This lane neighborhood has over a hundred years of history.
Tips
culture
弄 in this reading is essentially a Shanghai-region word for a narrow residential lane between rows of 石库门 townhouses. It mainly survives in two compounds — 弄堂 and 里弄 — which name the iconic Shanghai version of the Beijing 胡同.
mistakes
Only read 弄 as lòng inside lane-compounds. Free-standing or with a verb-result complement it's always nòng. If you see 弄 before a verb of doing/handling (e.g. 弄好, 弄错), it's the verb reading, not this noun.
Bottom two-hands radical — the indexing component, same as in the nòng reading. The lòng pronunciation is a regional reuse of the same graph for an unrelated noun meaning 'lane / alley', preserved mainly in Shanghai-region words like 弄堂 and 里弄.
Top jade — same graphic as in the nòng reading: a string of jade discs held up between two hands. The lòng 'lane' sense is a later regional borrowing of the same character; the jade picture doesn't motivate the lane meaning, but the graph is shared. 玉 here is a 4-stroke contraction (standalone is 5).
