If you are just a passerby walking in a hurry, you will never see the specialness of Yuyuan Road. The Yuyuan Road mentioned earlier is hidden behind the street and can only be discovered by walking into the alley.
Today, walking on the street, Yuyuan Road is full of Shanghai elements. Mr. Weng Tonghe, who lives in Lane 1420, has lived here for more than fifty years. In his view, this street is a constantly updated Shanghai calendar. Mr. Weng’s hobbies have been constantly changing over the years, and the entrance to the alley in front of his door is the place where his memories are most concentrated. When I was a child, I watched people make candy figures there; when I went to the countryside as a teenager, I said goodbye to my parents there; after ten years of separation, when I returned to Shanghai, I was unemployed and sat in the alley selling newspapers; and later, the people at the door Gradually, he got older and spent his free time arranging dragon gate formations with his neighbors.
These days will not last long. I heard that they are going to be demolished and old cities are being renovated everywhere. The garden houses on Yuyuan Road cannot be demolished, not only because these houses preserve memories, but more probably because of the amazing commercial interests behind these houses. Therefore, what needs to be demolished are low-rise bungalows and crowded Shikumen. The demolition was carried out from east to west. In a community in the east, a slogan "Salute to the residents who took the lead in demolition" has been put up. These days, demolition is not easy, it is not easy to be moved away, and it is not easy to work as a demolished person.
People from the relocation team have already come to the door. They say it’s a negotiation, but it’s actually an ultimatum. Mr. Weng is not a hard-core farmer. He has long been thinking about how much money the government can subsidize, and what kind of place he should find to live out his life with the capital he has accumulated over the years. There are no more houses with lane entrances, and we can no longer swing the cattail leaf fan from door to door. It seems that we can only find a commercial house and live behind the security door to reminisce about the past.
Yuyuan Road, which belongs to countless ordinary people, is low-key and realistic. They married wives and had children here, lived and died. Little did they know that in an ordinary apartment at the intersection of Yuyuan Road and Changde Road, Zhang Ailing, who wrote all the grievances of Shanghai's golden fans, once lived. Those who know, what they remember is not the packaged Zhang Ailing later. Boss Lin, who sold watches on Yuyuan Road before liberation, said that she was just a Shanghainese woman who could write articles, and somehow she became popular. He also remembered the Fu Lei couple who lived on this road. Fu Lei once came to him to buy a watch for his wife. What made him proud was that he also asked Mr. Fu Lei to translate the watch manual. Today, it seems that he is very proud. But at that time, Mr. Fu Lei was so approachable and had no airs at all. He happily delivered the neatly copied translations as scheduled.
Boss Lin is very wary of the sudden rise of old Shanghai fever. In his opinion, many stories are just man-made imaginations. Even Shanghai in the old days did not have so many sentiments. Life was not easy for most people, including those rich people who had been working as slaves since they were young. , those who have worked hard at the dock, they know best the principle of making money through hard work and sweat. The ladies and gentlemen of wealthy families spend all their time being flirtatious, which is not doing their job properly. If the old man knows about it, he may not be happy. If he encounters a harsh tutor, he will even hit them on the head, fearing that the family business will be ruined in the long run. However, among these people, because they are close to the West, they have cultivated an aristocratic atmosphere in their lifestyle and way of thinking that is different from traditional wealthy families. This is true. The houses on Yuyuan Road itself are proof that, except for Shanghai, there may be no other city in China that has concentrated so many Western architectural styles and improved them in the local area to such a perfect combination of Chinese and Western styles.
Please allow me to write down the scene at the east end of Yuyuan Road at 14:40 on September 18th: two roads intersect here, forming an irregular square in the middle of the intersection. There is a bar on the square, with more than a dozen open-air tables and chairs holding parasols placed there. The red Coca-Cola logo is very eye-catching from a distance. At one end of the road is a club called "Harajuku". On the wall facing the street are carvings of some characters from the Japanese shogunate period. Judging from the layout inside and the people coming and going, it must be owned by Japanese people. At the other end of the road is an old-fashioned alley, with a huge word "Demolish" written on the black wall. The neighborhood committee's blackboard poster is hung at the entrance of the alley, announcing that prevention of SARS cannot be relaxed. The residents inside are busy. On the small island in the middle of the street, there was the smell of grilled squid, combined with car exhaust. I sat on a chair, and all kinds of people passed by me, the smell of sweat from migrant workers, and the smell of fashionable girls' perfume.
A few dozen meters away, someone seemed to be quarreling and making a lot of noise. There was a large circle of people around. Two fat policemen had just rushed over on bicycles. The crowd dispersed in a noisy manner, and only the wheels were left in their ears. The sound of rolling.
Real history does not live in memory. Memory always tends to be imaginary and has no ending. Memory itself is already a kind of filter. Remember what you can remember, but forget most, which are the most trivial details in daily life. They may seem ordinary but are often the most real. The current Yuyuan Road is already living in my memory. The most famous version of the story about this residence is the allusion of "the beauty hidden in the golden house" performed here. Wang Boqun, an important member of the Kuomintang, fell in love with the school beauty of Jiaotong University. He wanted to hide the beauty, and he did not hesitate to accept gifts from others, so he used such a British manor-style mansion to hide her beauty. Unexpectedly, not long after, the Dongchuang incident occurred, and Wang Boqun was demoted for taking over this house of unknown origin. And because there was a mysterious and beautiful heroine in this story, it became a hot topic in Shanghai at that time.
This house later became Wang Jingwei's mansion. Come to think of it, this man who had highs and lows in history lived in a house like this, and did he ever think that its previous owner had been so unlucky here? The house has been a base for youth education activities since the founding of the People's Republic of China. From the current owner, no more historical materials are available, and we don't know which filing cabinet it is locked in. It may have been scattered long ago.
The hidden beauty in the golden house and the cabinet crisis of Wang Puppet Government have been gradually forgotten by people. Fortunately, this house still exists. Because it was converted into a children's palace, some parts of the house have changed. The entire building is in Gothic style. The main building has the third floor, with a hall and a side door. The main door is used for entertaining guests and the owner's entry and exit, while the side door is reserved for domestic servants and daily needs. However, unlike the side entrance of ordinary bungalows, this house also has other passages, which are winding and complicated. I wonder if it is because all the people who live here are at the forefront of the crisis, so that they can easily escape in times of crisis. The layout of the house is exquisite. Although the furniture and furnishings are no longer there, judging from the details of the wall and roof decoration, it is elegant enough. It has smooth marble floors, nanmu escalators and floors, carved dragons on the roof, floor-to-ceiling glass, and the front faces south, with ample lighting. . It is worth mentioning that such a large house built on the roadside cannot be noticed from the outside. A tall bush rushes out of the wall, blocking the view just right. It is similar to the method of blocking the house with a seven or eight-meter wall in the north. In comparison, this approach is undoubtedly more in line with the needs of nature and beauty. During the design, the house also deliberately created a lane that is just big enough for one car to pass. When people walk in for more than a hundred meters, they suddenly become enlightened. All this shows the special considerations of the owner of this house when he originally built and selected it. This house is remembered for its pioneering role in Shanghai's new lane housing. The so-called new-style lanes are a type of Westernized architecture that combines Chinese characteristics and began to appear in Shanghai at the beginning of the last century. The buildings are connected in a row as a whole, and the single-family houses are divided into several houses. Each house usually has three floors, with a small garden on the ground floor. The second and third floors are divided into separate houses, each with its own function. Overall it is somewhat similar to today's townhouses.
This place on Yuyuan Road is called Yongquanfang. The three big characters of Yongquanfang are right on the street. The tall arcade at the entrance of the community is said to have become popular at that time. Since then, many new lanes built in Shanghai have also adopted this style of building arcade gates. Firstly, it looks impressive, and secondly, it can save some space. The houses in Yongquanfang are red in appearance, and the styles are not exactly the same. They also seem to have traces of the original builder's private considerations. For example, a house that originally belonged to the boss of a tobacco company has different appearances on all sides, making the whole house unique.
It is said that after the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", many capitalists who were driven out from neighboring private mansions were placed in Yongquanfang. Those capitalists were also very old and could not bear the humiliation. They were depressed. Many of them died, and their children also received Western-style education in their early years. Some had already gone abroad before, and some had already left their hometowns after the policy was implemented, leaving only those young aunts and wives alone. Guard the empty gate. They can only get a room in a new-style alley, and the prosperity is gone. Some people can see through it, but some people may not, which makes them sad. The writer Cheng Naishan recorded an old lady who was originally the owner of the largest mansion in the Far East. After the "Cultural Revolution", she was driven to an attic. Her husband had already committed suicide with his concubine. She continued to drink coffee by herself with an English tea set and facing the window sill every afternoon. habits.
After the Cultural Revolution, someone asked her if she wanted to implement the policy and get her house back. She said, "No." This is also a group of villas that cannot be found from the outside. Their specifications and grades are somewhere between private mansions and new-style lanes. The most famous ones here are No. 63, No. 65 and No. 67. The owners of these three connected houses are agents Li Shiqun and Wu Shibao, with Zhou Fohai in the middle.
From the appearance, these houses are relatively small, so more structural thought was put into their design. In order to distinguish them from others, they have different styles and are arranged neatly together, which is convenient for the viewer. After turning the corner from Lane 749, the entrance to the entire building complex is still quite open, but later on, it became more secretive and the owner became more distinguished. Finally, there are several small doors leading to the bustling downtown, so they are designed like this to facilitate escape. Houses in troubled times have doors that only exist in troubled times.
These houses are now occupied by tenants who came in one after another after liberation. A garden house has become a place where 72 tenants live together. This is also what happens to most garden houses in Shanghai. A house that was originally a whole seems to be divided evenly, which is really a very complicated ending. Outsiders once laughed at the fact that there are more than a dozen lamp holders installed in the corridors where Shanghainese live, and more than a dozen faucets locked on the sink. They are a reflection of the shanty life in this kind of garden house.
According to statistics, there are more than 6,000 private garden houses in Shanghai, of which four-fifths are in public use. The ones on Yuyuan Road are only a small part of them. In these houses, the story of Shanghai's most prosperous growth period took place. Allowing these buildings to be divided up and used for a long time, making it difficult to repair, is a disguised erasure of the past and the future. They deserve to be treated well.
No. 81 Yuyuan Road, the former residence of Liu Changsheng - "Mahjong Tiezi" turned out to be the Secretary of the Communist Party of China
On May 27, 2004, Shanghai celebrated the 55th anniversary of liberation On this anniversary, an exhibition hall reflecting the history of the struggle of the Communist Party of China’s underground organizations in Shanghai was officially opened to the public at No. 81 Yuyuan Road. This is the former residence of Comrade Liu Changsheng, deputy secretary of the Shanghai Bureau of the Communist Party of China, and now displays various materials about the underground struggle.
From 1946 to 1949, Liu Changsheng, the leader of the Shanghai underground organization of the Communist Party of China and deputy secretary of the Shanghai Bureau of the Communist Party of China, lived here. Liu Xiaochang, secretary of the Shanghai Bureau, one of the secret organs of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, came here to discuss and hold a meeting with Liu Changsheng. Liu Changsheng's home was on the second floor, while Zhang Chengzong, then secretary of the underground municipal party committee, lived on the third floor. There was even a Kuomintang agent on the same floor.
Every time the underground party contacted Liu Changsheng at his home, Liu Changsheng's wife and children stood guard outside the house. When they noticed any movement, they would play mahjong with a clanging sound. Over time, people around him thought that the pudgy boss loved to play mahjong. Although people came and went, they never aroused suspicion. So after Shanghai was liberated, the name of Liu Changsheng, the leader of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, was published in the newspaper. The old lady next door exclaimed: "Is he the Arag mahjong partner 'Fat Liu'?!"
Don't say this either. Neighbors, Gu He, who was serving as the party branch secretary of the nearby Shixi Middle School at the time, never knew that his superior, the deputy secretary of the Shanghai Bureau, actually lived under his nose a few hundred meters away from his school. At that time, No. 81 You can imagine how well the confidentiality work is done.
During the War of Liberation, there was almost no time when the Kuomintang’s military intelligence did not fail to mention Liu Changsheng and list him as the leading element on the blacklist. In the autumn of 1948, the Kuomintang government changed its ID cards in order to arrest underground party leaders including Liu Changsheng. Little did they know that Liu Changsheng, who had rich experience in underground struggles, was living peacefully in this small building at No. 81 Yuyuan Road!
Today’s exhibition hall displays the development and struggle of underground organizations in China through a series of combined scenes. The cafe on the ground floor also simulates three secret liaison shops of Shanghai’s underground party in the 1930s and 1940s: Shanghai Bookstore, Rongtai Cigarette Shop and Gongfa Cafe. When I visited the Exhibition Hall of the History of Struggles of Underground Organizations, I saw these two exhibits placed together: a novel "Repaying Revenge with Human Faces and Beasts' Hearts" and a "History of the United Communist Party (Bolsheviks)". Underneath them were written the following words: Propaganda materials given by Yang Xuemin, secretary of the Shanghai Female Middle School District Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1948, to Gu He, then secretary of the Party branch of the Municipal West Middle School, for preservation.
Why are these two seemingly unrelated materials put together? I searched around and found Gu He mentioned in it. Gu He was a student Party member who joined the Party at St. John's University. After graduating from university in 1947, she came to work as a teacher at Shixi Middle School on Yuyuan Road, and also became the first teacher Party member in Shixi. Zhao Chuanjia, the principal of Shixi at the time, recalled: "After (Gu He) arrived at the school, he united progressive teachers and students, spread revolutionary ideas, and carried out patriotic activities, which made the school lively."
Yang Xuemin was the president of the school at that time. *The district committee secretary of the Shanghai "School Working Committee" (referred to as the "Study Committee"), and also Gu He's superior. In May 1948, the situation in Shanghai was tense for a time. Yang Xuemin gave the "History of the United Communist Party of China (Bolsheviks)" to Gu He for safekeeping, sandwiched with a popular novel at the time "Revenge of Virtue from the Heart of a Human-Faced Beast", while he went into hiding. . "He put this progressive reading material in the novel mainly to hide it from others," Gu He said: "The situation was tense at that time, and it was necessary to leave no traces as much as possible. For example, our application for joining the party often only Written on a small page, the leader will burn it immediately after reading it..."
A year later, when the liberation of Shanghai was approaching, Gu He also faced danger and hid it, but she still kept Yang Xuemin The material handed to her has been kept intact. After the victory of the revolution, Gu He never had the opportunity to return this material to Yang Xuemin. It was not until the Shanghai Underground Organization Struggle History Exhibition Hall of the Communist Party of China collected cultural relics that she donated the two materials to Yuyuan Road with Yang Xuemin's consent. Exhibition Hall. At this time, she has kept these materials intact for nearly 60 years!
Real underground work is much different from what we imagine: sometimes it can be very mundane, but at the same time it contains endless dangers. The task given to Gu He by the party organization at that time was: "Study diligently, work diligently, and make friends diligently." These tasks seemed to have nothing to do with the revolution, but they directly affected the development of her subsequent work. Because only by making achievements in academics and teaching can it be possible to form prestige in the school; and only by making more friends can it be possible to expand the party's influence. It was precisely because of Gu He's outstanding work in Shixi that when Shanghai was liberated, Zhao Chuanjia, the principal of Shixi Middle School, did not leave. Don't underestimate this work. He was the only one among the more than 20 public middle schools in Shanghai at that time. The principal who stayed!
However, Gu He did not welcome the liberation of Shanghai in her school. Shortly before the victory, a new party member she had just developed, Liu Guifu, was arrested, so she had to hide and hide in A classmate’s home in Zhongshi New Village, Yuyuan Road. Those were the most difficult days. She was not only concerned about the liberation of Shanghai, but also worried about her arrested comrades. Every day, she saw news of the sacrifice of her comrades in the newspapers, which increased her worries. On the morning of May 27, 1949, the leader finally informed her: Shanghai is liberated and you can remove yourself from hiding. She immediately returned to Shixi, and her first words were: How is Liu Guifu? Fortunately, I heard good news: just the day before, when Liu Guifu and other arrested comrades were being taken to the execution ground, the People's Liberation Army came in, so the escorting soldiers dispersed in a hurry, and they were rescued soon after. come out. Teachers and students in Shixi celebrated the liberation with songs and dances, and also welcomed Liu Guifu's return.
“It was such a critical moment!” Gu He still told reporters with emotion today. New Zealand friend Rewi Alley also lived on Yuyuan Road when he was in Shanghai. From the 11th to 27th years of the Republic of China, No. 4, Lane 1315, Yuyuan Road, was Rewi Alley's residence in Shanghai. It was a three-story Western-style house with an escalator outside that could go straight up to the second floor living room. The front half of the ground floor is the reception room and dining room, and the back half is the kitchen and other auxiliary rooms. There is a small workshop with a lathe and some tools built in. There is a garage along the alley on the ground floor, and there is a small garden in front of the house.
While in Shanghai, Rewi Alley served as the Inspector-General of the Industrial Section of the Industrial Bureau of the British Concession. Starting in 1934, he participated in the first international Marxist study group in Shanghai and established contact with the Communist Party of China. The friends who often worked together included Song Qingling, Shi Mochilai, Ma Haide, etc. Because he was a foreigner who worked in the Concession Industry Bureau and lived in a quiet place, the Chinese *** organization used this place to carry out secret work. The Shanghai Party organization of the Communist Party of China once set up a radio station in the small room on the top floor of Rewi Alley's residence to maintain communication with the Red Army who was undergoing the Long March. Alley also purchased medical equipment, medicines and various supplies for the Soviet area and the Red Army here, and transported them out through various channels.
Rewi Alley’s residence was also a meeting point and refuge for members of the Communist Party of China. In April 1935, Smedley brought Chen Hansheng, an expert on international issues who had just arrived in Shanghai from Tokyo, here. to avoid being hunted by the concession authorities, and was later escorted by Alley to an ocean-going ship bound for Moscow. In the late autumn of the same year, through Smedley's introduction, Liu Ding, the representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China who contacted Zhang Xueliang, lived here for a long time until he went to northern Shaanxi in the first half of 1936. In 1937, when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, Lu Xun's old friend Japanese Shikachi Geng and his wife Sachiko Ikeda also lived in Alley's apartment to avoid being pursued by the Japanese police.
After the August 13th Incident broke out in 1937, Rewi Alley ended his legendary life in his Shanghai apartment and transferred to Hong Kong to Wuhan.
On June 1, 1992, the former residence of Rewi Alley was announced as a municipal memorial site by the Shanghai Municipal People's Government.
Address: No. 4, Lane 1315, Yuyuan Road, Changning District, Shanghai