About This Book
How it began
This project started life in 2023 as a half-hearted attempt on GitBook: one page reading "test", and then nothing. It was picked up again in 2026, and the first order of business was to move it off GitBook and onto HonKit — because GitBook's online editor and its legacy CLI had long since stopped being maintained, while HonKit is its community successor, compatible almost line for line with the old directory structure (SUMMARY.md) and configuration format (book.json). Migration cost almost nothing, and it builds locally with a single command and publishes to GitHub Pages with another.
The second order of business was to put something inside it. A house that has stood empty for three years does not need a fresh coat of paint; it needs furniture.
What this book is
This is neither a travel guide nor a work of scholarship. It sits somewhere between the two:
- More reliable than a travel guide — every date, every place name, every figure is traced back, so far as possible, to a gazetteer, a government bulletin, or a report in an authoritative outlet;
- More readable than a scholarly monograph — it wears no armour of footnotes and citations. It tells of people, events and scenes, and allows itself opinions and digressions.
In a single sentence: an ordinary Shanghainese reader should be able to finish the book and then tell a friend three things about Zhabei that they did not know before.
How the sources are graded
The book grades its cited material roughly, so that readers can judge how much weight to give it:
| Grade | Type | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| A (primary / authoritative) | Local gazetteers, government bulletins, heritage registers, institutional archives | Gazetteer of Zhabei District, work reports of the Shanghai Municipal Government, the Shanghai register of protected cultural sites, China Military Online |
| B (secondary / authoritative media) | In-depth reporting in major outlets, topical articles by Party-history and gazetteer bodies | Xinhua, People's Daily, the Shanghai Party History Network, the Jing'an District People's Government website |
| C (reference / popular) | Encyclopaedia entries, travelogues, personal reminiscence, online articles | Baidu Baike, Wikipedia, local-history WeChat accounts |
The main text is built on A and B; C is used only to fill in detail or to add an anecdote, and is flagged as such in Appendix 4.
A few cautions
On administrative geography. Zhabei District was abolished in November 2015 and merged with Jing'an District to form a new Jing'an District. In this book, therefore, "Zhabei" carries two meanings: the historical administrative district, which is the subject of the book, and the informal area name that still survives in place names and everyday speech. The book distinguishes the two by context rather than by over-scrupulous footnoting.
On figures. Population, area and similar figures change from year to year, and the book notes the year wherever it can. "Area: 29.19 km²", for instance, is the figure from before the merger, while the 1996 Gazetteer of Zhabei District gives 28.48 km². The two do not contradict each other; they belong to different moments.
On illustrations. At the author's request the book is text-first and carries no images. Readers who want to see things should go and look at the addresses given under each entry in Part Three.
How to use this book
- To get a quick grasp of Zhabei: read the chronicle in Part One. An afternoon will do it.
- To walk the district with a plan: go straight to the sites in Part Three, each of which comes with an address clue.
- To find out why a particular street is called what it is: turn to Appendix 1 · Historical Codes in Street Names.
- To check a particular claim: turn to Appendix 4, which lists all the principal sources.
About the author
Zhou Ge (舟哥), who publishes as Nickzhuo. The complete source of this book lives in the GitHub repository; corrections, additions and discussion are all welcome there as issues. The book can be read online at https://zhabei.org.
If you find an error of fact, please raise an issue in the GitHub repository.