Walk down one Zhabei street and you’ll forget all that talk about modernity. Chris St Cavish meets the craftsmen happy to be doing it the old fashioned way.

Big, bright mega-supermarket-malls are eating up the city's old blocks. Their fluorescent aisles are stocked with goods, the end products of long supply chains that stretch far across the country to a million unseen factories and automated, streamlined producers. The last thing on your mind as you tick off the items on your shopping list are the people that have made them.

But scope out Baoyuan Lu in Zhabei, and you will be reminded of a more hands-on era, where small clusters of craftsmen are still plugging away with old-time skills. To get there, take the metro to Baoshan Lu, walk past the industrial wasteland of the Chuan Bao Old Machine Market, and the old computer monitors being scrapped or recycled, and you' ll stumble upon Baoyuan Lu. Walk north from the main road and you' ll see a pair of shoes impaled on cobbler’s tacks. These mark the slim storefront of Mr. Zhao, the first in a succession of craftsmen trying to keep these dying traditions alive here.

Mr. Zhao’s business is small – too small to bother with a businesscard, or even a name – but it is unique in this area. Zhao, a third generation cobbler, makes leather shoes by hand, but not ¥1,000 Jimmy Choo replicas or the Italian boots you might find in more affluent areas of the city. The samples on the racks lining his combined workshop, storefront, and home are all variations on two themes – businessman’s dress, or lady’s pump.

Older people in the area with an eye for custom, quality work, make up the bulk of his customer base, and the styles and prices reflect it. Still, it doesn’t stop talk about his work from getting around town. “A friend told me about him a few years ago, and I’ve been coming here ever since,” says Mr. Wang, a repeat customer who was choosing between leathers late one weekday morning. “I live on the other side of the city, but the quality of his shoes and price make the trip worth it.”

Crowding him in the room just big enough for two is a second return customer, Hu Lin. He points to the pair on his feet. “Zhao’s shoes are great, and they’re cheap,” he says. “Shoes like this in a department store will cost three, four, five hundred kuai, and they won’t fix them for you if they break. I’ve got three pairs already.”

A pair of handmade shoes here averages ¥150, capping at ¥450 for a bespoke pair – the starting point for most other custom manufacturers in the city. It’s also much faster. From foot measuring to finished shoe, the process takes a week. While modern styles aren’t exactly the crux of his business, Zhao does do replicas of shoes or boots brought to him in person or in picture, which makes him a good alternative to add to your list. But, like most of the old-time businesses in the area, his days are numbered. When asked if his small daughter was learning the family business, Zhao laughs. “No way. She’s in school, studying hard. I want her to go to university, not make shoes.”

Continue up the street, and you’ll find one Mr. Chen sitting behind the blue plastic bins that make up his world of handmade noodles. A scale covered in wheat flour sits next to him, and piles of both dried and fresh noodles – ropey chao mian (a thicker noodle used for the eponymous stir-fried dish), and fine longxu (dragon’s whiskers) mian, among several others – sit around him. His uncle, the other Mr. Chen, is back in the cramped workshop, white with flour he’s been turning into noodles, glutinous rice cakes (nian gao), or dumpling skin since three o’clock that morning. Peek behind the counter and into their store, and you’ll find da kuai mian and xiao kuai mian noodles slung over the wooden dowels or wedged into a nook near the ceiling to dry. A space capsule-looking vat roasts ducks every afternoon, with the blasted birds moved to an adjacent sidewalk nook to be sold.

In what becomes a running theme, his customers mention over and over that the noodles are cheaper and tastier, than the ones they can get in the big markets. “We taught ourselves the business over a decade ago when we were living in Chongqing,” the elder Chen says. “When we came to Zhabei, it was the business we were best at.”

Farther up Baoyuan, an open bag of fluffy, cloud-white cotton and a paper price list tacked to the wall marks the storefront of Mr. Lu, the comforter man. Finished pieces are folded, stacked, and lined against one wall; an ancient looking machine used to fluff cotton abuts the other. A large, low-lying table is spread with the remains of an old blanket a customer has dropped off to be re-fluffed, and made into a larger size.

“This one is too thick to go through the machine. I’ve got to do it the old way,” Lu tells us. He pulls out a gong. It’s a tall, bent wooden bow, with a taut metal line in place of bowstring. It looks much the capital letter D. He fastens one end of it to his pants, and with the thin metal cable in front of him, begins to rapidly hit the pile in front of him. The string vibrates and makes a twinging sound that echoes in the small room as the old cotton is cut and fluffed before being wrapped in gauze, ready for a new cover and a second wind. Once a common method in the cities, using a gong is an old practice that hangs on in some parts of the countryside, and at his anonymous Zhabei shop. But the real find here are the custom comforters Lu makes from soft, new cotton for roughly ¥100.

Towards the end of the street, where it curves and starts to parallel the overhead metro tracks, you’ll find the Cen brothers, Liangen and Yonggen, at their diamond-in-the-rough wok workshop. Their operation is small, and but for the constant sound of hammered metal, it doesn’t draw much attention from the local residents. Unlike the other three craftsmen on the street, the price of their product is higher than the ones found in the stores. The duo are well known among many of the best Chinese restaurants in town for their high-quality Shanghai style woks, different than the deeper ones favored in Guangdong, or one-handled ones used in the north. “The slightly shallower, two-handled wok is made to suit the slower cooking style of Shanghainese cooking,” Cen explains.

“We’ve used their woks for years. Our chefs like them much better than other ones on the market,” says Mr Lin, the purchasing director for the popular Xiao Nan Guo restaurants. Mr Liu, the chef of the Zhi Zhen restaurant, agrees, adding “The woks are not cheap, but are of the best quality. You can’t make delicious food with poor quality equipment.”

Their craftmanship also attracted the notice of cookbook author Grace Young, who liked their hand-hammered woks so much, she not only wrote about the brothers in ‘Breath of a Wok,’ the acclaimed 2004 chronicle of the history of the wok in Chinese life, but used a picture of one for the cover. In that book, she described the woks as “beautiful, with rich, dull, pebbled finishes and exquisite crafting.”

Not much has changed. The woks are still gorgeous, with a faint pearly surface keeping a record of every precise hammer strike used to create it.

They are the real treasures here, hidden in one of Shanghai’s unassuming outposts, a secret for those in the know. The family has been on the same plot in Zhabei for 50 years, turning flat circles of carbon-steel into woks over a four or five hour period. “We’re the only people in the city who still make woks this way,” says Cen. “We’ve already done this for thirty years, but we’re not going to continue forever.” Consolation may come from the fact that although the brothers will close the business in a few years, one of their woks, used at home and properly cared for, will last for 25 years or more.

“It’s not easy work, but it’s good exercise. And iron is great for the blood and the hair. I haven’t been sick in years, and just look at how nice my hair is,” the elder Cen chuckles.

Longhua Temple Fair

If you want to soak up more of the craft scene, head to the Longhua Temple for the annual two-week cultural celebration that is the Longhua Temple Fair.

The event has been held on the third day of the third lunar month ever since the Ming Dynasty, when according to Chinese beliefs, the Laughing Buddha was born under the Longhua tree to preach Buddhism. This illustrious event later developed into a festival to welcome the arrival of dragons visiting the temple, which themselves granted prosperous wishes to the temple’s devoted followers. And where there’s a crowd, a fair will soon follow.

Don’t expect to find manufacturing crafts like shoeand wok-making, however. This is a far more artsy affair, bringing to life the vivid history of Chinese folk heritage through cluttered stalls and booths selling all sorts of traditional foods and crafts. Other highlights for this year include performances from the Gochun man-horse show, another depicting the ‘Return of the Northern and Southern Lion Kings,’ as well as a colorful parade of mythological figures and fairies. The Fair also coincides beautifully with the blossoming of the peach trees in Longhua Park.

Longhua Temple Fair, Longhua Ancient Town, 2853 Longhua Lu, near Longhua Lao Jie, Apr 19-May 7, 9am-9pm. For more info call 6436 5333.

Xin yi iron wok store

Cen Liangen, Cen Ronggen Hand-hammered Shanghai-style woks, ¥100.

214 Baoyuan Lu (near overhead metro line 3), 130 4664 7226

Chongqing noodle store

Mr. and Mr. Chen

Handmade noodles, glutinous rice cakes (nian gao), dumpling skins, from ¥1.7/jin.

149 Baoyuan Lu (around Baotong Lu), 6654 4031.

Mr. Zhao’s handmade shoes

Mr. Zhao

Custom leather shoes and boots, ¥140-¥450.

107 Baoyuan Lu (around Baotong Lu), 131 6723 0168.

Cotton comforter store

Mr. Lu

Custom cotton comforters, ¥100. Next to 174 Baoyuan Lu (around Baotong Lu), no telephone number.