Within and beyond our apartment complex many individuals who live on the first floor units, turn the front room of their apartment into a little retail store, and then live in the remaining rooms.  As I have walked along the streets I guess I never paid too much attention to the fact that many of these store fronts are actually apartments for residence.  Well, this week I suppose the zoning law for residential and commercial restrictions began to be enforced.

I frequent a little store called the DIY store (Do it Yourself).  They sell many useful products like muffin papers, baking pans, hand mixers, cookie cutters and the item I most frequent this store for…butter.  Well, today when I walked over the store to make my weekly purchase of butter, I found that I could not enter the store, unless I climbed through the newly created window in the place where the door used to be.  The sales lady told me she would bring the items I wanted to the window for purchase.

New sidewalk in the distance behind Jessie. Baracade wall on the right

As Jessie and I continued our walk, we found the old dirt walking road turned back into a paved sidewalk.  Before we arrived in China, this temporary wall was put up as a baracade to the subway construction.  There is a subway line that will eventually run a few streets behind our apartment complex.

A recycle man rides his bike down the old dirt road, you can see the crumbling temporary wall that acted as a baracade and the continuing construction on the new road.

In the distance across the street you can see the bricking up of more store fronts, and the man preparing the area for new sidewalk pavers. 

Jessie walks on the new sidewalk

A game store where the kids sometimes buy Wii games