Looking at the green paulownia leaves outside my window, I decided not to tackle any big topics today. Instead, let’s simply sit together and revisit those radiant summers of our youth — days filled with cold soda, bicycles, internet cafes, arcades, air conditioning, and flower dew cologne. Days when we could laugh without a care in the world.
Here’s the plan: I’ll share my memories first, then you share yours in the comments. Deal?
My teenage years fell right after the turn of the millennium, and honestly? Life was far more interesting back then.
The streets especially had a kind of raw, lived-in energy — infinitely richer than anything you see today. Street stalls, vendors, barbecue grills, skewers of every kind — they were absolutely everywhere. Sure, by today’s sanitation standards there were probably issues, but those streets felt alive to me. They had a genuine, untamed spirit.
Take my morning routine during middle school, for example. I was always sleeping in and missing breakfast, so I’d regularly stop at an old grandmother’s zongzi (sticky rice dumpling) stall on my way and grab one pork-and-salted-egg-yolk zongzi plus a box of chocolate milk.
The grandmother made those zongzi herself at home. Being a local, she was incredibly generous with the soy sauce — so the flavor was rich and deep even after all that boiling.
More than a few times, I’d rushed out in the morning and forgotten to grab breakfast money from my parents, so I’d just give her a dopey grin and tell her I’d pay double next time.
She’d scold me with a laugh — “You little rascal, always trying to swindle this old lady, aren’t you?” — while her hands swiftly unwrapped the zongzi and tucked it into a thin plastic bag, then laughed me off to get going before I cost her any more business.
So there I’d be: left hand gnawing on the zongzi, right hand steering my bicycle at full speed. Even now I wonder how on earth I pulled off that particular feat of athleticism.
Looking back, my feelings every morning as I raced to school were genuinely complicated. Part of me dreaded the day of classes ahead. Part of me was thrilled to mess around with my friends again. Joy and annoyance, tangled together every single day.
But on Fridays? From the second period of the afternoon, my mind was already miles away — daydreaming about what we’d get up to after school and over the weekend. My body was still in the classroom; my spirit had long since fled.
Especially those moments when the teacher was up front assigning homework and we were in the back exchanging glances and passing folded notes about where to go — that happiness was beyond description.
Then the final bell would ring. The whole classroom erupted in one thunderous scraping of chairs, and we’d explode through the school gates to go wherever the day took us.
That kind of joy — pure, simple, direct — is something I rarely feel anymore.
My middle school was in Putuo District, Shanghai. Nearby were three legendary hangout spots: the back gate of East China Normal University, the Xigong area, and the Caoyang neighborhood. Oh, and the Railway Market too.
Of these, the back gate of ECNU was hands-down the greatest concentration of street food in that era: grilled lamb skewers, fire-blasted giant squid, crispy chicken tenders, and the long-vanished Tujia sesame flatbreads — every single one a signature product of that glorious food street.
Two other tastes defined the era: spicy hot pot (麻辣烫) and Guilin rice noodles. They were absolutely everywhere — every alley, every corner — and every shop had its own style and flavor.
The drinks we had back then were something else too. Coke, Sprite, Meinian Da — sure, those existed. But somehow plastic-bottle drinks never tasted as good as the ones in glass bottles.
After a game of ball or a swim, soaked in sweat and reeking of chlorine, plain water just didn’t cut it.
You’d fish around in your pocket for 50 fen, ask the corner shop owner to pull a soda from the frost-covered freezer, and down it in one go.
That refreshing hit — God, it felt like the best drink in the universe. Head splitting from the cold, throat blissfully quenched. Absolute perfection.
I’ve had Lafite and Screaming Eagle since then. I’ve sipped Louis XIII more than once. Hand on heart: none of them can hold a candle to that frozen soda.
After eating and drinking your fill, you’d browse the little roadside shops until suddenly it was dark — sometimes you’d play until deep into the night, with the streets still buzzing and full of life.
But for actual shopping, my favorite teenage haunts in Shanghai were Qipu Road, Xiangyang Road, and Xigong — three places where your parents could hand you 100 yuan and you’d roam like royalty. If you had 500 in your pocket, you were the coolest kid on the block, walking into any shop and pointing at whatever caught your eye.
Compared to now, that kind of shopping was real shopping — every store had fresh and different merchandise week after week, month after month, and no two shops were the same.
These days you can walk into any mall and it’s the same brands everywhere you look. No surprises. No character.
When it came to surprises, the old Xigong of Shanghai — seventeen or eighteen years ago — was in a class of its own.
For boys especially, it was paradise: video games, manga, internet cafes, arcades, roller skating rinks everywhere you turned. And the racing game Initial D, beloved by every red-blooded young man, always drew the biggest crowds.
Sometimes two or three of us would share one machine at 3 yuan an hour, grab a few drinks, and spend a perfectly wonderful afternoon — or evening — hollering and competing back and forth.
And then there was the place every teenage boy considered sacred: the internet cafe.
My personal test of a good one? Simple — check how powerful the air conditioning was at the front door. If it was blasting cold air, the owner clearly didn’t mind the electricity bill, which meant the machines and internet speeds were probably decent too.
Boys mostly played Counter-Strike, StarCraft, Legend of Mir, Warcraft, Miracle, Ragnarok Online, and A Chinese Odyssey. Girls preferred Audition, Bubble Bobble Online, and Kart Rider.
Today’s internet cafes have none of that atmosphere. None of that all-caps shouting, that freedom to plant yourself in a chair for a whole night — or straight through until dawn. Even that particular blend of cigarette smoke, instant noodles, and iced tea that hung in the air — I haven’t smelled it in over a decade.
Equally distant now is that specific anxiety: glancing at the time, realizing it’s gotten way too late, jumping on the last bus, watching the midnight city and amber streetlights slide past the window, with a small knot of dread about how your parents might react when you got home.
Nine or ten at night — you’d rush through the door and find your parents looking mildly displeased, but they’d still tell you to go wash up. And you’d know: okay, okay, the big bosses aren’t actually mad.
A quick shower, still flushed from the day. Lying down in the small air-conditioned room, turning on the TV to find one of those talent competition shows just starting to take off back then — fresh, bright young faces, natural and unaffected.
Chatting idly with your parents. Scooping a “8424” watermelon (a prized Chinese summer variety) with a steel spoon. Eating a square of Bright brand ice cream. In the corner, the family dog lying down, eyes fixed on the slow curl of smoke rising from the mosquito coil.
I think this is what people mean when they say: tranquil days, earthly paradise.
The rest of this space is yours.
On this quiet night — whether you leave a comment or send me a message — I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Tonight, I want to hear your story.