In Shanghai, it is a “local custom” to set up BAMBOO poles to hang the washing and air the bedclothes. Strolling in wide streets and narrow lanes of Shanghai, people from other places will be confronted with this queer scene everywhere: quilts and bed-sheets, handkerchiefs, stockings, even nappies and underwear are unabashedly hung outside the windows and balconies. It seems that there is an international exposition of garments and bedclothes.
It often so happens that the newly-built apartment buildings look like ships with fluttering banners of numerous nations. One bed-sheet after another cover the pillar-boxes and the road-signs and shade the plush shop windows in the streets. Walking in some narrow streets of the old residential areas, the pedestrians have to quicken their steps if they do not want the water-drops from the washing to wet their clothes.
