2. Before the Port Opened: Tidal Flats, Villages and Two Country Lanes

A place of crossing waterways

Before telling how Zhabei "prospered", one has to tell how wild it was.

The Gazetteer of Zhabei District is blunt about the terrain before the port opened:

At that time most of the land south of the Qiujiang was criss-crossed by waterways, and only around the two gates did markets gradually take shape. North of the Qiujiang lay farmland and natural villages.

Unpacked, that is three statements:

1. South of the Qiujiang, water was everywhere; apart from the two markets, it was largely wetland;
2. North of the Qiujiang, farmland and natural villages;
3. The whole area had no proper town of any kind.

The Qiujiang (roughly the line of today's Qiujiang Road) was an important boundary at the time, and it is broadly a relic of the former course of the Wusong River. The early history of "Zhabei" is therefore, in a sense, the history of "the two banks of an old river".

The earliest residents: shacks and migrants

Zhabei's earliest form of settlement was not a town but a shantytown.

From the last years of the Daoguang reign to the early Tongzhi years, migrants kept flowing into Shanghai from elsewhere, and the poor mostly put up shacks, cleared land and settled in southern Zhabei. Thus the first settlements appeared: natural villages such as Meiyuantou, and the settlement at Tangjia Lane.

This stretch of history deserves particular attention, because it set a "gene": Zhabei was, from the very beginning, a place where incomers put down roots. The population explosion of the early twentieth century, the refugee shantytowns after the war of resistance, the workers' villages after that, and the migrant neighbourhoods after that — one line runs through all of it.

A small aside: Tangjia Lane later became a busy commercial spot. The Gazetteer of Zhabei District records that after the port opened Zhabei acquired the "Tangjia Lane Wanmaochang market", one of the area's several principal markets.

Living off the water: the transport economy on the Wusong River

At that time passenger and goods transport within the district depended almost entirely on the Wusong River. The riverbank therefore became a natural place for farm produce and sideline goods to gather and change hands. Zhabei's early economy was, put simply: wharf plus market.

It had no industry yet, no culture, not even a decent road — only country lanes.

Three lanes, linking three towns

The Gazetteer of Zhabei District records:

There were country roads running from the Old Gate and the New Gate to Jiangwan Town, Dachang Town and Zhenru Town.

That one sentence carries a great deal. It says three things:

1. Zhabei was not an island; it was the route linking the county seat of Shanghai to the surrounding townships;
2. The three towns it led to — Jiangwan, Dachang, Zhenru — all later became important towns, and Zhabei was where everyone had to pass through;
3. Zhabei played the part of "the route" for more than a hundred years. From country lanes to the Shanghai–Wusong railway, the Shanghai–Nanjing railway, the Old North Station and Shanghai Station, and on to the Inner Ring Road, the North–South Elevated Road and the Middle Ring Road — Zhabei's core identity never changed: it is a passage; it is a gateway.

The first shadow of the concessions

The real turning point came in 1863.

From the second year of the Tongzhi reign, the south-eastern corner of Zhabei's territory was progressively included in the American concession (later merged into the International Settlement). The Gazetteer of Zhabei District records that between 1863 and 1893 about 0.73 km² of land in that south-eastern corner was brought into the concession piece by piece.

0.73 km² does not sound like much. But what was taken was the part of Zhabei closest to the county seat of Shanghai and of the greatest commercial value. More to the point, the concession boundary was still moving — and that directly produced the story of "Zhabei saving itself" that the next chapter tells.

In short

Zhabei before the port opened comes down to one sentence: it had nothing of its own yet, but it stood on the road that everything had to take. And that road was about to be turned into a city by a group of merchants and gentry who meant to save themselves.