The neighborhood has a surplus of elderly people, some with strong family connections and others who get by on their own in a community that guarantees human contact.
Some of the old people, like the penniless man who mumbles incessantly as he gleans unburned nuggets of coal from discarded ashes, or the white-haired woman who was outside cleaning fish the other day, have a shell-shocked look.
Others, hardened by decades of upheavals, put on a show of mock defiance.
"We like it here and we're not leaving -- period!" said Mrs. Zhang, a widow in her 70s who was in the alley commiserating with a neighbor; she had a fly-swatter in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
"You can't do anything to help us anyway," she growled at an inquiring foreigner, "so why should we talk to you?"
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