Other Corners Worth a Walk

The eight pieces before this are the "main dishes". This one is the "side dishes" — a few places that are not so famous, but repay a visit.

One: the north bank of Suzhou Creek (the Guangfu Road–North Suzhou Road area)

Why go: this is the best walkway for understanding Zhabei.

Start from Sihang Warehouse and walk along the north bank of Suzhou Creek. Under your feet is the former Zhabei (the Guangfu Road area); across the water is Huangpu District (the Nanjing East Road sub-district). One river between them, two kinds of city.

Things you can turn over as you walk:

• the name Guangfu Road comes from "commemorating the recovery of Shanghai" (named in 1912);
• this area was once a concentration of warehouses and godowns — many cargo-loading wharves were built along Guangfu Road;
• Sihang Warehouse and the former site of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce are both on this stretch;
• looking north from the city centre, what you see is Zhabei — this is the urban view of more than a hundred years.

Suggested time: dusk. The words a Xinhua reporter used for Sihang Warehouse's west wall were "the setting sun slants across … a deep crimson like blood".

Two: Qiujiang Road: treading an ancient course a thousand years old

Address: the Qiujiang Road area (Zhijiang West Road sub-district / Baoshan Road sub-district).

Why go: this is the most "obscure" piece of knowledge in this book.

The area of the former Qiujiang Road sub-district was originally the channel of the old course of the Wusong River; in the Northern Song the Wusong River silted and narrowed, and came to be called the Old River, also known as the Qiujiang, with reed marshes on either side.

The Qiujiang Road you walk today has a Suzhou Creek of a thousand years ago beneath your feet.

And Qiujiang Road itself is a landmark of old Shanghai's second-hand goods market (it was a well-known gathering place for electronics and second-hand goods last century). One "old course" plus one "second-hand market" — the name holds both geographical history and street-market history at once.

By the way: Shanghai has more than one Qiujiang — the western stretch (in Jiading and Putuo) was renamed West Qiujiang in 1981, and the middle stretch, because it joins Zoumatang, was renamed Outer Zoumatang. (See China National Radio's This Is How the Rivers of Our Shanghai Got Their Names!)

Three: Tianmu East Road: one street is one boundary

Address: Tianmu East Road (Beizhan sub-district).

Why go: Tianmu East Road was the northern boundary of the concession in those days.

The Gazetteer of Zhabei District records that from the second year of the Tongzhi reign to the nineteenth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing, the south-eastern corner of the district was drawn into the American concession, "extending north to the Boundary Road (today's Tianmu East Road)".

"Boundary Road" — the road's original name literally meant "border road".

Walk along Tianmu East Road and you will be walking on the line a hundred-odd years ago between the "Chinese-administered area" and the "concession". The Shanghai Railway Museum (200 Tianmu East Road) is on this street.

Four: Shanxi North Road and Jiqing Lane: looking for Wu Changshuo

Address: Jiqing Lane, Lane 457, Shanxi North Road.

Why go: see the previous chapter. The "Whampoa Military Academy" of modern Chinese art history is in this lane.

A reminder: this is people's housing, not a memorial; please do not disturb the residents.

Five: Qingyun Road: all the red memory on one street

Address: Qingyun Road (Baoshan Road sub-district).

Why go: this street strings together:

On one street, half is the history of modern Chinese education, half is the history of the Chinese workers' movement.

Six: Sande Lane and Baoshan Lane on Baoshan Road

Address: 220–300 Baoshan Road (the site of Sande Lane), and around 393 Baoshan Road (the site of Baoshan Lane).

Why go: these two lanes were the gathering place of Shanghai's cultural institutions in the 1920s and 1930s:

• Baoshan Lane: the Kaiming Bookstore, the Beixin Bookshop and other cultural institutions; the Shanghai General Trade Union was founded at No. 2 Baoshan Lane on 1 June 1925;
• Sande Lane: on 13 April 1927 the Baoshan Road Massacre happened near Sande Lane.

Today it is an ordinary residential area, but the names of these two lanes are worth remembering.

Seven: Pengpu Xincun: to see a "living workers' village"

Address: Pengpu Xincun sub-district (the Wenxi Road, Changzhong Road and Pingshun Road area).

Why go: if you are interested in "Chinese urban forms", this is the best living specimen.

• 56 workers' dormitory blocks built in 1958 (the Peng-1, Peng-3, Peng-5 and Peng-7 estates);
• today 180,000 registered residents and more than 230,000 permanent residents;
• people over 60 make up 48.6%;
• the ongoing "Pengpu model" whole-block redevelopment.

Go and see a 66-year-old workers' village, and the workers who lived in it when they were twenty.

Eight: the former Tianhou Temple and the Native Bankers' Guild Hall

Address: the area around the junction of Henan North Road and Tanggu Road.

Why go: among the pictures in the Gazetteer of Zhabei District there are two old photographs:

• the exterior of the Tianhou Temple, built in 1883 (today at the junction of Henan North Road and Tanggu Road);
• the Native Bankers' Guild Hall, built in 1889 (today at the junction of Henan North Road and Tanggu Road).

The Commercial Press's Feihong School (built in 1904, today's Tanggu Road Primary School) is also in this area.

This patch is the little that survives of Zhabei in its "early port days".

Nine: Hetian Road: the old name of Song Park Road

Address: Hetian Road (along the western boundary of Baoshan Road sub-district).

Why go: its former name was Song Park Road — "all named to commemorate the martyr of the 1911 Revolution, Song Jiaoren".

In the January 28 Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese bombing "focused on the Baoshan Road area near the North Station and the area east of Song Park Road (today Hetian Road)". The road has been renamed, but its former name was one of the targets of that war.

Ten: Bunye Cheng Green

Address: Tianmu West Road sub-district, around the Shanghai Railway Station.

Why go: this is one of the large green spaces within Zhabei, and the contemporary remnant of the "Bunye Cheng" concept.

From the green space you can see Shanghai Station and the surrounding high-rises — this is the most concrete scene of "Zhabei catching up".

A "supplementary list"

One last word

The sights of Zhabei share one quality: most of them are not "handsome", but almost every one has a "story behind it".

Walk Zhabei for a day with this book in hand, and what you see may still be those ordinary roads, ordinary lanes, ordinary parks. But a layer will have been added to your mind —

knowing what that road was once called, what used to stand opposite that building, what burned on that patch of open ground.

That extra layer is what this book wants to give you.

Sources: the sources for the entries in this piece are noted in the corresponding chapters. The rivers and place names follow China National Radio's Zoumatang, Qiujiang, Taopu … This Is How the Rivers of Our Shanghai Got Their Names!; the history of the roads follows the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau's The 1911 Revolution and Shanghai's Street Names and the place-name research material of "Shanghai Suhewan". The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.