4. The Main Base of Chinese-Owned Industry (1912–1927)

These fifteen years were Zhabei's peak

If you had to pick the "best days" out of Zhabei's hundred-odd years of history, they would have to be 1912 to 1927.

In those fifteen years Zhabei was at one and the same time:

• Shanghai's industrial centre within the Chinese-administered city
• one of Shanghai's commercial centres within the Chinese-administered city
• one of Shanghai's modern cultural centres within the Chinese-administered city

Add the three titles together and only Zhabei held them all. Let us take them apart.

Industry: why the factories all ran to Zhabei

The reasons are not complicated. There are four:

1. Cheap land — much cheaper than the concessions;
2. Good water and rail links — Suzhou Creek plus the Shanghai–Nanjing and Shanghai–Wusong railways;
3. Power and water — supplied by Zhabei's own water and electricity company;
4. The political climate of the Chinese quarter — national capitalists were put upon in the concessions and relatively free in the Chinese city.

And so "a number of Qing officials and national capitalists rushed to invest in Zhabei, competing to buy land, build factories and open shops". The larger concerns that landed included:

• the Commercial Press
• the Zhabei Water and Electricity Company
• the Fuxin machine flour mill
• the Chinese-run Gongheyong filature and more than 60 other filatures, foundries, machine works and cigarette factories

The numbers

The figures in the Gazetteer of Zhabei District are persuasive:

A finer set — the share of the city's factories in each trade that stood in the Chinese part of Zhabei, from a 1930 survey of Shanghai industry:

• textiles 41.57%
• printing 29.57%
• chemicals 23%
• food 22.38%
• machinery and electrical goods 16%

Close to half of Shanghai's big factories stood in Zhabei. This is where the title "the main base of Chinese-owned industry" comes from.

Commerce: three thriving centres

Industry rose, and commerce rose with it. Zhabei grew three commercial centres, each with its own character:

There is also a more obscure record: on the north bank of the Wusong River (today's Henan North Road to Fujian North Road) Shanghai's largest inland wharf was built, with scheduled passenger and cargo boats between Shanghai and the ports of the Lake Taihu basin. Zhabei's character as a gateway reached its height in this period.

Culture: the most precious thing on this ground

Industry and commerce were the visible achievements. But what made Zhabei truly irreplaceable was culture.

(1) The Commercial Press and the Oriental Library

The Commercial Press was founded in 1897, originally in Dechang Lane on Jiangxi Road. In 1904 it bought more than 80 mu east of Baoshan Road (the site of today's No. 499 lane, Baoshan Road) and put up its general office, printing works and editorial office there.

It was the most important cultural institution in the country at the time:

• it published the Eastern Miscellany, the Short Story Monthly, the Women's Magazine and Chinese-language textbooks, among much else;
• it owned more than 1,200 of the most advanced printing machines in the world;
• it was the largest publishing and printing enterprise in the Far East.

In 1924 the Commercial Press built the Oriental Library on the west side of Baoshan Road, opposite the main works — a five-storey reinforced concrete building, then the tallest in Zhabei. Its director was concurrently Wang Yunwu, head of the editorial office.

The Oriental Library's figures deserve a table of their own:

Its collections were so rich and so fine that "at the time it ranked first in China and indeed in Asia", and it was called the "first library of the East". From 1926 it opened to the public at set hours each afternoon, and received more than 30,000 readers a year. In 1928 it began a library training course, and in 1929 it added a children's library.

One detail: in May 1924 the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore lectured at the Oriental Library, with Xu Zhimo and Lin Huiyin interpreting throughout. (Shanghai, Jing'an District historical materials)

(2) Baoshan Road: a cultural landmark of the 1920s and 30s

There is a street in Shanghai that is "the easiest to overlook and forget" — Baoshan Road. It runs 1.7 km, from Tianmu East Road in the south to Tongxin Road in the north.

But in the 1920s and 30s it was the most famous cultural landmark in Shanghai, and in the country:

• after the Commercial Press and the Oriental Library came the Kaiming Book Company, the Beixin Book Company, the publishing department of the Chuangzao Society, the Esperanto Society and the Correspondence Library, and other cultural institutions;
• near Baoshan Road, in the Zhabei–Jiangwan area, Shanghai University, the Lida Academy and the Labour University were founded one after another;
• by the early 1930s almost every leading figure of modern Chinese culture had left footprints on Baoshan Road.

Zhao Jingshen, who taught at Fudan University in Jiangwan, recalled:

"In 1927 I lived on Tiantong'an Road, which was called the Latin Quarter. The road was very close to the Commercial Press and to Kaiming, and many men of letters lived nearby." — Zhao Jingshen, Reminiscences of the Literary World

In the summer holidays of 1921, Hu Shi was invited to spend a month inspecting the Commercial Press and turned up at the Baoshan Road editorial office every day. Baoshan Road also appears in the life-lines of Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Lao She, Ye Shengtao and Zheng Zhenduo.

(3) Education, theatre, sport

In this period Zhabei's cultural undertakings flowered across the board:

• by the early 1930s there had been 74 editorial, publishing and distribution houses and 25 newspapers and periodicals;
• six libraries, including the famous Oriental Library;
• eleven theatres and cinemas, large and small, including the Linji Gengxin Stage, which seated 3,000;
• the urge to found schools was intense: the Patriotic Girls' School founded by Cai Yuanpei moved into the district; the district's first private primary school, Feihong Free Primary School, was established; Xia Ruifang founded a primary teachers' training course and the Shanggong Primary School; Tang Naikang founded Shibei Public School (the forerunner of today's Shibei Middle School). By 1930 the district had seen more than 160 primary schools, more than 40 secondary schools, more than 20 vocational schools and more than 10 institutions of higher learning;
• sport: Xu Yibing and others founded China's earliest sports school, the China Gymnastics School; the patriotic martial artist Huo Yuanjia founded the Jingwu Gymnastics Association (forerunner of the Jingwu Sports Association); the China Women's Gymnastics School, founded by Wang Jilu and others, moved into the district.

Revolution: Zhabei's other, hidden thread

Zhabei's "red" undertone was laid down in these same fifteen years. In order:

Sanzeng Lane, Shanghai University, the General Trade Union and the Baoshan Road massacre all have chapters of their own in chapter 5, in Part Three and in Part Four; we set them aside here.

A brutal turning point

Zhabei's high noon ended with extraordinary suddenness.

On the night of 28 January 1932 the Japanese army attacked Zhabei. In the small hours of 29 January, Japanese aircraft bombed Zhabei, and the Commercial Press and the Oriental Library on Baoshan Road were destroyed.

From that moment Zhabei entered its darkest fourteen years. The next chapter tells of the two Shanghai wars.

In short

The richest, most dignified, most influential fifteen years of Zhabei's life were these fifteen. That is why, when it was later smashed to pieces, it hurt so much.