Wu Changshuo: His Last Fourteen Years in Jiqing Lane

Basic facts

For the position and present state of the residence itself, and for the phrase "the Whampoa of the art world", see Part Three · The Former Residence of Wu Changshuo. This piece is about the man.

A "late" peak

When Wu Changshuo moved to Zhabei in 1913, he was already close to 70.

This was not the start of a life but a final sprint before the finish. And the way he sprinted was:

"In his fourteen years in Zhabei, Wu Changshuo's artistic creation was at its most vigorous and his artistic achievement at its most brilliant."

A man from 70 to 84 years old, in a Shanghai lane, reached the highest peak of his life's artistic achievement.

The 1912 phenomenon

To understand this, one must first look at Shanghai around 1912.

According to the curatorial reading of the exhibition "The Strength of Bronze and Stone, the Heart of Grass and Trees — Wu Changshuo and Shanghai":

In 1912 a great many senior officials of the old imperial order came to Shanghai, and collectively changed posts into the Shanghai School of painting and calligraphy, such as Chen Baochen, Chen Sanli, Shen Zengzhi, Zeng Xi, Zhu Zumou, Li Duanqing, Zhang Jian, Kang Youwei and others. In May of that year, Wu Changshuo too settled formally in Shanghai.

That is to say, after the 1911 Revolution a group of former Qing scholar-officials came into Shanghai and turned collectively to painting and calligraphy. Within a year or two Shanghai gathered the strongest force in painting and calligraphy in the country, and Wu Changshuo became the leader among them.

With the idea of inheriting and opening up, the awareness of innovation and inclusiveness, the spirit of reforming in old age, and the bearing of founding a school, he "carried through all-round breakthroughs in painting, calligraphy and seal carving", "breaking the old methods and bringing out his own meaning", and so became the leader of the Shanghai School of painting and calligraphy.

"Reforming in old age" — those four words are the key to understanding Wu Changshuo.

Jiqing Lane's three "calling cards"

Wu Changshuo's residence (Jiqing Lane) later acquired three identities (according to an exhibition review in Jiefang Daily's Shangguan News):

1. the artistic base from which the Shanghai School of painting and calligraphy reached its height;
2. the master's high-end salon;
3. the master's great cradle.

And artists respectfully called it "the Whampoa of the art world".

The salon: who came

"A stream of cultural notables often came as guests, gathering to talk of art, and became a scene peculiar to Jiqing Lane, from Wang Yiting, Shen Zengzhi and Li Duanqing to Zhu Zumou, Zhang Yuanji, Mei Lanfang and others."

Note that Zhang Yuanji is among them — the head of the Commercial Press and the leader of the Shanghai School of painting and calligraphy, talking of art in one and the same lane. You can see from this the cultural density of Zhabei in those years.

The cradle: who came out of it

Wu Changshuo's great-grandson Wu Chao says:

"This place could be likened to the Whampoa of the art world; those who came out of it were Liu Haisu, Wang Geyi, Pan Tianshou, Sha Menghai, Chen Banding, Chen Shizeng, including Mr Zhang Daqian, Zhao Yunhe, and also Japan's great master Kawai Senro, while the leader of the Lingnan School, Gao Jianfu, also came here to learn seal carving from him…"

One drawing room in a Shanghai shikumen connects to more than half the roster of modern Chinese art history, and to Japan and Lingnan as well.

Qi Baishi too wrote a poem praising him — "Old Fou, in his declining years, has a talent all his own" — and, taking inspiration from his brushwork, founded the "red flowers, ink leaves" school.

The name "Fou Weng"

Wu Changshuo's style was "Fou Weng". Why "fou"? Two senses:

"A big belly that can hold everything" + "when things are unfair, it speaks out" — put those two together and you have the whole Wu Changshuo.

The anger of an 81-year-old man

Wu Changshuo's fourteen years in Zhabei were not spent shut up painting. Again and again he "spoke out when things were unfair".

Winter 1917 and autumn 1919: two Portraits of Refugees

• in the winter of 1917, more than a hundred counties in Zhili and Fengtian were stricken by disaster, and the starving were beyond counting;
• in the autumn of 1919, mountain floods broke out in the five provinces of Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and many innocent victims were left homeless;

Wu Changshuo twice collaborated with Wang Yiting on Portraits of Refugees, selling them for charity to relieve the disaster.

30 May 1925: Mourning the May Thirtieth

When the May Thirtieth Massacre happened, and seeing the whole of Shanghai rise in a wave of strikes by workers, students and shops, Wu Changshuo, already 81, could not sit still. When students from the Shanghai Art Academy came to Jiqing Lane to ask Wu Changshuo to raise funds, the old man, still ill, resolutely took up his brush through the night and wrote the long poem Mourning the May Thirtieth:

"Beacon fires press on the sky, the sky grows dark; the light of heaven slants down, the sea pale and red. A single cannon shot and the bullet rain beats down; those who take the bullets swell the fields and paths…"

Why he was so stirred

Because this was not abstract sympathy. The report makes the reason plain:

"At this moment he, who had seen so much trouble, perhaps recalled the years of war he had lived through as a boy. He was then only 16, exactly the age of these hot-blooded young students before him. At that time the flames of war reached western Zhejiang, and Wu Changshuo and his father fled their home for four years. Father and son met disaster after disaster, and lived on wild fruit, grass roots and tree bark."

An 81-year-old man wrote a poem while ill, because 65 years before he too had been a 16-year-old boy fleeing war.

Two "unforgettable birthdays"

During his years in Zhabei, Wu Changshuo celebrated the two most unforgettable milestone birthdays of his life, his 70th and his 80th.

He once summed up his days in Jiqing Lane in eight characters:

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

(According to Wu Changshuo's great-grandson Wu Chao in an interview, this "is precisely the heartfelt reflection and true picture of Wu Changshuo's attachment to Jiqing Lane in Zhabei in his late years".)

"Every house has Fou Weng, every door has Changshuo"

A saying once circulated in Shanghai:

"Every house has Fou Weng, every door has Changshuo."

This saying describes how widely Wu Changshuo's work had spread — in those days it was common for Shanghai households to hang his paintings.

For an artist's work to enter "every household" is rare in modern Chinese art history.

November 1927: death in Jiqing Lane

In November 1927 Wu Changshuo died in Jiqing Lane.

From the spring of 1913 to November 1927 — just a little more than fourteen years.

How Zhabei commemorates him

It was co-hosted by the Haishang Cultural Centre, the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial Hall, the Zhabei Revolutionary History Exhibition Hall and the Zhabei District Library.

"Zhabei Produced Wu Changshuo" — the exhibition title itself is a positioning: not "Wu Changshuo lived in Zhabei", but "out of Zhabei came Wu Changshuo's peak".

How to go and see him today

• No. 12, Jiqing Lane, Lane 457, Shanxi North Road: the site of the former residence (an ordinary dwelling — please do not disturb the residents; it is viewable only from outside);
• the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial Hall (in Pudong): the place to see his work;
• the Xiling Seal Society (Hangzhou): he was its first president.

A closing line

Wu Changshuo's fourteen years in Zhabei make one thing clear:

Whether a lane can become a "holy place of art" does not depend on how much money it has, but on who lived there and what it was connected to.

Jiqing Lane is an ordinary shikumen lane. But because Wu Changshuo lived at No. 12, Mei Lanfang went up to its second floor, Qi Baishi took inspiration from him, and Pan Tianshou and Sha Menghai learned painting here.

Between 1913 and 1927 Zhabei held the Commercial Press, the Oriental Library and Jiqing Lane all at once. On this land on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, the cultural density of that age was far higher than many people imagine.

Sources: "Memory on the Sea · Because of Wu Changshuo, Shanghai's Shanxi North Road Had the 'Whampoa' of the Art World" (Tencent News); the NetEase News report "Wu Changshuo's 170th-birth-anniversary commemorations conclude in Shanghai"; and the exhibition reading "The Strength of Bronze and Stone, the Heart of Grass and Trees — Wu Changshuo and Shanghai" in Jiefang Daily's Shangguan News. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.