it was time to go home.
This final stretch along Tianshan Rd back home felt like a procession of farewells. I passed by the Changning District library, and remembered back when I used to come here on a near daily basis to think about moduli spaces and get lunch at the 7-Eleven in the metro station or the Saizeriya across the street. I passed by the massive construction site that transported me back to Beijing the first time I’d biked past it in 2023 — a void in the skyline that reminds one that the heavens are always standing right over our shoulders. And then I reach the part of Tianshan Rd that fills me with instinctual dread: the Loushanguan Rd intersection, where my office is. Even running past it on a holiday when I don’t have work, those two sinister towers I know so well, connected by a bridge halfway up, loomed over me, so I made a left to get away from them, running the rest of the way home along Wuyi Rd.
When I got home, I ran up the 25 flights of steps to my apartment on the 30th floor (the numbering skips the 13th floor and all the floors that end in 4). I started doing this a few months ago at the end of my runs in remembrance of my father. I felt a little sad because it was already late — the first day of my labor day vacation was over.
Running along Hongqiao Rd always has a bit of melancholy to it. I saw a sign once hanging from an underground pedestrian tunnel that declared this the Hongqiao Economic Development Zone, and suddenly it made sense to me why these buildings are so big, the sidewalks are so wide, and the people so few: this isn’t a real neighborhood, it’s only an Economic Development Zone. I can run through it as much as I want without any danger of encountering anyone but the sort of people that dwell in Economic Development Zones.
When I’m in other places like the French Concession, I run as fast as I can so that I can gaze at the faces of beautiful or hideous strangers outside — running towards delirium, so that I can gaze even more intently at these strangers whose faces are forever trapped in that world of motion. The next day, wrapped in soreness, I imagine the impressions of all the people I saw embedded in my body somehow. But I never find people like that along Hongqiao Rd. Everyone there is unmemorable.
Running gives me a reason to repeatedly revisit and spend enormous amounts of time in places that I'd otherwise have no reason to come to even once. The only part of Hongqiao Rd my girlfriend’s ever been to is the metro station — it’s probably never occurred to her that half the time when I go out jogging, this is where I am. None of what I see or think about there is something I can share with her. It’s its own reality — a completely different form of existence that becomes inaccessible as soon as I get home.
Yet, when the spring comes, it's hard not to write about the spring, despite of all of histories greatest poets having already sung odes to it in every language a hundred thousand times over. In the same way, when I enter that strange not-quite-sore feeling — almost the opposite of a hangover — the second day after a long run, I'm filled with wonder and want to talk about it, despite having nothing more to say.
I was convinced just now that I must have written about the feeling of running in 2014 or 2015, when I was sitting at home all day and had no hobbies other than going out and running the exact same loop around our neighborhood everyday. Back then I was so obsessed with describing physical and tactile experiences, so I assumed that, despite being a bit of an idiot, I’d have come up with some wonderful metaphor for post-run soreness that I could quote here. Something like this, which I just came up with as an example:
Running makes drinking water feel like a forgotten pastime I’ve finally gotten a chance to revisit. It makes deep breaths feel as exhilarating as the soul-melting electronic squeal 30 seconds into Bobby Orlando’s Beat by Beat.
But there was nothing! It turns out that I never actually wrote about real experiences and real feelings back then. When I came up with elaborate metaphors, it was to describe things I’d never actually felt — imaginations of feelings. It’s really only in 2023 when I kept the running diary linked above that I ever tried writing about this stuff. I’m not sure what to make of that observation: something I thought I’d always been doing turned out to be something I’ve only been doing for two and half year. It doesn’t sound very profound when I put it that way, but I guess that’s just the way it is.