Zhabei No. 1 Central Primary School: Three Rented Rooms, 1928

Basic facts

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.

A rented beginning

In September 1928 Chen Heqin had just taken up a post no one had held before: head of the Chinese Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council of the International Settlement.

The post itself was a major event. Before it, not one of the public primary schools in the International Settlement had ever been founded and managed by the Chinese themselves. That Chen Heqin could take this seat was the result of years of struggle by Shanghai's Chinese community.

No sooner had he taken office than he did two things:

1. he rented the Nie family garden at No. 150 Huishan Road (later renamed Huoshan Road) from the industrialist Nie Yuntai, to prepare the Eastern District School, and while he was at it lodged the office of the Chinese Education Department, together with his own home, there for the time being;
2. at No. 228 Laobazi Road (today's Wujin Road) near Zhabei railway station, he rented three rooms to prepare the Northern District School.

On 8 October 1928 the two primary schools opened on the same day. This was the starting point of Zhabei No. 1 Central Primary School: not a school building, but three rented rooms.

In its first year the school had only 78 pupils. The premises on Laobazi Road could seat three hundred or more, but the classrooms as a whole were on the small side and there was almost no outdoor sports ground — in the school's own phrase, it "was of a provisional nature".

1930: Moving into a Building Left by a British-run School

For a new school to grow up, the first thing it needs is a building of its own.

In September 1930 the chance came. the Chinese Public School, which stood on today's school site (it later moved to Haskell Road, today's Zhongzhou Road), vacated the place, leaving behind a school building put up in 1903. the Northern District School moved in, and has used it ever since.

In the year it moved in, the school enrolled 412 pupils — from 78 to 412 in two years.

Because it stood on Cunningham Road, the school was also known at the time as "Cunningham Road Primary School".

A house built in 1903, a school founded in 1928. By 2026 the house is 123 years old and the school 98. In Zhabei, the age of a school and the age of its building can be counted separately.

A primary school renamed eight times

The school's names are almost a miniaturised history of modern Shanghai's administrative divisions:

Read this table once and you see three things:

• "Municipal Council" becomes "Shanghai" — educational authority had been taken back;
• "the 15th District", "Beizhan District", "Zhabei District", "Jing'an District" — as the administrative divisions changed one after another, the school name changed with them;
• the 1969 row — the school came to a full stop.

1969–1978: a primary school shut for nine years

In 1969 the school was closed and the site became Beizhan Middle School.

A school founded in 1928 had its name taken away at the age of 41. The building stayed where it was and pupils still came and went, but it was no longer a primary school.

In 1978 the school reopened. In the same year, with the approval of the Municipal Education Bureau, it became a key district-run primary school.

From closure to reopening, nine years passed. The children studying at No. 199 Kangle Road today are unlikely to know that the ground under their feet once had a spell of "not being a primary school".

A single line: "Everything for the Children"

Of all the things Chen Heqin left to this school, the weightiest is a plain sentence:

"Everything for the Children"

He also put forward a whole theory of living education, holding that children's education in China should suit the country's conditions and follow the laws of children's physical and mental development. In his 11 years at the Municipal Council he founded 7 primary schools in all (each with a kindergarten attached).

"Everything for the Children" sounds like a slogan. But set before those three rented rooms of 1928, it is a promise: this work will not be abandoned because the rooms are small, the pupils few and there is no playground.

Today

• No. 199 Kangle Road (with a further campus at No. 685 Haining Road), still running;
• the school covers about 8,667 square metres;
• it now runs at the scale of 21 classes and about 750 pupils.

It is on no tourist list, and its gate is not open to tourists. But if you walk along Kangle Road, behind that gate is a school that has never really stopped since 8 October 1928 — it paused for nine years and then carried on to this day.

A closing line

Zhabei has many primary schools; why write this one first?

Because the way it took its first step is the most interesting: a rented room, 78 pupils, and a department head just come into office. The truly important part of a school has never been its buildings, but the moment it decides why it exists.

Sources: the pages "School history" and "How it was founded" on the 90th-anniversary site of Shanghai Jing'an District Zhabei No. 1 Central Primary School; the Jing'an District People's Government's Public Notice of Teaching Facilities and Teacher Allocation at Public Schools for Compulsory Education in Jing'an District, 2025; public information on the school's own website; and the Baidu Baike entry "Shanghai Jing'an District Zhabei No. 1 Central Primary School". The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.