Yuqun Middle School: the Shaoxing school of 1938, closed in 2022

Basic facts

This piece is about a middle school that is no longer there. It stood in Zhabei for eighty-four years, and in 2022 it handed over its school gate.

A middle school run by a native-place association

Yuqun Middle School's starting point was not education but native place.

In September 1938 the Shaoxing Seven-County Native-Place Association in Shanghai founded a middle school, and gave it a plain name: the Shaoxing Seven-County Residents' Middle School, "Shaoxing Middle School" for short.

That year Shanghai had already fallen (the Chinese-administered areas were lost in November 1937, and the foreign concessions became an "isolated island"). Shaoxing people had fled to Shanghai, and their children needed schooling — a native-place association running a school was the commonest way of saving oneself in that era.

The "seven counties" were the old stock of Shaoxing prefecture: Shanyin, Kuaiji, Xiaoshan, Zhuji, Yuyao, Shangyu and Shengxian. One association of Shaoxing people in Shanghai opened a school in Shanghai for the children of seven counties.

Qiao Shi built the underground party here

The weightiest stretch of Shaoxing Middle School's history did not happen in the classroom.

During the War of Resistance and the War of Liberation the school was an important stronghold of the Communist underground in Shanghai. Qiao Shi (later chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a member of the Political Bureau's Standing Committee) founded and led the Communist underground organisation at Shaoxing Middle School in those years, and also served as the adviser to the school's student self-government association.

He sent the underground member Shen Changxu to the school to open up work. The student movements that followed came one after another:

Nine former pupils died in these struggles: Ni Yulin, Tan Wenliang, Zhang Dunxu, Zhang An, Zheng Jiefen, Zhong Xuan, Sun Xingzhen, Shen Ou and Tian Rutang.

In the history of one middle school there is a page that is a list of martyrs. That is no isolated case among Zhabei's schools, but Yuqun's page is unusually long.

1953: the name becomes "Yuqun"

In April 1953 Shaoxing Middle School was renamed Yuqun Middle School.

The groundwork for the renaming was merger:

• autumn 1952: the senior division of Tongde Middle School merged in;
• 1955: the whole of Tongde Middle School merged in;
• autumn 1962: the senior divisions of Zhabei No. 4 Middle School and Zhabei District No. 6 Middle School were incorporated.

Merger after merger, and the school grew larger with each, in the end reaching 29 classes.

The site moved three times with it:

No. 330 Anqing Road → No. 482 Zhonghua Xin Road (the original site of Zhonghua Xin Road Primary School) → August 1956, No. 1000 Gonghexin Road.

The house number No. 482 Zhonghua Xin Road later housed other schools as well (see the piece on the tourism vocational school). One house number, several generations of schools — very common in Zhabei.

1993: two-thirds of the buildings gone

In 1993 Shanghai built the Inner Ring Road and the North-South Elevated Road.

Yuqun Middle School stood at No. 1000 Gonghexin Road on nine mu of ground. The works came, and two-thirds of the school buildings were taken.

What was left was not enough for lessons. The school could only teach at several sites as a stopgap, and the stopgap lasted five years.

In autumn 1998 the new buildings were completed. Three things happened in the same year:

1. the buildings of the former Zhongshan North Road Primary School all went to Yuqun;
2. the former Daning Middle School merged into Yuqun;
3. Yumei Private Middle School was founded (Yuqun's "private division").

From then on Yuqun "stood again at No. 1000 Gonghexin Road", on a larger scale than before.

Ding Shengbao and the "learning by doing" method

Yuqun had one teacher who could be counted: the special-grade teacher Ding Shengbao.

What she did, put in one sentence, was this: she taught pupils from 0 marks to 100.

It caused a stir across the city at the time — not because of the marks, but because the pupils she faced were a batch who "could not be taught". The "learning by doing" method she later created (pupils work with their own hands and find the rule in the doing) won national recognition, and she herself was named a national outstanding teacher and a national "March 8th" red-banner pacesetter, and took part in the national meeting of heroes.

Yuqun's other speciality was fine art. The school ran art classes, and in 1996 it was among the first to set up a senior-high art double-certificate class (one diploma plus one vocational certificate), opening a road other than the ordinary senior high school.

2014: moving house; 2022: closing

In September 2014 Yuqun moved into new buildings at No. 56, Lane 899, Zhongshan North Road.

On 18 July 2022 the Jing'an District Education Bureau took a decision on adjusting educational resources: Yuqun Middle School ceased to function as a school.

On 22 November of the same year, with the approval of the Jing'an District Committee's Commission for Institutional Establishment, the school was formally renamed Fenghua Junior Middle School South Campus, Jing'an District, Shanghai.

Eighty-four years, and it ends here.

What it means when a school closes

Yuqun's closure is the outcome of six words: "adjustment of educational resources".

Seen from outside, the matter is very quiet: one school merges into another, the name is changed, the pupils go on with their lessons. But seen from inside, it is the transfer of a whole set of memories:

• the classroom of the Shaoxing Seven-County Native-Place Association of 1938 is gone;
• the building where Qiao Shi guided the student self-government association is gone;
• the class in which Ding Shengbao took 0 marks to 100 is gone;
• the nine mu at No. 1000 Gonghexin Road are no longer called Yuqun either.

A school's name can change and its buildings can be pulled down, but the former pupils are still there.

The children studying at Fenghua Junior Middle School South Campus today will probably never know that the school under their feet was once called "Shaoxing Middle School", once had nine martyrs, once had a teacher who could take 0 marks to 100.

That is the reason for writing this piece: the school history of Zhabei is not only "which school is good", but also "what each school once was".

Connections

• Sub-district：Gonghexin Road Subdistrict
• See also：Gonghexin Road Subdistrict, Fenghua Middle School, Zhabei Tourism Vocational School, Shibei Middle School

Sources: that the predecessor of Shanghai Yuqun Middle School was the Shaoxing Seven-County Residents' Middle School, founded in September 1938 and known for short as Shaoxing Middle School; that the senior division of Tongde Middle School merged in in autumn 1952; that the school was renamed Yuqun Middle School in April 1953; that the whole of Tongde Middle School merged in in 1955; and that in autumn 1962 the senior divisions of Zhabei No. 4 Middle School and Zhabei District No. 6 Middle School were incorporated, the school growing to 29 classes; that the site moved from No. 330 Anqing Road to No. 482 Zhonghua Xin Road (the original site of Zhonghua Xin Road Primary School) and in August 1956 to No. 1000 Gonghexin Road, on nine mu of ground; that in 1993, with the building of the Inner Ring Road and the North-South Elevated Road, the school buildings were reduced by two-thirds and the school taught at several sites as a stopgap for five years; that the new buildings were completed in autumn 1998, that the buildings of the former Zhongshan North Road Primary School went to Yuqun and the former Daning Middle School merged into it, and that Yumei Private Middle School was founded in the same year; that the school moved into No. 56, Lane 899, Zhongshan North Road in September 2014; and that teaching ceased on 18 July 2022, the school being renamed Fenghua Junior Middle School South Campus, Jing'an District, Shanghai, on 22 November of the same year with the approval of the Jing'an District Committee's Commission for Institutional Establishment, are based on the Baidu Baike entry "Shanghai Yuqun Middle School", the same entry on 360 Baike and the same entry in the Chinese Encyclopaedia (Grade B); the details of the "isolated island" background of the school's founding in 1938, of the "nine mu" and of the "five years of stopgap" are according to the same entries; that Qiao Shi founded and led the Communist underground organisation at Shaoxing Middle School and served as adviser to its student self-government association, and that the underground member Shen Changxu was sent to the school to open up work, are based on the same entries and on local historical accounts of the school (Grade B); the nine martyr alumni Ni Yulin, Tan Wenliang, Zhang Dunxu, Zhang An, Zheng Jiefen, Zhong Xuan, Sun Xingzhen, Shen Ou and Tian Rutang, and the "learning by doing" method created by the special-grade teacher Ding Shengbao, which won national recognition, are based on the same entries (Grade B); the section "What it means when a school closes" is the author's own synthesis, marked Grade C. See Appendix 4 for the full bibliography.