Beizhan: Born of the Station, Trapped by the Station

In one line

Its name comes from a railway station that no longer exists; the most typical old quarter in Zhabei, and its most typical stretch of shikumen.

Where it is

Beizhan sub-district lies in the south-east of Zhabei District and covers about 1.78–1.99 km² (sources differ; see the table below). Its four boundaries are unusually evocative:

To the east it adjoins Zhapu Road sub-district of Hongkou District along Henan North Road, Wujin Road, Luofu Road and Qiujiang Road; to the west it neighbours Tianmu West Road sub-district along Gonghexin Road and the north–south elevated road; to the south it looks across Suzhou Creek at Nanjing East Road sub-district of Huangpu District; to the north the railway forms its boundary with Zhijiang West Road and Baoshan Road sub-districts.

To the south it looks across Suzhou Creek at Nanjing East Road sub-district of Huangpu District — that sentence deserves a pause. Directly opposite Beizhan sub-district lies Nanjing East Road, the busiest shopping street in Shanghai. One river between them, two worlds apart. This geographical relationship is the most immediate picture of Zhabei's psychology of "catching up".

The name: a station abbreviated

The two characters "Beizhan" are not an elegant piece of naming. They are simply an abbreviation:

"Beizhan" is a local place name within the sub-district, that is, a shortening of the old Shanghai North Railway Station of the Shanghai–Nanjing Railway, also habitually called the old North Station; it takes its name from lying north of the city centre, and was the land gateway of old Shanghai.

And the history of "Beizhan" lines up exactly with the chronicle in the previous part:

A sub-district named after a station that is no longer in use. That is not rare in Chinese urban toponymy, but it gives you pause every time.

Lineage: three mergers

The institutional history of Beizhan sub-district is even more carnivorous than that of Tianmu West Road:

Three mergers, one transfer out. By the time of abolition Beizhan sub-district administered 25 residents' committees, with its office at 43 Guoqing Road.

Incidentally: the name Guoqing Road is the one discussed in Part One, chapter 3 — it is a product of the "five races in one republic" round of renamings (Beichuanhong Road → Tianmu Middle Road; Nanchuanhong Road, split, → Guoqing Road and others).

What the sub-district looks like

Encyclopaedia entries describe Beizhan sub-district with considerable bluntness:

The area is mostly old shikumen housing. On the eastern side of Beizhan sub-district the belt along Anqing Road and Kangle Road still keeps the dirty, chaotic, run-down appearance of the old city, particularly around the Anqing Road market (from Kangle Road in the west to Henan Road in the east) …

That description was written in the 2000s and carries the harshness of its period. But it also states a fact about Beizhan sub-district:

This is the part of Zhabei that preserves the most shikumen, and the hardest to redevelop. What is good about shikumen (high historical value; the representative building type of modern Shanghai) and what is hard about it (extremely high residential density; rehousing costs out of all proportion) are both shown most typically in Beizhan sub-district.

The heavyweight landmarks inside it

Beizhan sub-district carries an unusually dense set of historical assets:

(Sihang Warehouse is covered in Part Three; the railway museum in Part Three.)

Why "born of the station, trapped by the station"

Beizhan sub-district's fate was decided entirely by that railway station:

Born of it — because the station was here, inns, restaurants, shops, warehouses and places of entertainment all clustered round it, and this was once one of the noisiest places in Zhabei.

Trapped by it — the crowds the station brought kept this area for decades in low-end commerce, cheap lodging and very high residential density; and in the two Shanghai campaigns of the war against Japan it was among the most heavily bombed districts (the North Station was bombed again and again — the Gazetteer of Zhabei District records that "the North Station, the McGregor Road station and the Commercial Press were several times bombed again").

The station moved away; the trouble stayed. That is the shared fate of many "old quarters around a railway station".

A set of figures (as before abolition)

What to see here today

• Shanghai Railway Museum: the reconstructed English-style station building of the old North Station, and the starting point of Chinese railways;
• Sihang Warehouse memorial: the bullet holes in the west wall are original — do not miss them;
• The north bank of Suzhou Creek (Guangfu Road to North Suzhou Road): looking across from here to the opposite bank (Nanjing East Road sub-district of Huangpu District) is the best stretch of walkway for understanding "north of the creek versus south of it";
• Anqing Road and Kangle Road: no longer what it was in the last century, but you can still feel the grain of the old shikumen.

Sources: the institutional lineage and the four boundaries follow the xzqh.org entry for Beizhan sub-district and the Boya place-name directory's "Historical lineage of the sub-districts of Jing'an District"; the history of the station follows Shanghai local gazetteers and public material from the Shanghai Railway Museum. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.