Baoshan Road: One Street That Holds Half of Modern China's Cultural History

In one line

Less than 1.7 km² of ground, holding nine of Zhabei's twelve revolutionary sites; a 1.7-kilometre road threading the Commercial Press, the Oriental Library, Shanghai University, the Shanghai General Trade Union and the Baoshan Road Massacre.

If you had to pick the single most "loaded" sub-district in Zhabei, this is it.

Where it is

Baoshan Road sub-district lies in the south-east of the district (some sources say the east):

To the east, Dongbaoxing Road; to the south, the railway; to the west, Xizang North Road (formerly Hetian Road); to the north, Zhongshan North Road. Area: 1.62 km².

Its office stands at 600 Qingyun Road. Qingyun Road will come up again and again in this book — because Shanghai University, Sanzeng Lane and Qingyun Road Square are all on it.

The name: the road to Baoshan County

The naming logic of "Baoshan Road" is very Qing-dynasty:

Baoshan Road is the name of a principal road within the sub-district. The road takes its name from the fact that it leads all the way into Baoshan County.

So it is a "road towards Baoshan County". Plain, unadorned, obvious at a glance.

Lineage

Why this is "modern Chinese cultural history in condensed form"

This is not an exaggeration. Let us go by space, and see what stands on and around Baoshan Road:

One: the Commercial Press (1904)

In 1904 the Commercial Press bought more than 80 mu on the east side of Baoshan Road (today around Lane 499, Baoshan Road) and put up its general affairs office, its printing works and its editorial office.

First, a common misunderstanding to correct: the Commercial Press was not founded in Zhabei. It was founded in 1897, at Dechang Lane on Jiangxi Road, and only moved to Baoshan Road in 1904. But both its heyday and its final destruction were in Zhabei.

It was then the most important cultural institution in the country:

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

In the summer of 1921, Hu Shi was invited to spend a month inspecting the Commercial Press, and appeared at the Baoshan Road editorial office every day.

Two: the Oriental Library (1924–1932)

In 1924 the Commercial Press completed the Oriental Library on the west side of Baoshan Road (opposite the main works) — a five-storey reinforced-concrete building, the tallest structure in Zhabei at the time. For the detail see Part One, chapter 4; here, remember just three figures: 463,000 volumes, more than 5,000 rare and unique copies, first in Asia.

It stood for only eight years. In the small hours of 29 January 1932 it was destroyed by Japanese aircraft; on 1 February Japanese ronin set fire to the books.

The site is at today's 584 Baoshan Road, declared a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit on 22 November 1960.

A piece of "knowledge trivia": in May 1924 the Indian poet Tagore lectured at the Oriental Library, with Xu Zhimo and Lin Huiyin translating throughout.

Three: a cluster of cultural institutions on one street

After the Commercial Press and the Oriental Library came, one after another, on and around Baoshan Road:

the Kaiming Bookstore, the Beixin Bookshop, the publishing department of the Creation Society, the Esperanto Society, the Communication Library (most of them clustered around Baoshan Lane — today near 393 Baoshan Road — and Sande Lane — today around 220–300 Baoshan Road).

In the neighbouring Zhabei and Jiangwan areas, Shanghai University, Lida Academy and the Labour University were established one after another.

According to the recollection of Zhao Jingshen, who once taught at Fudan University in Jiangwan:

"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 literary people lived nearby." — Zhao Jingshen, Reminiscences of the Literary World

"The Latin Quarter" — that was what people then called this stretch of Zhabei. Paris's Latin Quarter is where writers and scholars gather; Shanghai people called this part of Zhabei the same thing. The name itself says everything.

By the early 1930s, almost every figure of modern Chinese cultural elite had left footprints on Baoshan Road.

Four: Shanghai University (1922)

On 23 October 1922 the newspapers carried "Notice concerning Shanghai University", announcing that "the name is fixed as Shanghai University, and Mr Yu Youren is elected president of the university". The school's original site was at Qingyun Lane, Qingyun Road — inside Baoshan Road sub-district.

Among the revolutionary youth of the day a saying circulated: "For letters, Shangda; for arms, Whampoa." (For the detail see Part Three.)

Five: the Shanghai General Trade Union (1925)

On 1 June 1925 the Shanghai General Trade Union was founded at No. 2 Baoshan Lane, Baoshan Road, with Li Lisan as chairman and Liu Shaoqi as head of the general affairs section.

The union declared that only a trade union could truly protect the workers, and issued a notice: "If working friends do not understand how to organise a union, please send someone to No. 2 Baoshan Lane, Baoshan Road, Zhabei, to the Shanghai General Trade Union, and ask there and you will know."

From June 1925 to April 1927 the Shanghai General Trade Union moved from one lane to another, through nearly twenty of them — a very particular memory in Shanghai's red history.

Six: the Huzhou Guild Hall, the union's last open office

The Huzhou Guild Hall stands between 155 and 163 Huiwen Road. Funded by Qian Xinzhi, Shen Lianfang and others, natives of Huzhou in Zhejiang, it was founded in 1900 as a place for Huzhou sojourners in Shanghai to gather, deliberate, convalesce and lay out coffins.

On 24 March 1927 the Shanghai General Trade Union moved its offices into the Huzhou Guild Hall. After the 12 April coup, more than ten thousand workers spent that night in the open in front of the Huzhou Guild Hall to guard their own organisation; on 15 April the union withdrew from the guild hall and went underground.

The site was declared a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit on 26 May 1959. The original building had already been destroyed by Japanese shellfire in the "28 January" incident; what stands today is a commemorative site.

Seven: Sanzeng Lane, seat of the CCP Central Bureau (1923–1924)

Sanzeng Lane stands at the corner of Gongxing Road and Xiangshan Road (today Linshan Road). Because three families surnamed Zeng had lived there, and there were only three house numbers, it was called "Sanzeng Lane" — the Lane of the Three Zengs.

From July 1923 the Central Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party had its offices at No. 3 Sanzeng Lane. Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui, Cai Hesen and Xiang Jingyu, and Luo Zhanglong all lived and worked here, calling themselves to the outside world "the Wang brothers, one family", and hanging a "Guanjuan hang" signboard at the gate as cover.

In the "28 January" incident of 1932, Sanzeng Lane was destroyed by Japanese shellfire.

(For the detail see Part Three · Sanzeng Lane and Part Four.)

Eight: the Baoshan Road Massacre (1927)

From Qingyun Road to Baoshan Road: the massacre in the rain of 13 April 1927 happened near Sande Lane, Baoshan Road. The place where blood was shed was the stretch of 220–300 Baoshan Road, declared a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit in 1959.

Nine: Qingyun Road Square (1927)

The site of Qingyun Road Square is at the corner of Qingyun Road and West Baoxing Road. On the afternoon of 23 March 1927, more than 1,000 organisations from every walk of Shanghai life and 500,000 people held a mass meeting here in support of the new municipal government and in welcome of the Northern Expedition army.

On 13 April the union held another mass meeting of workers here; afterwards 100,000 people marched to Baoshan Road and came under fire.

A "site inventory"

Zhabei District has twelve revolutionary historical sites in all; Baoshan Road sub-district holds nine of them. The representative ones include:

This road is worth walking slowly.

The other side of the street

A less presentable point, by the way: in the 2000s this area was also one of the places in Zhabei where "dirt, disorder and squalor" were most concentrated. Encyclopaedia entries once mentioned that "the sub-district is full of dangerous shikumen housing", and that on Qiujiang Road the "Qiufu market" (second-hand digital goods and pirated media) was once "one of Shanghai's blind spots for public order".

For one sub-district to be at once a "holy place of culture" and a "blind spot for public order" sounds contradictory, but it is not: precisely because it is old, dense and neglected did it keep, at the same time, both the most history and the most problems.

A set of figures (as before abolition)

What to see here today

• Lane 499, Baoshan Road: the former site of the Commercial Press's main works (now a residential area — look for the plaque);
• 584 Baoshan Road: the commemorative marker at the site of the Oriental Library;
• 155–163 Huiwen Road: the Huzhou Guild Hall commemorative site;
• Gongxing Road × Linshan Road: the Sanzeng Lane site (today around 202–204 Xiangshan estate);
• 220–300 Baoshan Road: the Baoshan Road Massacre commemorative point;
• 600 Qingyun Road and Qingyun Lane, Qingyun Road: towards the former site of Shanghai University;
• Shibei Middle School (formerly Shibei Public School) and Qingyun Middle School: the century-old thread of education on this street.

Sources: the institutional lineage follows the administrative-division place-name directory and the Boya place-name directory; the location and history of the sites follow A Survey of Shanghai's Important Revolutionary Sites (reproduced on Fudan University's "Shanghai red resources" website), the Shanghai Party History website, and topical articles on the website of the Shanghai Municipal CPPCC; the cluster of cultural institutions on Baoshan Road follows the "Memory on the Sea · One Baoshan Road" series of reports. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.