Zhabei Gymnasium: a 45-metre span, and a commune building team
Basic facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Shanghai Zhabei Gymnasium |
| Address | No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road |
| Built | work began June 1981; completed and opened 10 September 1983 |
| Why built | for the Fifth National Games (1983, hosted by Shanghai) |
| Scale | a site of about 1.26 hectares, a main hall floor area of 5,400 square metres, 3,050 spectator seats |
| Structure | a three-storey frame plus a space-frame roof, square plan, a 45-metre span, eaves 18.1 metres high |
| Playing area | a central court of 35 × 20 metres, clear height 15 metres, fine hardwood parquet floor |
| Sports | basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, gymnastics, weightlifting |
| Contractor | the Cailu construction team of Cailu Commune, Chuansha County |
This section is about a gymnasium that is still in use. It stands two streets from Xinghuo Cinema; one is 1959, the other 1983.
First, a distinction: a gymnasium is not a stadium
Zhabei has two "sports" buildings that are easily confused:
| Zhabei Gymnasium (this section) | Zhabei Stadium | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road | No. 2100 Gonghexin Road (Daning) |
| Built | 1983 | 1997 |
| Form | an indoor hall, with a roof | an open ground, with stands |
| Capacity | 3,050 seats | about 20,000 |
| Today | still standing | demolished; a Jiuguang department store now stands on the site |
| What it holds | basketball, volleyball, badminton, gymnastics, weightlifting | football, athletics |
This section is about the first — the indoor hall on Zhonghua Xin Road.
1983: a hall built for the Fifth National Games
In 1983 the Fifth National Games were held in Shanghai, with 31 delegations and 8,943 athletes taking part, a scale larger than the previous four.
To hold a National Games you need venues. In those years Shanghai concentrated on rebuilding or building nine medium-sized gymnasiums, in Huangpu, Zhabei and elsewhere — Zhabei Gymnasium was one of them.
Work began in June 1981 and was completed in September 1983, handed over in time for the Games.
The 45-metre span was the hard problem
The hardest technical figure in this hall was the 45-metre span, a space-frame roof 45 × 45 metres.
Why was it hard?
In a hall 45 metres wide there can be no columns in the middle — a column blocks the sightlines and blocks the court. So the roof has to span the gap itself, spreading the load to the four sides through a "net".
But a 45-metre space frame could not be hoisted in one piece in those years.
What was done was to break it into four strip trusses:
- make them in strips on the ground;
- lift each strip into position with hydraulic truck cranes;
- assemble and connect them in the air into a single space frame.
"Made in strips on the ground, lifted, joined in the air" — the process was new at the time, and it opened up a new technique and a new craft for "covering a large span with a space frame".
The works were designed by the Shanghai Civil Building Design Institute.
The hall was built by a commune building team
The contractor was the Cailu construction team of Cailu Commune, Chuansha County.
This is worth pausing over.
In 1981 the state building companies of Shanghai were busy with big projects. For a commune building team — that is, a rural collective construction team — to take on a municipal gymnasium of 5,400 square metres and a 45-metre span was in itself unusual.
The team's own account is that this was "the first time a grand building had been undertaken in the building history of Chuansha County and Cailu Commune".
They did it. The works were judged one of the city's outstanding projects of 1983, and Architectural Journal carried a feature on them in its eighth issue of 1984.
This says something about one side of Shanghai in the early 1980s: outside the state system, construction teams from the townships had begun taking on big urban jobs — the later "home of builders" (the Chuansha and Nanhui area) started from projects of this kind.
What is inside
When it opened in 1983 the Zhabei Gymnasium's facilities were, in the phrase of the day, "of a new form, fairly complete in equipment":
| Facility | Detail |
|---|---|
| Seating | 3,050 upholstered seats, "comfortable, with good sightlines" |
| Air conditioning | cooling plant (in 1983 a high-grade fitting for a gymnasium) |
| Scoring | an electronic scoreboard |
| Lighting | lights "bright", adequate for the broadcast of matches |
| Sound | "good effect" |
| Court | 35 × 20 metres, fine hardwood parquet floor, clear height 15 metres |
| Ancillary | VIP lounge, athletes' lounge, changing and shower rooms, referees' room, press room, medical room, switch room, air-conditioning plant room |
The sports it could hold: basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, gymnastics, weightlifting.
It could also show films, stage variety shows and hold mass meetings — the gymnasiums of that era were all "multi-purpose", because there were not many days in a year of real competition, and the rest of the time had to be filled some other way.
1993: altered again for the East Asian Games
In 1993 the first East Asian Games were held in Shanghai.
Shanghai upgraded a group of venues for the occasion: the bowling hall of the Sports Palace, Hongkou Stadium, Zhabei Gymnasium, Huangpu Gymnasium, Putuo Gymnasium and others, bringing the facilities for athletics, gymnastics, badminton, weightlifting and wushu to "Asia's first-class standard".
A hall built for the National Games in 1983 was altered again ten years later for a continental games. This was the norm for Chinese urban sports facilities in those two decades: follow the big events, upgrade with each edition.
A hall and a district's sporting memory
Zhabei Gymnasium stands at No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road, and has stood there since 1983.
It did not vanish like Xinghuo Cinema, nor was it pulled down to build a mall like Zhabei Stadium. It is still there, still holding competitions, still open.
What does it mean to the people who live around it?
- to athletes: a court with a 45-metre span and 15 metres of clear height;
- to spectators: 3,050 seats, for a basketball or volleyball match;
- to ordinary residents: a place you can walk into and play.
A district's sport does not rest on one hall alone. It rests on whether there is somewhere to play, whether there is anyone to teach, whether there is a match to watch. The hall is the "least dispensable" piece of hardware.
Connections
- Sub-district：Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict
- See also：Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict, Xinghuo Cinema, Zhabei Tourism Vocational School, Zhabei District Youth Science and Technology Station, Shanghai Circus World
Sources: that the Zhabei Gymnasium stands at No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road, covers about 1.26 hectares and has a main hall floor area of 5,400 square metres; that work began in June 1981 and the building was completed in September 1983 (opened on 10 September); that it was built for the Fifth National Games, with a three-storey frame and a space-frame roof, a square plan, a 45-metre span and eaves 18.1 metres high; that it has 3,050 spectator seats (three thousand upholstered seats), cooling plant and an electronic scoreboard; that the central court is 35 × 20 metres with a clear height of 15 metres and a fine hardwood parquet floor; that it can stage basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, gymnastics and weightlifting and can also show films, stage performances and hold mass meetings; that the contractor was the Cailu construction team of Cailu Commune, Chuansha County, using the space-frame method of "strips made on the ground, each strip lifted by hydraulic truck crane, assembly in the air"; that the works were judged one of the city's outstanding projects of 1983 and featured in the eighth issue of Architectural Journal in 1984; and that the design was by the Shanghai Civil Building Design Institute, are based on chapter nine of Cailu Township Gazetteer: Compilation of Materials (which records the engineering details and the contractor) and on Today's Headlines' "Old Shanghai Buildings — No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road, Zhabei Gymnasium" (which records the completion date and the court parameters) (Grade B); that the Fifth National Games were held in Shanghai in 1983 and Shanghai concentrated on rebuilding or building nine medium-sized gymnasiums in Huangpu, Zhabei and elsewhere, and that the first East Asian Games were held in Shanghai in 1993 and venues including the Zhabei Gymnasium reached Asia's first-class standard after upgrading, are based on Sohu's Shanghai in Words: Shanghai Folk Sport (Grade B); the Zhabei Gymnasium (No. 485 Zhonghua Xin Road, 1983) and the Zhabei Stadium (No. 2100 Gonghexin Road, 1997, demolished) are two different facilities; the latter is based on the Wikipedia entry "Zhabei Stadium" and on The Past and Present of the Northern Gate (Grade B). The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.