Inside a senior dining hall in central Shanghai, a worker brandishing a sponge inched closer to Maggie Xu, 29, as she finished her rice and broccoli soaked in garlic and oil. Mrs. Xu ignored her.
“If you come at 12 o’clock, the aunts will give you less food,” Mrs. Xu said, speaking in a low voice. After 1:30 p.m., they give away soup. They also begin to hover, like the sponge aunt, rushing stragglers out the door.
Ms. Xu is familiar with the rhythms of the Tongxinhui community canteen because she eats there every day to save money. She has a good job as an accountant at a foreign company, but she can’t shake a growing sense of unease about her future.
“Only when you save money will you feel secure,” he said.
In these difficult economic times in China, many young people are unemployed, but they are not the only ones anxious. A devastating drop in real estate values, where most household wealth is tied up, has increased the feeling among young professionals like Xu that their situation is also precarious.
In Shanghai, some people are finding relief at subsidized community centers that once served mainly older people but now also attract younger crowds. The food is affordable and plentiful. The dishes on offer, sometimes as cheap as $1.40, are packed with local specialties like shredded eel in hot oil, steamed pork ribs or red braised pork belly.
Like soup kitchens, the soup kitchens are privately run but subsidized by China’s ruling Communist Party and serve older residents who are too frail to cook or are homebound, offering discounted meals and health services. delivery.
At the canteen where Ms. Xu likes to eat, diners 70 and older receive a 15 percent discount. The taproom is part of a three-story community center that opened in May.
As neighbors and workers from nearby shops and small offices fill the canteen for lunch and dinner, folding dining tables and plastic chairs are quickly set up, extending to the entrance of the building to accommodate grumbling stomachs.
During the break between meals, the older residents sit at the entrance, chatting and passing the time. A gigantic hammer-and-sickle-shaped ceiling lamp lights up and reminds diners of the owner.
The canteens date back to a dark time during Mao’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, when the Communist Party replaced private restaurants with community canteens, said Seung-Joon Lee, an associate professor of history at the National University of China. Singapore.
Mismanagement of soup kitchens played a role in the disastrous famine that would define the Great Leap Forward.
“It may remind some of you of the tragic events of the Maoist soup kitchens,” Lee said.
More recently, soup kitchens have emerged as part of a broader social welfare initiative to improve food services for a rapidly aging population.
There are 6,000 local groups running community kitchens across the country, according to the official Xinhua news service. In Shanghai, where almost a fifth of the population is 65 or older, there are more than 305 soup kitchens. Many of them get tax breaks and low or free rents.
But canteens have also become an important fixture for Shanghai’s younger working population. Portions are often so generous that they can stretch over several meals, and diners can often be seen putting away unfinished dishes.
The cost-saving impetus arises from a reluctance to spend that has become so common among Chinese people that it is contributing to the country’s economic woes and prompting top officials to speak with a sense of urgency about promoting confidence. .
If there’s one thing 31-year-old Deng Chunlong lacks, it’s confidence. Mr. Deng’s personal training business has taken a hit. Some clients have stopped coming to his studio altogether. Others enroll in a third of the classes they used to, he said.
Mr. Deng, who is tall and has unruly hair, has been eating cheaper food at the soup kitchen in Jing’an, a district of Shanghai, to reduce his expenses. He recently stopped renting an apartment and sleeps in his Pilates studio.
“I feel like business is not as easy as it used to be,” he said between bites of cauliflower and pork. “It seems like people aren’t willing to spend that much.”
When Deng discovered the cantina a year ago, it had mostly older customers, he said, but since then the clientele has expanded. “There are a lot of young people now,” she said.
In some neighborhoods, young people stand alongside older people, forming lines that sometimes extend into the street. Customers find soup kitchens on restaurant apps and social media platforms, where people also share tips on which dishes are the tastiest and cheapest.
“Young people who are not very rich at the moment should visit Shanghai soup kitchens,” one person wrote on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app. Another person described the soup kitchens as a “happy home for the poor.”
It was while browsing Dianping, a Chinese food app, that Charles Liang, 32, discovered the Tianping Community Canteen in Shanghai’s exclusive Xuhui neighborhood.
From the outside, the cantina looks more like a modern restaurant, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a red brick façade. Inside, blue plastic boxes filled with colorful, dirty plastic plates give the place more of a cafeteria feel.
“I tend to save money,” said Liang, a freelance graphic and clothing designer, who said finding work had become more difficult. A two-month Covid lockdown in Shanghai in 2022 also affected his prospects, he said, making him more ambivalent about his future and cautious about his finances.
Mr Liang said he ate regularly at the canteen, which opened in 2020. On that particular night, when he arrived for dinner, all the tables were full. A man in a three-piece suit sat down with a tray full of plates and began dividing the food into plastic takeout containers. Almost everyone ate quickly and left.
As Mr. Liang was finishing his meal, the crowd began to thin out and some of the canteen’s waiters and chefs sat down to eat. One of the waitresses, Li Cuiping, 61, a migrant worker from central China’s Henan province, said she had been serving people at the canteen for half a year and that she had noticed more young people in recent months. “Everyone is welcome,” she said.
On a recent Wednesday, at another canteen near Jiangsu Road in Changning District, a worker known as Fatty Yao was busy cleaning up more than a dozen empty blue and white plates left by a group of young office workers. The dining hall was serving more young people like that group, he said.
The dishes had been dropped off by Qiu Long, 24, and five of his colleagues who worked together at a lighting design company about a 10-minute walk down the same street. Long and his colleagues said they had only started eating at the canteen a week ago.
However, they kept coming back because it was cheaper and offered more variety than other nearby restaurants, many of which Long said tended to close after a few months.
“I think for workers,” Long said, “the canteen is a more affordable place to eat.”
Li you He contributed to the research from Shanghai.