Longtang

In the mid-20th century, after the establishment of Communist rule in Shanghai, a system of "neighbourhood committees" were set up as the lowest level of self-governing administrative organs in urban areas.

Lilong committees acted as liaison between residents and the next level of administrative government (the sub-district), but also had various administrative powers in relation to public security and internal security, education, social welfare, employment, industry, health and mediation.

In 1963, the Communist Party's Shanghai committee held a conference on the work of sub-districts, and the Shanghai People's Committee (the municipal government at the time) issued the Regulations for the Work of Lilong Committees in the Shanghai Municipality, which emphasizes that sub-districts and lilongs are "the frontier posts for class struggle, the home front of production, places of living, and important battle positions for the struggle to foster the proletariat and destroy the bourgeoisie".

In simplified Chinese confusion is sometimes caused between lòng ("alley"; traditional Chinese 衖 or 弄) with the verb nòng ("tamper with"; traditional Chinese 挵) since both have been simplified down to "弄" by removal of the radical (a hand-radical shǒu-bù 扌 in the case of "tamper with", a walk-radical compounded from chì 彳 "step" and chù 亍 "step" on both sides of the phonetic 共 "public" in the case of "alley").

In simplified Chinese the two characters are now written the same way, but the two different pronunciations are still retained in standard Mandarin, where only context indicates whether to read lòng or nòng.