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Old buildings a solid reminder of wartime era
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Sihang Warehouse
Address: 1 Guangfu Rd
This warehouse is probably Shanghai’s most famous building that brings back memories of China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). It will open to the public next Thursday after being closed one year for renovation.
Designed by Atkinson and Dallas, this modern-style structure was built in 1935 by the Joint Savings Society, which was founded by four Chinese banks and also owned the Park Hotel.
The building gained fame after a battle between more than 400 Chinese soldiers led by Colonel Xie Jinyuan. They fought the Japanese army in a fierce four-day battle that began on October 27, 1937. Brave Chinese soldiers repeatedly repelled Japanese attacks before they were ordered to retreat on November 1. The 400-odd Chinese soldiers were widely admired as “800 heroes” because they claimed to be 800 to confuse the Japanese troops.
The warehouse’s appearance has changed greatly over the years. During the renovation that kicked off last summer, a team headed by famous architect Tang Yu’en pulled down parts that were not part of the original structure, maintained its flat slab structure and converted it into a complex featuring a memorial museum, offices and shops.
The key part of the renovation was restoring the south faade, which had hundreds of bullet holes after the battle. However, plaster had been used to cover the bullet holes in various restorations since the 1940s.
After a survey, Tang’s team removed the plaster and located the original bullet holes with the help of historical photos. Then they restored the holes and also reinforced the wall. The museum features details about the battle and the “Chinese heroes” with a combination of oil paintings, sculptures and a multimedia display.
Lunghwa Camp
Address: 989 Baise Rd
Located near the Longhua Pagoda and inside today’s Shanghai High School, Lunghwa Camp was the largest of the 20-plus camps used to hold Westerners. At its peak, 1,756 captives were here.
A wire fence surrounded the camp and captives lived with limited food, water, clothing and little space or privacy. They were freed shortly after Japan surrendered in August 1945.
British writer J.G. Ballard had spent two and a half years in this camp, which he later wrote about in his best-selling novel “Empire of the Sun,” which was adapted into a Hollywood film.
“I wandered around the site for an hour, ignoring my camera but taking a thousand snapshots inside my eye,” Ballard wrote when he revisited the former camp in 1991. “The children were away on holiday, and we were able to enter G Block. The Shanghai High School is solely for boarders, and all the rooms were locked except for the former Ballard room, which was now a kind of rubbish store. A clutter of refuse, like discarded memories, lay in sacks between the wooden bed frames, where my mother had read ÔPride and Prejudice’ for the tenth time, and I had slept and dreamed. Lunghwa Camp was there, but it was not there.”
Embankment House
Address: 400 Suzhou Rd N.
Once the largest residential building in Asia, Embankment House was built in 1935 by Jewish tycoon Victor Sassoon, which he built as a temporary shelter for Jewish refugees in 1938.
Stretching along Suzhou Creek, this eight-story building is shaped like a huge “S” in order to make use of the narrow plot of land. In a New York Times article headlined “The Man Who Changed the Face of Shanghai,” Taras Grescoe wrote that Sassoon built his own memorial with this building and the V-shaped Sassoon House (today’s Fairmont Peace Hotel).
“Viewed from the Bund, and reading from left to right, the letters “V” and “S” are legible in the outlines of Sassoon’s two signature buildings,” he wrote in the article published last year.
The former Shanghai Municipal Government Building
Address: Administrative Building in Shanghai Sports Academy, 650 Qingyuanhuan Rd, Yangpu District
The former municipal government building had been occupied by the Japanese and was also used by the Japanese puppet government.
Designed in 1931 by renowned architect Dong Dayou, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, the government building was a key part of the Greater Shanghai Plan and was designed in a Chinese Renaissance style.
The Greater Shanghai Plan was the city’s first true urban planning project. It was initiated by the Kuomintang government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Since downtown Shanghai was mostly occupied by foreign concessions, planners looked to a vast area in the city’s northeast, now Jiangwan Town, to build a new center.
Architects were required to base their designs on Western structures but add traditional Chinese elements. Thus the building is reminiscent of a Chinese emperor’s palace with big roofs, overhanging, upturned eaves, huge scarlet wooden gates and exquisitely painted traditional patterns on its exterior. But the general structure, the faade and the entrance clearly showcase the eclectic style popular in the city at the time.
Ohel Moishe Synagogue
Address: 62 Changyang Rd
One of seven Jewish places of worship in Shanghai, the Ohel Moishe Synagogue was originally founded in 1907 and late moved to Changyang Road in 1927. Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum is built on the site. Even the old Vienna CafŽ was recreated in the yard to evoke memories of the period.
Hongkou District’s Foreign Affairs Office estimated that Shanghai accepted 18,000 refugees from Germany, Austria, Lithuania and Poland between 1933 and 1941, most of whom flooded into ghettos in the district near the synagogue and the museum. Shanghai had sheltered them and saved their lives, and the city was nicknamed “Noah’s boat in the Orient.”
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