Xinzhong Middle School → Xinzhong Senior High School: A School Founded by a Guild
Basic facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Origin | 1923, when Qin Runqing founded the Xiuneng Academy |
| Founded | March 1925, when the academy was expanded into the Native Bankers' Public School |
| Founded by | the Shanghai Native Bankers' Guild (chairman Qin Runqing; first principal Bai Xu) |
| Three sites | No. 730 Tanggu Road → No. 48 Menggu Road → No. 400 Yuanping Road |
| Two "separations" | in 1955 the primary and middle divisions separated and the middle division was renamed "Xinzhong Middle School"; in 1998 the junior and senior divisions separated and it was renamed "Xinzhong Senior High School" |
| Present name | Shanghai Xinzhong Senior High School (No. 400 Yuanping Road, Jing'an District) |
| Two generations of motto | Chengzheng ("sincere and upright") (inscribed by the first principal Bai Xu) → Shude Xiuneng (2015, inscribed by the alumnus Guo Jingkun) |
| Centenary | the school's centenary on 8 March 2025 |
This section is about a school, not a sight. It does not receive visitors; please do not linger or take photographs at the school gate.
First, the three addresses
Writing this section, I hesitated a long while over whether to use the word "I".
I studied at both schools — Zhabei No. 1 Central Primary School and Xinzhong. So when I talk of the school moving, of name changes, I have pictures in my head. But the pictures are private, cannot be checked, and should not be written in here. This section tells only one verifiable thing: how this school came all the way to today.
Its route has three addresses in all:
No. 730 Tanggu Road (1925–1963) → No. 48 Menggu Road (1963–1998) → Yuanping Road (1998– )
Three moves, two "separations". And the one in 1998 moved two schools in a single move.
1923–1925: A School for the "Sons of the Native Banks"
This school was founded neither by the government nor by a church, but by a trade guild.
the Shanghai Native Bankers' Guild — a trade body of old Shanghai that ran native banks — founded the Xiuneng Academy in 1923, specifically for the sons of families in finance to study. In March 1925 the academy was expanded into the Native Bankers' Public School, with Qin Runqing as chairman and Bai Xu as first principal, at No. 730 Tanggu Road.
The two characters "Xiuneng" come from the Li Sao:
"Since I already have this inner beauty, I will add to it the cultivation of my powers."
It means: I already have so many fine inner qualities, and I will add to them the cultivation of my own abilities. By naming it with these two characters, Qin Runqing made plain his purpose in founding the school.
A school funded by the native-bank trade and opened for the sons of native bankers — this is where Xinzhong began. It went on to live a full hundred years.
From a few dozen to seventeen hundred
Once the Native Bankers' Public School was running, its pupil numbers climbed steadily:
| Time | Scale |
|---|---|
| At the start | only a few dozen pupils |
| 1929 | renamed "Shanghai Private Native Bankers' Primary and Middle School", with separate middle and primary divisions |
| 1937 | pupils grew to more than 300 |
| Summer 1938 | the middle division added a senior section, making it a complete primary-and-middle school |
| Late in the War of Resistance | more than 900 pupils enrolled |
| On the eve of Liberation | total enrolment reached more than 1,750 |
A private school run by a trade guild, growing from a few dozen to more than seventeen hundred in twenty-odd years, and even drawing the mayor of Shanghai at the time to send his own child there — this is not the weight of an ordinary school.
1955: renamed "Xinzhong"
After the founding of New China, the Party organisation sent Shi Boyun into the school to set up a Party branch, and in May 1951 he was formally appointed principal. In the summer of 1953, Hubei Middle School and Shangshi Middle School were merged in.
In the autumn of 1955 the primary and middle divisions separated. The middle division was renamed "Xinzhong Middle School" and the primary division "the Private Native Bankers' Primary School".
The name "Xinzhong" has a definite meaning: the school met a new birth in New China.
From "native bankers" to "Xinzhong", from private to public — this was a school changing its nature, not just changing a nameplate.
In the summer of 1963 Xinzhong Middle School moved from No. 730 Tanggu Road to No. 48 Menggu Road. In 1977, with the approval of the Municipal Education Bureau, it became a key district-run middle school.
July 1998: two moves through one gate
As mentioned earlier, the move of 1998 "touched" two schools. Here is how it went:
- In July 1998 Xinzhong Middle School moved from No. 48 Menggu Road into its present site at No. 400 Yuanping Road, and completed the separation of its junior and senior divisions, being renamed "Shanghai Xinzhong Senior High School";
- its junior division was merged into Xiangdong Middle School — and Xiangdong Middle School at the same time moved there from No. 830 Haining Road, taking up Xinzhong Middle School's old site at No. 48 Menggu Road.
So in July 1998 two schools changed address together:
| School | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Xinzhong Middle School (senior division) | No. 48 Menggu Road | No. 400 Yuanping Road |
| Xiangdong Middle School | No. 830 Haining Road | No. 48 Menggu Road (Xinzhong Middle School's old site) |
The senior division went north to Yuanping Road; the junior division stayed on Menggu Road, and another school took it over. No. 48 Menggu Road housed two middle schools one after the other.
This book's Part Three is about "notable sites"; this part is about "danwei". And the wonder of Zhabei often lies here: who lived in a compound is more worth recording than the compound itself.
Yuanping Road: a "modern boarding senior high school"
How the new campus came about is itself a thing of its time.
Between 1996 and 1999, to "create first-class education to match a first-class city", the Shanghai municipal government built 11 modern boarding senior high schools across the city. Xinzhong Middle School was one of them.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Relocation | 1998, to No. 400 Yuanping Road |
| Site area | 152 mu |
| Floor area | 56,000 square metres |
| Investment | 250 million yuan |
| Facilities | a gymnasium, a concert hall, a swimming pool, a planetarium and a 400-metre synthetic running track |
| Honour | the Silver Award among Shanghai's "Classic Buildings of the 50th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic" |
| Event | the closing ceremony of the 1998 World Secondary School Students' Games was held here |
| 2005 | among the first batch of Shanghai's "experimental and model senior high schools" |
A school that started from three rooms on Tanggu Road became, seventy years later, a boarding senior high school covering 152 mu.
Two generations of motto: from "Chengzheng" to "Shude Xiuneng"
This school has something rare: two generations of motto, ninety years apart.
| Time | Motto | Inscribed by | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1925 | Chengzheng | the first principal Bai Xu | "sincere intent and upright heart", "eschew deceit" |
| 2015 | Shude Xiuneng | inscribed by the alumnus and Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Guo Jingkun, and carved on a great stone on campus | "shude" (cultivate virtue) and "xiuneng" (cultivate ability) stand side by side |
What is interesting is where the second generation came from: the two characters "xiuneng" were originally the name Qin Runqing gave the academy in 1923. After going round for ninety years, the school picked "xiuneng" up again and set it beside "shude" as the new motto.
A school walked ninety years and finally wrote its first word again on the stone at its gate. That is what "remembering where you came from" means.
2025: the centenary
On 8 March 2025, Shanghai Xinzhong Senior High School marked its centenary.
From the three rooms of the Native Bankers' Public School in 1925 to a whole campus on Yuanping Road today, in a hundred years it changed its name seven or eight times, moved three times, ran a primary division, absorbed other middle schools, went through one "separation" and took on another.
In Zhabei, the history of a school is often the history of this land.
Sources: the pages "History" and "The Charter of Shanghai Xinzhong Senior High School" on the school's official website; the report on the school's centenary (Sina Shanghai, 7 March 2025); Jiefang Daily, "Chengzheng Casts the Soul, Xiuneng Opens a New Journey" (20 November 2025); The Paper's The Origin of Xinzhong Senior High School's "Shude Xiuneng" Motto; and the Baidu Baike entries "Shanghai Xinzhong Senior High School" and "Xiangdong Middle School". The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.