The lilong is a traditional Shanghai housing typology characterised by narrow alleyways, shared courtyards and interconnected dwellings. These spaces once supported a distinctive form of communal life, blurring the boundaries between domestic intimacy and public activity.

As Shanghai's rapid urbanisation replaces these neighbourhoods with high-rise developments, many of the social rituals associated with them find a new setting in the city's public parks.

Filmed in People's Park, Lu Xun Park and a residential development near Moganshan Road, Lilong follows the repetitive gestures of elderly residents engaged in tai chi, singing, dance and collective exercise. Through a succession of individual portraits, these familiar activities become strangely ambiguous: movements once embedded in neighbourhood life emerge as isolated performances against the backdrop of an expanding metropolis.

The film reflects on the relationship between architecture, social behaviour and cultural memory, questioning what happens to collective identity when the spaces that sustain it are transformed or erased.