The Former Residence of Wu Changshuo (Jiqing Lane): The Art World's Whampoa

Basic information

1913: an old man moves into Zhabei

In the early spring of 1913 an old man about to turn 70 moved with his whole household from Wusong in Shanghai into Jiqing Lane, then part of Zhabei.

His name was Wu Changshuo (1844–1927); his sobriquet was "Fouweng".

For both of them 1913 was a special year: it was Mei Lanfang's first visit to Shanghai to perform, and also Wu Changshuo's second year of settling in Shanghai.

That year Mei Lanfang, then not yet 20, came to Shanghai to perform for the first time. Accompanied by Liu Shannong, he crossed Suzhou Creek and went north, reached Jiqing Lane, 923 North Shanxi Road (today No. 12 Jiqing Lane, Lane 457, Shanxi North Road), climbed to the second floor of a "three bays, two wings" two-storey shikumen house, and respectfully paid his respects to an old man, inviting him to come and see his performance.

After that meeting, north and south of the great river, everyone knew the name of Mei Lanfang.

A master and a "Whampoa Military Academy"

Wu Changshuo spent the last fourteen years of his life (1913–1927) in Jiqing Lane. And those fourteen years were the most flourishing stretch of Shanghai-school painting and calligraphy, and the most brilliant stretch of his own artistic achievement.

What he did here

Why it is called "the Whampoa Military Academy of the art world"

Wu Changshuo's dwelling in Jiqing Lane was respectfully called by artists "the Whampoa Military Academy of the art world".

It served three functions at once (according to the curatorial reading of the exhibition The Strength of Metal and Stone, the Heart of Grass and Trees):

1. an art base for Shanghai-school painting and calligraphy at its most flourishing;
2. a master's high-end salon (Wang Yiting, Shen Zengzhi, Li Duanqing, Zhu Zumou, Zhang Yuanji, Mei Lanfang and others often came to discuss art);
3. a master's great cradle.

For the people who came out of here, take a passage from Wu Changshuo's great-grandson Wu Chao:

"This place can be compared to the Whampoa Military Academy of the art world; the people who came out of it are Liu Haisu, Wang Geyi, Pan Tianshou, Sha Menghai, Chen Banding, Chen Shizeng, including Mr Daqian and Zhao Yunhe, and Japan's grand master Kawai Senro; the leader of the Lingnan school, Gao Jianfu, also came here to learn seal carving from him …"

In the drawing room of a single shikumen house sat more than half the landscape of modern Chinese art history.

Qi Baishi too praised Wu Changshuo in verse — "old Fou in his declining years has a talent all his own" — and, inspired by Wu Changshuo's distinctive brush and ink, created the "red flowers, ink leaves school".

Two lines, one period of feeling

During his residence in Zhabei, Wu Changshuo passed two of the most memorable milestone birthdays of his life, his 70th and his 80th.

He once wrote eight characters describing his days in Jiqing Lane:

"The gentleman takes his ease in joy; the worthy man finds great peace."

(According to what Wu Changshuo's great-grandson Wu Chao said in an interview, this was the heartfelt sentiment and true portrait of Wu Changshuo's late years, when his affections were bound to Jiqing Lane in Zhabei.)

The point of the character "fou"

Wu Changshuo's sobriquet was "Fouweng". Why "fou"?

"Fou" is an utterly plain earthenware vessel, simple in form, with few decorations, never showing off, with a big belly that can hold everything — which suits the master's pursuit of art. But the character "fou" carries another meaning too — in the Records of the Grand Historian, in the "Biographies of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru", it records the musical instrument in "Xiangru stepped forward and struck the fou", struck, it gives out a sound; when things are unfair, it speaks out — which was also Wu Changshuo's character.

"A big belly that can hold everything" and "when things are unfair, it speaks out" — put the two meanings together, and that is Wu Changshuo.

An 81-year-old's "Lament for the May Thirtieth"

On 30 May 1925 the May Thirtieth Massacre occurred, and strikes, class boycotts and shop closures swept all Shanghai.

Wu Changshuo, already 81, could not sit still. When students of the Shanghai Art Academy came to Jiqing Lane to ask him to raise funds, the old man, still ill, resolutely took up his brush through the night and wrote the long poem "Lament for the May Thirtieth":

"The beacon fires press on the sky, the sky turns dark; the sky's light slants across the sea, a pale red. Once the cannons sound, the bullets rain fierce; the bullet-drinking men swell across the field-paths …"

Why such a strong reaction? Because he had lived through war in his youth:

He was only 16 then, exactly the age of these hot-blooded young students before him now. The flames of war then reached western Zhejiang, and Wu Changshuo and his father fled their home for four long years. Father and son met disaster after disaster, and the two of them staved off hunger with wild fruit, grass roots and tree bark.

An 81-year-old man, in sickness, writing a poem for a child who fled war 81 years before.

Jiqing Lane today

Address: No. 12 Jiqing Lane, Lane 457, Shanxi North Road (old house number 923 North Shanxi Road).

It needs to be explained that this is not a memorial open to the public, but a piece of shikumen lane housing. Adjust your expectations before you go: what you are seeing is "the spot where the building Wu Changshuo lived in stood", not "the Wu Changshuo former-residence museum".

A lead for something "nearby": in 2014 the closing exhibition of the 170th anniversary of Wu Changshuo's birth, "Wu Changshuo Came Out of Zhabei: An Exhibition of the Painting and Calligraphy of Wu Changshuo, His Teachers and Friends", was held at the Zhabei District Haishang Culture Centre, with 84 exhibits. The Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial (in Pudong) is another place to see his works.

Nearby, to see in the same trip

• the Shanxi North Road and North Suzhou Road area: the old shikumen district on the north bank of Suzhou Creek;
• Sihang Warehouse: walk east from Shanxi North Road and you reach it;
• the former site of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce (west side of North Suzhou Road and Henan North Road, built in 1915): not far.

Sources: Wu Changshuo's deeds in Zhabei follow Memory on the Sea: Because of Wu Changshuo, Shanxi North Road in Shanghai Has a "Whampoa Military Academy" of the Art World (Tencent News), NetEase News's report on "The 170th anniversary of Wu Changshuo's birth", and the Liberation Daily Shangguan News reading of the exhibition The Strength of Metal and Stone, the Heart of Grass and Trees: Wu Changshuo and Shanghai; the address of the former residence follows the above reports. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.