The Former Residence of Deng Zhongxia: No. 92 Baoshan Li, One Bed and One Writing Desk

Basic information

This piece is about one year that a man spent living in Zhabei. The house is long gone, but on that writing desk the charter of a university was drawn up.

One: Why Baoshan Li

In February 1923 the great strike of Beijing-Hankou Railway workers was suppressed (the "February 7 Massacre"), the Chinese Labour Union Secretariat in Beijing was shut down, and Deng Zhongxia was wanted. By arrangement of the Party organisation, he moved with the Secretariat to Shanghai.

In April of the same year, introduced by Li Dazhao, Deng Zhongxia accepted the invitation of Yu Youren, president of Shanghai University, and took up the post of provost, in charge of the whole administration of the school.

He moved into No. 92 Baoshan Li, Baoshan Road (today No. 92, Lane 403, Baoshan Road).

Why here? Because at that time Baoshan Road was one of the busiest streets in the Chinese quarter: the Commercial Press, the Oriental Library, the Changjiang Bookstore and several silk filatures and cotton mills stood on both sides, and shikumen lanes such as Baoshan Li and Yipin Lane were being built up row after row.

A wanted man, hidden on the busiest street, was safe precisely because of it.

Two: "Deng Anshi"

To evade the warlord wanted notice, he changed his name to "Deng Anshi".

Neighbours in the lane knew only that the household was surnamed Deng, lived on the ground floor, and that he seldom went out. In the room there was only one bed, one writing desk and a few chairs.

No study, no bookshelves, no place to receive guests. A man who had just come out of the Chinese Literature Department of Peking University and helped found the Society for the Study of Marxism spent that year in Shanghai doing his work in a room like this.

Three: What Was Done at That Writing Desk

In his year as provost of Shanghai University, what Deng Zhongxia did was no small thing:

Shanghai University soon became known across the country, praised as "the Red University of the East", and paired with Peking University as "the two centres, south and north, of Chinese Communist Party activity".

This stretch of the school's history has been told in this book's piece on the former site of Shanghai University. Here only one thing is added: the charter and the timetable of that university were drafted on the writing desk on the ground floor of No. 92 Baoshan Li.

A school's history is usually told starting from its buildings. But the most important year of Shanghai University began not in a school building, but on the rented ground floor of a shikumen house.

Four: From 1924 to 1933

In March 1924 Shanghai University moved to 130 Seymour Road (today Lane 299, Shaanxi North Road), and Deng Zhongxia left Baoshan Li to live elsewhere.

After that his life went steadily onward:

• 1925: he helped lead the February general strike in Japanese-owned cotton mills in Shanghai; he went to Guangzhou to prepare the Second National Labour Congress, was elected secretary-general of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and helped draft its charter; and he organised the Canton-Hong Kong general strike;
• 1927: he attended the August 7 Meeting and was elected an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee;
• 1928: he was elected a member of the Central Executive Bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions and went to Moscow for the Sixth National Congress of the CPC;
• 1930: with He Long, Guan Xiangying and others he founded the Hunan-Hubei-Western revolutionary base area at Honghu, serving as political commissar of the Second Red Army Corps;
• 1932: he was transferred to be director of the National Red Relief Association and secretary of its Party group, doing underground work in the White areas.

On the evening of 15 May 1933, betrayed by a traitor, he was arrested in Shanghai. On 21 September he was executed at Yuhuatai in Nanjing, aged only 39.

Two days before his death he wrote a last letter to the Party organisation: "Comrades, I am soon going to Yuhuatai; keep up the struggle, for the final victory will in the end be ours."

Asked before his execution "whether he had anything more to say", he answered: "In all my life I have done nothing that needs regretting, and I have nothing to say to you."

Five: The House Went First

The house at No. 92 Baoshan Li did not last until Deng Zhongxia - in the January 28 Incident of 1932 it was destroyed by Japanese shellfire. The Commercial Press, the Oriental Library and the Huzhou Guild Hall on either side of Baoshan Road were all destroyed in the same war.

This is the most helpless thing about Zhabei's red sites: they were not pulled down by people, nor did they collapse on their own; a whole street was wiped flat by shellfire together. So most of the "former sites" on Baoshan Road today are not the original buildings, but a stele, a gateway, a house number.

For Deng Zhongxia's former residence there is not even a clear record of a physical stele - it is now a stretch of position inside a lane. Lane 403, Baoshan Road is still there, the house number 92 is still there, but the house has been replaced.

Six: Why Write About "One Room" at All

This piece has no building to look at and no exhibition to visit.

But it is the most "concrete" of this group of red sites: the others record an uprising, a congress, a human life, and this one alone records how one person lived from day to day - one bed, one writing desk, a few chairs, an alias, one year.

History, written down to the end, is often not numbers but furniture.

A wanted man, who did not leave the lane by day and at night wrote the charter of a school at his writing desk, brought in as teachers a group of people later written into textbooks. One year later he moved away; eight years later the house was gone too.

This is No. 92 Baoshan Li.

Connections

• Sub-district：Baoshan Road Subdistrict
• See also：Baoshan Road Subdistrict, The Former Site of Shanghai University, The Commercial Press and the Oriental Library, Sanzeng Lane and Huzhou Guild Hall, Wang Shouhua

Sources: Deng Zhongxia (1894-1933), a native of Yizhang, Hunan, was one of the early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and a leader of the workers' movement; after the "February 7 Massacre" of 1923 he moved to Shanghai with the Chinese Labour Union Secretariat and, to evade a warlord wanted notice, changed his name to "Deng Anshi"; he lived on the shikumen ground floor at No. 92 Baoshan Li, Baoshan Road (today No. 92, Lane 403, Baoshan Road, Jing'an District), with only one bed, one writing desk and a few chairs in the room; in April 1923, introduced by Li Dazhao, he accepted Yu Youren's invitation to serve as provost of Shanghai University, drafted the Shanghai University Charter, added a sociology department, appointed Qu Qiubai, Cai Hesen, Yun Daiying, Zhang Tailei, Xiao Chunü, Jiang Guangci and Ren Bishi, among others, to teach, and promoted several academic societies; in March 1924, after Shanghai University moved to 130 Seymour Road, he moved away; in 1925 he helped lead the February general strike in Japanese-owned cotton mills in Shanghai, went to Guangzhou for the Second National Labour Congress and was elected secretary-general of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and organised the Canton-Hong Kong general strike; on 15 May 1933 he was arrested in Shanghai, and on 21 September was executed at Yuhuatai in Nanjing, aged 39; the former residence was destroyed by Japanese shellfire in the January 28 Incident of 1932; sources include Xinmin Evening News's "For One Man, Walk a City: Deng Zhongxia's Footsteps in Shanghai" (2021), Shi Yongfeng of the Shanghai CPPCC's "Born Brilliant as Summer Flowers: Deng Zhongxia's Former Residence on Baoshan Road", the Shanghai channel of People's Daily Online's "A Hundred-Year Journey, Lighting Up 100: Exploring the Red Gene in Haipai Culture" (No. 66, "Deng Zhongxia's Former Residence"), Baoshan Road Subdistrict's "Red Baoshan Road 2.0 (19): The Site of Deng Zhongxia's Former Residence", and the Baidu Baike entry "Former Residence of Deng Zhongxia" (Grade B); phrases such as "a whole street wiped flat by shellfire together" and "history written down to the end is not numbers but furniture" are the author's own synthesis, marked Grade C. See Appendix 4 for the full bibliography.