It's been a summer of change in Shanghai, with many long-time city hotspots and F&B venues closing up shop and saying goodbye in the face of sweeping new urban upgrades. The latest location slated for large-scale repurposing: the Changle Road "bar street," in the 600s block area at Xiangyang Road N.

The Changle Road bar street is home to the city's most popular bottle shops, with, at its peak, around 10 small, one-room beer, wine and cocktail bars operating until the wee hours of the morning catering to the Gen Z clubbing kids coming from or going to more proper dance clubs in Found 158, Xiangyang Road N. and the downtown area. During the day, the area is home to small fashion boutiques, specialty shops, and some of the city's best smaller restaurants, including the popular and iconic pot sticker restaurant, He Le Dim Sum. All of these are also saying their goodbyes this month. A tour down the street already shows red construction notices and stickers on the doors of half of the venues, with the rest hosting closing sales and leaving by the end of the month.

The Gen Z Bar Street

Shanghai has a long history of dedicated bar streets that have cropped up over the decades, either organically or by design, to serve as one-stop-shops for nightlife revelers to sample a bunch of different venues in a single night out. From the heydays of Maoming Road, Hengshan Road and Tongren Road, we got Yongkang Road, a raucous strip of street pubs that sometimes pitted nightlife punters against neighborhood residents and families. After Yongkang Road was shuttered in the wild mid-'00s, catering to a different generation and demographic of nightlife chasers, we got the Changle Road bar street. Over the last 10 years, Changle Road has only risen in popularity, with sometimes several hundred drinkers sitting on curbs on the street until the morning hours. Changle Road has always served as Shanghai's indie fashion hotspot. With its rows of indie fashion boutiques and shops, some of the city's residents have dubbed it China's "Harajuku." When the "long gold" road started hosting small bottle and cocktail shops in the mid-'00s, the strip of shops took off as a central node for China's next generation of fashion-savvy (and maybe wallet-smart) nightlife denizens.

Saying Goodbye… or At Least For Now

If you went to Changle Road on a Saturday night, located the hundred-deep crowd of 20-somethings drinking beer on the street, and looked for the very center of that, you'd find 624 Changle Road, a massively popular bottle shop known for its extensive selection of beer and wine. The venue pretty much introduced the blueprint for the style of bars that popped up on the road in their wake: Cheap libations for people to sit and drink on the street or take with them, served out of a one-room shop. 624 Changle has already closed up, with graffiti on the doors testifying to their legacy, relocating a few blocks down to Shaanxi Road S. In their wake popped up Highway Store, another bottle bar, and Tonic, an internet-famous cocktail-to-go spot. Both of them have several venues in the city now, based on their Changle Road success. Also departing are Jolly Bar, Good Thing, Gelato Manuela, He Le Dim Sum and more.

Most of these have found or are finding new locations dispersed throughout the city of Shanghai. Such is the boom, bust and echo in the life of a Shanghai bar street, though. The moveable revelry moves on.

We tilt our traveler cups to the passing of Changle Bar Street, as we make our way down the street to the next curb to sit on until 4 am.