5. A District Is Born, and Devastated (1927–1932)

1927: three things in one year

For Zhabei, 1927 was a year of information overload. Three great events crowded into it:

1. 21–22 March: the workers' third armed uprising is won in Zhabei, and the first elected government in Shanghai's history is formed;
2. 12–13 April: the April 12 coup; Baoshan Road runs with blood;
3. 1927–1928: "Zhabei District" appears formally as an administrative unit.

From the brightest triumph to the most savage massacre was a gap of about twenty days.

March: the victory ends in Zhabei

Of the three armed uprisings of Shanghai's workers, the first two failed. The third, on 21 March 1927, was led by a special committee of the Communist Party's Central Committee and the Shanghai regional committee — Chen Duxiu chaired the special committee; Zhou Enlai headed the special military committee.

The rising began around 1 p.m. on 21 March; by a little after 6 p.m. on the 22nd, the main battlefield — the battle for Zhabei — had ended in victory. After two days and a night of hard fighting the rising succeeded. Shanghai's workers overthrew the warlord government by force and set up an elected city government led by the working class.

On 24 March, the Shanghai General Trade Union moved into the Huzhou Guild Hall (around today's Nos. 155–163 Huiwen Road) and began working there. The white-on-red banner "Shanghai General Trade Union" hung above the entrance hall; to either side were a reception room and the guard room of the workers' pickets, whose members carried rifles on their shoulders and belts at their waists, and checked the papers of everyone going in and out.

There is a detail here that is easily missed: during the third armed uprising the general headquarters of the workers' pickets was in the Oriental Library — the five-storey library of the Commercial Press. From the railing of the second-floor balcony hung the banner "Headquarters of the Shanghai General Trade Union Workers' Pickets", and Zhou Enlai and others directed the assault on the North Station from there.

A library became the command post for an assault. The image is symbolic in itself.

On the afternoon of 23 March, more than 1,000 organisations from every part of Shanghai and 500,000 people held a mass meeting on Qingyun Road Square (today's corner of Qingyun Road and West Baoxing Road) to support the founding of the city government and welcome the Northern Expeditionary army. It was one of the largest gatherings in Zhabei's history.

April: the rain on Baoshan Road

The victory lasted twenty days.

On 12 April 1927 Chiang Kai-shek launched his counter-revolutionary coup. Before dawn, gangs drawn from the Green and Red societies, long prepared, wound white cloth and a black character "工" (for "worker") around their arms, disguised themselves as workers and poured out of the concessions in several directions, attacking workers' pickets at 14 places including Zhabei, Nanshi, Huxi, Wusong and Pudong. The pickets fought back. In the thick of the fighting the 26th Army of the National Revolutionary Army — Sun Chuanfang's old troops, taken over by Chiang — arrived and, on the pretext of "mediating a quarrel among workers", disarmed the workers' pickets. That day more than 2,700 armed pickets were disarmed.

On 13 April the Shanghai General Trade Union held a workers' assembly. It called a mass meeting on Qingyun Road Square in Zhabei; afterwards some 100,000 workers marched in formation to petition the headquarters of the 2nd Division of Zhou Fengqi's 26th Army.

As the column reached the neighbourhood of Sandeli on Baoshan Road, soldiers of the 2nd Division hidden in the lanes suddenly appeared and opened fire on the crowd with machine guns. More than a hundred were shot dead on the spot, countless more were wounded, and over 200 were arrested. It happened to be raining hard; for a while Baoshan Road ran with blood.

This is the Baoshan Road Massacre.

In the three days from 12 to 15 April, more than 300 people were slaughtered in Shanghai, more than 1,000 Communists arrested, and more than 5,000 driven into exile or lost. The labour leaders Wang Shouhua, Zhao Shiyan and Chen Yannian were killed one after another (on Wang Shouhua see Part Four).

A place name worth remembering: the site where the revolutionary crowd shed its blood in the April 12 massacre lies on Baoshan Road in Zhabei District, Shanghai, in the stretch numbered 220–300. On 26 May 1959 the Shanghai Municipal People's Government listed it as a protected cultural site of Shanghai, and on 7 December 1977 as a commemorative site of Shanghai.

1927–1928: Zhabei becomes a "district"

In the midst of blood and fire, Zhabei's administrative status was changing too:

• In 1927 the name "Zhabei District" begins to appear;
• In 1928 Zhabei District is formally established, under the Special Municipality of Shanghai (later renamed the Municipality of Shanghai).

"Zhabei" went from a geographical direction, a customary way of speaking, to a formal cell in the state administrative system.

1929–1931: a brief revival

In the three years or so before the January 28 Incident, Zhabei had a period of recovery:

• In 1929 the Shanghai municipal government drew up the first outline of the "Greater Shanghai Plan", with a road system for Zhabei planned specifically;
• on the eve of the war of resistance, Zhabei's roads had achieved "linked to the concessions in the south, to Baoshan in the north, to Hongkou in the east and to Pengpu in the west";
• in September 1929 the Shanghai special municipal government decided to allocate funds to repair Song Garden (Jiaoren Park) and open it as a public park;
• by the early 1930s Zhabei's factories, schools, theatres and libraries had all recovered to a considerable scale.

Everything seemed to be going the right way. Then 1932 arrived.

28 January 1932: the January 28 Incident

Background: a war to divert attention

At the beginning of 1932, in order to divert international attention from its seizure of north-east China and its creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo, Japan stirred up trouble in Shanghai. The plan was drawn up by Tanaka Ryukichi, the Japanese military attaché in Shanghai, and others, in order to manufacture a pretext for conflict.

Defending Shanghai at this point was the 19th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army — commander-in-chief Jiang Guangnai, army commander Cai Tingkai, and Dai Ji, commander of the Shanghai–Wusong garrison.

On 23 January 1932, with the situation growing tense, Jiang Guangnai left hospital against medical advice and convened an emergency meeting of officers of battalion rank and above at the Shanghai–Wusong garrison headquarters in Longhua, resolving to "fight the Japanese to the death" and "hold the soil of the country", and secretly ordering every unit to stand ready. When the Japanese ultimatum arrived, Jiang Guangnai gave his order: "Answer it with cannon!"

The fighting: the first shot at Zhabei

At 11.30 p.m. on 28 January, about a thousand Japanese marines attacked the North Railway Station, more than 700 attacked Tiantong'an Station, and more than 1,600, covered by tanks, advanced out of the concession area on North Sichuan Road towards Qiujiang Road, Baoshan Road, Hengbang Road, Qingyun Road and elsewhere, attacking the Chinese troops in Zhabei.

The 19th Route Army fought back. At 1 a.m. on 29 January, Jiang Guangnai, Cai Tingkai and Dai Ji issued a joint telegram to the whole country:

The brutal Japanese have occupied our three north-eastern provinces; our territory is discoloured, our nation is on the brink of extinction! Of late they have murdered and burned in Shanghai; ronin have swarmed everywhere... On the night of the 28th, at midnight, they brazenly violated our lines at Zhabei in Shanghai and provoked us. Guangnai and the others are soldiers; we know only legitimate defence. To protect the country and hold its soil is our bounden duty; not an inch of ground can be given up. In resisting Japan to save the nation and preserve our people, we shall not flinch even if we are reduced to a single soldier and a single bullet, and so forfeit the honour of a soldier of the Republic of China. This resolve, this heart of ours, can be laid before heaven and earth and shown to the world.

By 3 a.m. the Japanese at Tiantong'an Station had been wiped out and the station retaken. The Chinese forces pressed the advantage for a time, advancing as far as the Japanese marine headquarters near Hongkou Park.

In the small hours of 29 January, Japanese aircraft bombed Zhabei; the Commercial Press and the Oriental Library on Baoshan Road were both destroyed. Several parts of Zhabei were on fire.

So the 1932 Battle of Shanghai opened at Zhabei.

Thirty-three days of street fighting

Zhabei was the 19th Route Army's main line of defence and the Japanese army's preferred direction of attack — the Japanese did not dare attack the International Settlement or the French concession directly, for fear of conflict with the European powers and the United States, and turned their spearhead on the Chinese city. The fighting took the form of street fighting:

In the street fighting at Zhabei the Japanese army took heavy losses and changed commanders three times — Shiozawa Koichi, then Nomura Kichisaburō, then Ueda Kenkichi, then Shirakawa Yoshinori — while continuing to pour in reinforcements, the total force reaching 80,000–100,000 at one point.

On 1 March the Japanese landed at Liuhe, threatening the Chinese defenders' flank and rear; with no further reserves coming, the 19th Route Army and the 5th Army (Zhang Zhizhong leading the relief force) were forced to retreat along the whole line on the night of 1 March. On 2 March the Japanese army occupied Zhabei.

What Zhabei paid

The account recorded in the Gazetteer of Zhabei District is shocking:

And the most symbolic single item of all was the Oriental Library.

The destruction of the Oriental Library

In the small hours of 29 January 1932 the Japanese army sent six aircraft to drop bombs on the Commercial Press on Baoshan Road, Zhabei. The whole of the Commercial Press was reduced to ruins in a sea of fire; only the plate store survived. On 1 February Japanese ronin slipped into the Oriental Library and set the books alight.

The 460,000 volumes that Zhang Yuanji had gathered and built up — including more than 3,700 rare old editions, over 35,000 volumes — were burned in their entirety. The only things to survive were more than 5,000 unique and rare volumes (among them 21 volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia) that had been stored in advance in a bank vault.

The Commercial Press afterwards compiled a book called Books Remaining from the Hanfen Tower after the Flames — the two characters "remaining after the flames" chosen "to record the pain".

That winter the wind in Shanghai blew from the north-east. Old hands at the Commercial Press remembered:

For several days that winter the north-east wind blew hard, and the paper ash of Zhabei drifted over western Shanghai, sheet after sheet, into the courtyard of Zhang Yuanji's house.

Zhang Yuanji's couplet was: "Twenty years of heart's blood ground down to a scrap; / in one instant the forest of books is turned to ash." (On Zhang Yuanji see Part Four.)

And the Japanese marine commander Shiozawa Koichi said something that lays bare the logic of the catastrophe as clearly as anything could:

"Burn down a few streets in Zhabei, and they can be restored in a year or half a year. Burn down the Commercial Press, the most important cultural institution in China, and it can never be restored."

This was a war against culture.

Armistice and recovery

On 5 May 1932, with the British, Americans, French and Italians mediating, China and Japan signed the Shanghai Armistice Agreement, and the Japanese army was forced to withdraw from Shanghai.

After the armistice the people of Zhabei made a very Zhabei choice: rebuild at once.

• On 21 May 1932 the railway was running again;
• the ruined businesses, homes, hospitals and schools were built again, and the economy recovered to a degree;
• in 1936 a Shanghai municipal government survey found 574 factories in the Zhabei area, 34.02% of the 1,687 factories across the five areas of the International Settlement, the French concession, Zhabei, Nanshi and Pudong;
• by 1937 there were 39 public and private hospitals, large and small.

In five years Zhabei pulled itself out of the ruins, recovering to more than seventy per cent of its pre-war level.

Then 1937 arrived.

In short

• 1927 was the year Zhabei's summit and its abyss appeared in the same frame: the workers' third armed uprising was won here; the Baoshan Road massacre happened here; and "Zhabei District" was formally established in those same two years.
• The January 28 Incident of 1932: Zhabei was the main battlefield and the greatest victim — 68% of the city's losses fell on Zhabei.
• The burning of the Oriental Library was the most irreversible loss of that war.
• Zhabei rebuilt in five years, and by 1936 it was back to 34% of the city's factories — and then August 13 came.