Before We Begin: Through the School Gate

This part has been separated out from the one before it

Part Five gathers "old institutions" — a locomotive depot, a department store and the like, places that carry history yet are not open to visitors.

That part had only reached its fifth piece when schools accounted for three of them. So the schools were simply picked out and made a part of their own.

The reason is not "making up the numbers" — quite the opposite:

• Schools are the most numerous in this category. In a hundred years a district can tear down most of its factories and move away all its railway facilities, and still keep several dozen schools — schools outlive enterprises.
• Schools are bound up with one another. This part sets up seven pieces, and at least four of their names appear in another's lineage: one closes, and its site goes to another; one moves away, and a third takes over the building. To tell one clearly, you often have to tell another first.
• Schools are the handiest "dating rod". On the same Qingyun Road, in 1922 there was Shanghai University, and in 1957 Qingyun Middle School; at the same No. 48 Menggu Road, in 1963 Xinzhong Middle School moved in, and in 1998 it was replaced by Xiangdong Middle School. Count how many generations of schools a road has seen, and you know how many times that ground has changed.

So this part is not a "sequel" to Part Five, but the thickest block of Part Five spread out on its own.

The boundary is still the same one

As in Part Five, everything gathered here is a place that sells no tickets.

But schools have one more rule than other institutions, and a harder one:

The school gate is the boundary. A ruin can be walked into; a school cannot — lessons are going on inside.

Seven schools, ordered by year of founding

The only standard for the order is the year of founding. How many times a school later moved house does not count in the ranking.

Three threads

Read the seven pieces separately, and you will miss the best of this part. Three threads run among them, stringing the seven schools together —

Thread one: No. 48 Menggu Road

One house number, home to two middle schools one after the other, handed over with perfect precision:

Xinzhong moved to Yuanping Road and left the building to Xiangdong; Xiangdong vacated No. 830, and the sign of Beizhan Middle School went up at No. 830 in turn. One move set three schools going.

Thread two: No. 830 Haining Road

This house number is even busier than No. 48 Menggu Road:

In which year exactly these schools at No. 830 handed over, this book has not found, and can write only up to the point above — it will not allot rooms for them. All that can be certain is this one thing: this house number has been in use from 1912 right up to today, never once left empty in between.

Thread three: No. 199 Kangle Road

A primary school and a middle school have changed hands twice on the same site:

The primary school gave way to the middle school for nine years, and the middle school gave it back. A school's site often says more about its period than its name does.

Names that were merged away along the way

This part sets up only seven pieces, but the schools the seven merged away along the way were far more than seven. Most of their names can no longer be looked up today:

A school disappears, and it is often not because it was badly run, but because the one next door wanted to expand, or the school-age children on that road grew fewer, or the district redrew its catchment once more. A merger table looks dry, but what it reads as is the population ledger of this stretch of ground.

The rules at the school gate

1. Schools do not receive visitors. Please do not linger or take photographs at the school gate, still less try to get in. This is no mere politeness — Zhabei's schools are all still holding their ordinary lessons today.
2. Addresses change, and names change even more. Under each piece in this part is a lineage table, setting out as far as possible "which stretch of time in which place"; where nothing can be found, it says so outright.
3. This part is school history, not memoir. The author himself studied at two of them (Zhabei No. 1 Central and Xinzhong), and his father studied at one (Beizhan Middle School); these three places are noted in the pieces. But private pictures are never written in — pictures are private, cannot be checked, and should not be written in.
4. The four newly written pieces (Xiangdong, Shibei, Fenghua, Qingyun) have no private connection, and rest entirely on verifiable school history.

Its relation to the parts before

Part Three gathers "notable sites" — places you can go and see. Part Five gathers "old institutions" — organisations that carry history but cannot be entered. This part gathers "schools" — which originally belonged among the "old institutions", and were pulled out on their own only because they are the most numerous and the most deeply entangled with one another.

One thread is worth remembering in advance: the name of Qingyun Middle School comes from Qingyun Road. And Qingyun Road has already appeared many times in this book — the site of Shanghai University, the site of Qingyun Road Square and the Baoshan Road sub-district office are all on this road. On the same road, in 1922 a group of people who wanted to remake China gathered, and in 1957 a middle school opened. This part will meet the first three again and again.

So let us first go and see the one founded earliest.