The Site Where Revolutionary Masses Bled and Died in the April 12 Incident: A Street Corner

Basic information

This piece is about a memorial site where nothing at all was left behind. It is not a building, not a ruin, not a gateway; it is the street corner where two roads meet.

One: First, Join Up the Timeline

This place cannot be told on its own; three days come before it:

On 12 April, Chiang Kai-shek launched the April 12 Incident in Shanghai, a counter-revolutionary coup, and dissolved the Shanghai General Trade Union, arresting and killing Communists on a large scale.

On 13 April, the Shanghai General Trade Union held a workers' meeting. After it, more than 100,000 workers, students and citizens formed up to petition at the headquarters of Zhou Fengqi's 2nd Division of the KMT 26th Army on Baoshan Road, putting forward four demands: return the workers' pickets' weapons, release the arrested workers, punish the chief culprits severely, and clear out the gangsters.

The procession came along Qingyun Road and East Yokohama Road and turned into Baoshan Road, stretching for about 2 li.

Two: One in the Afternoon, Near Sande Lane

The historical records agree closely on that moment:

As the petitioning procession shouted slogans and reached the area of Sande Lane on Baoshan Road (today the 220-300 Baoshan Road position), soldiers lying in ambush suddenly opened fire on the marchers. The crowd at the front fell at once, more than 100 killed on the spot, and countless wounded. It was pouring with rain, and blood ran in the streets of Baoshan Road. Only after half an hour did the firing stop, and the troops arrested many workers.

It is known to history as the Baoshan Road Massacre.

This book does not dwell on the details of that hour. It records only three verifiable things: the place, the time, and more than a hundred killed on the spot.

The procession came along Qingyun Road - at the other end is the former site of Shanghai University, also the starting point from which the same students, three weeks earlier, had helped the workers' pickets take the Huzhou Guild Hall. Three streets, less than three weeks, from victory to this spot.

Three: Why the Memorial Site Is "A Street Corner"

In 1959, 1977 and 2014 this place was entered three times on the municipal protection list. The 2014 scope-of-protection document puts it very concretely:

The whole environmental space of the street corner where the marker stele stands, bounded on the east, south and west by the existing kerb lines of Baoshan Road and Hongxing Road.

Note the two terms "street corner" and "kerb line".

For other protected units, the scope of protection reads "the building itself", "the courtyard", "the lawn"; for this one it reads street corner, and the boundary is the kerb.

Because there was nothing else left to protect. Sande Lane had long since gone, the houses in the 220-300 Baoshan Road area had been replaced several times over, and the war of 1932, later road widening and decades of urban rebuilding had smoothed away every trace above ground.

Only a position remained: the junction of two roads.

And it was precisely this position that was written into the municipal government's list three times.

Four: Three Announcements, Fifty-five Years

The three consecutive numbers 04, 05 and 06 string the line from March to April 1927 into one group:

• 04 is where the General Labour Union had its offices (3.24-4.12);
• 05 is the uprising's General Headquarters (3.22-April);
• 06 is the junction where the petitioning procession fell (4.13).

Three steles, one street, twenty-two days. The 2014 announcement amounted to the authorities recognising this whole route at one stroke.

Five: The Category of "Memorial Site"

The Shanghai local gazetteer added a note after its "List of Memorial Sites in Shanghai":

A memorial site means the original building has been destroyed or its original appearance greatly changed, and a stele is erected to commemorate it.

That note might almost have been written for this stretch of Baoshan Road. On the same list, within Zhabei, the following were set down one after another:

One house number per line, and nearly all of them on either side of Baoshan Road. This is not a list of sights; it is a list of "the houses are gone, the positions remain".

Six: What You See When You Go There Today

An ordinary street corner.

Baoshan Road and Hongxing Road meet here, with traffic lights, a pavement, street trees and passing cars. At the corner stands a marker stele. Apart from it, no wall, no courtyard, no exhibition, no ticket.

You do not need to go in, because there is nothing to go into. You simply stand at the junction, wait for a green light, and then know: on the afternoon of 13 April 1927, a procession two li long came here and went no further.

This is probably the place in the whole book least like a "sight". It is also the place where the reminder in the Part Three README applies most -

You are looking at "the place where history happened", not "the house of history".

Connections

• Sub-district：Baoshan Road Subdistrict
• See also：Baoshan Road Subdistrict, The Former Site of the Shanghai General Trade Union, The Former Site of the General Headquarters of the Shanghai Workers' Pickets, The Former Site of Shanghai University, Wang Shouhua, 5. A District Is Born, and Devastated

Sources: on 12 April 1927 Chiang Kai-shek launched the April 12 Incident in Shanghai, a counter-revolutionary coup, and dissolved the Shanghai General Trade Union; on 13 April the Shanghai General Trade Union held a workers' meeting, after which more than 100,000 workers, students and citizens went to petition at the headquarters of Zhou Fengqi's 2nd Division of the KMT 26th Army on Baoshan Road, putting forward demands such as returning the workers' pickets' weapons, releasing the arrested workers, punishing the chief culprits and clearing out the gangsters, the procession coming along Qingyun Road and East Yokohama Road and turning into Baoshan Road, stretching for about 2 li; at about one in the afternoon it reached the area of Sande Lane on Baoshan Road (today the 220-300 Baoshan Road position) and was fired on by troops, with more than 100 killed on the spot and countless wounded; it was raining hard, and the event is known to history as the Baoshan Road Massacre; on 26 May 1959 the Shanghai Municipal People's Government announced the site as a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit, on 7 December 1977 as a Shanghai memorial site, and on 4 April 2014 as a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit (S8(JN)-06, the 220-300 Baoshan Road area at the junction of Baoshan Road and Hongxing Road), with the scope of protection defined as "the whole environmental space of the street corner where the marker stele stands, bounded on the east, south and west by the existing kerb lines of Baoshan Road and Hongxing Road"; sources include the Shanghai Red Resources Joint Catalogue Database (Hongtu / Shanghai Library's "List of Shanghai Red Resources (First Batch)"), Guangming Daily's "A Little-Known Memorial Site of Bloodshed in Shanghai", the Shanghai Local Chronicles Office's "List of Memorial Sites in Shanghai", the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism's "Reply Approving the Scope of Protection for the Seventh and Eighth Batches of Major National Cultural Relic Protection Units and Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relic Protection Units (Announced in 2014) ...", the Jing'an District People's Government's "Red Culture on the Doorstep: 6 Routes to See All of Red Jing'an", and The Paper's "'Four Histories' Study and Education: Nine Important Places Here in Jing'an" (Grade B); "the consecutive numbers 04/05/06 string together one route" and "three streets, less than three weeks" are the author's own compilation and judgement, marked Grade C. See Appendix 4 for the full bibliography.