One of Shanghai's last "20,000" workers' homes will be demolished in its entirety in the near future.
Text | Li Xiaodong
One of the last "20,000 households" workers' new villages in Shanghai, the "Putuo Village" in Putuo District, is finally about to be demolished.
The author drove from the brilliant Wuning Road Bridge to a bend, through the beautiful Yiliu Apartment and Ige Square, suddenly appeared a row of low "Putuo Yicun" old public houses, standing alone in high-rise buildings, there seems to be an endless story.
A few decades ago, this kind of "20,000" workers' housing was already considered a "mid-range house" in the cramped living environment of Shanghainese at that time. When I was a child, I heard outsiders say that this place was called "20,000 households", and I always thought it was the meaning of "two-story households". This kind of old-fashioned public housing, divided into two floors, has a family living with independent coal bathroom, up and down four rooms of the single-family public housing. There are also two families living on the upper and lower floors, sharing a two-story public house with a kitchen and bathroom.
To be precise, the source of "20,000 households" originally referred to the abbreviation of the "21,000 households" new-style workers' houses built in Shanghai in 1952 to solve the housing problem of more than 100,000 workers. Putuo Village is a "workers' new village" built in 1958 to solve the problem of accommodation for personnel of the former Putuo District Committee and District Government organs and the accommodation problem of employees of other enterprise units.
Shanghai Urban Planning and Construction of Residential Village "Milestone"
"20,000 households" is the first batch of architectural works independently designed by new Chinese architects in Shanghai, and the proper "Made in China" has created a milestone in Shanghai's urban planning and construction of a new residential village.
The "20,000" workers' house was designed and constructed in 1952 by New China's own architects under the guidance of Soviet urban planning experts such as Himakov. It was built from traditional Chinese brick and wood structural materials, referring to the style of Soviet townhouses. Water, electricity and coal are complete, and every 5 households share kitchens and toilets, and support roads, sewers, schools, shops and greenery.
In 1953, Shanghai invested a total of 56.77 million yuan to build a 2,000-unit residential "20,000-household" worker village, distributed around the Industrial Zones of Hudong, Huxi and Hunan, and 100,000 families of workers moved into new homes, named Changbai New Village, Gongjiang New Village, Ganquan New Village, Caoyang New Village, Tianshan New Village, and Sunway New Village.
At that time, the "Yaoshui Lane", where industrial workers gathered in Putuo District, was still a "shirtless shantytown" composed of "dry boats", "rolling dragons" and grass-roofed mud walls "pigeon sheds", with about 10,000 workers' families living.
In 1956, my grandfather and his family moved from a 10-square-meter Shikumen pavilion on Changshou Road in Putuo District to the "20,000 Households" on the brand-new Wuning Road. According to her mother's recollection, compared with the home where the wooden toilet is poured every day, the tin coal stove is used for cooking, and the family eats and drinks In the pavilion, living in a new house with independent coal guards and more than 60 square meters upstairs and downstairs is like a dream.
The emergence of "20,000 households" greatly improved the living environment of the Shanghai working class in the early liberation period.
Out of a group of staff literary and artistic creators
The "20,000 households" are also the "witnesses" to the fate, status, rise and fall of the three generations of working class after the liberation of Shanghai.
Taking my family as an example, my grandfather's four daughters, in addition to my mother's team to settle in the field, three aunts were arranged in the wool mill, light bulb factory, forging machine tool factory, the whole family is happy.
Compared with the urban area with narrow roads, messy planning and crowded population at that time, the "20,000 households" workers' houses at that time had relatively complete municipal and community supporting facilities. To the north of "Putuo Village" are the District Government, the District Children's Palace, and the Huxi Workers' Cultural Palace. To the west and north are steel mills, forging machine tool factories, banknote printing plants, etc., and to the east are the transportation hub Caojiadu and the commercial center Changshou Road "Big Self-Chiming Bell".
When I was a child, the roads in "Putuo Village" were wide, tree-lined, houses were neat, there was everything in the vicinity, and the spirit of the people was also very good. I often look at the high-rise building complex of Wuning Road under construction under the rising sun, the huge slogan hangs on the outer wall of the infrastructure: "Strive to achieve the four modernizations", and the huge construction tower crane shakes back and forth on the gradually "uplifted" city skyline, reflecting the red light in the sun, full of vitality.
Some of the second-generation working class living in the "20,000 households" have become pacesetters and technical experts in labor competitions, some have been promoted to reserve cadres of the Party Committee of the Youth League Committee, and some have become cultural people through hard work and self-study. For example, the film "Village in the City" depicts the story of Shu Lang, a journalist who came out of a workers' residential area in Shanghai, and Ding Xiaoya, a model shipyard worker, and part of the film is derived from the drama "The Second Group" created by Liang Xingming, an amateur author at Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard.
In the 1980s, Shanghai's amateur literary and artistic creative talents were almost included in the "three palaces" of the Hudong Workers' Cultural Palace, the Huxi Workers' Cultural Palace (Xigong), and the Shanghai Workers' Cultural Palace (Municipal Palace). For example, "In the Silent Place" created by "City Palace", the film criticism creation of the West Palace and the literary creation of the East Palace.
Transformation of labor pains
From 1998, when the 120,000 backward cotton yarn ingots of the Shanghai Textile Factory were turned into scrap iron in front of the steelmaking furnace, the wave of layoffs of Shanghai workers driven by the transformation of Shanghai's traditional industries began. The residents of the "20,000 households" signed the "co-guarantee" and "buyout" service compensation agreements and walked out of the factory gate and walked into Shanghai's convenience stores, street three industries, small restaurants, fast food restaurants, directing traffic, driving taxis, driving disabled cars, and going to the "Oriental Book Kiosk" to sell newspapers and other positions to re-employment.
After 2000, the Shanghai working class in the "Putuo Village" and "20,000 Households" suddenly wanted to break out of a way to survive. A laid-off neighbor who knows how to cook first opened a small restaurant on the first floor of the street, because the rice, noodles, and dishes are cheap and good, and they don't want to do business, and diners flock to it. After that, the people of "Putuo Village" have "digested and absorbed" and "nested and attracted phoenixes" to decorate the first floor into a variety of characteristic restaurants and food stalls, from Sichuan cuisine to Cantonese cuisine, from milk tea to ramen. Or downstairs to open a shop or break the wall to find rent, for a time "Putuo a village" became a small famous food street nearby, and even the downstairs of my grandfather's house also opened a "Jingwu duck neck".
Renovation of the old district
When the original plan was designed, the "20,000 households" lived for 15 years, and the residents lived for decades. A 20-square-meter house in the "20,000 households" has been occupied by three generations of the same house, and the capacity has reached its limit. The toilets and kitchens shared by several families are old and crowded, and the queues for the toilets are all blushing. By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this century, the "wave of layoffs" and the people in the "20,000 households" were even more difficult.
Tiger skylights began to appear on the roofs of some "twenty thousand households" because of the erection of the attic mezzanine as a storage place for the third generation of "twenty thousand households" to sleep and study. The front door of the residents on the first floor was built with "self-built" "exclusive" toilets, kitchens and storage rooms. The patio at the back door was built into a covered "sun room" to house the elderly and make a living room. On the platform on the second floor, a "study room" was set up, in which children did their homework.
"Putuo Village" has become a "performance" stage for all kinds of illegal buildings to play freely and grow arbitrarily. These "polygonal irregular box buildings" increased by various building materials, with a unique style of drying racks, TV antennas, flowers and grass debris, and onion pot fish tanks, have become a place full of "fireworks".
After 2002, the transformation of "20,000 households" was gradually included in the government's agenda. The largest "20,000 households" residential complex in Shanghai, "Fengcheng Village", was demolished. In 2016, the last "20,000 households" in Yangpu District, more than 200 residents in 228 neighborhoods of Yangpu District, also completed the relocation. However, unlike the end of "20,000 households" in other places, the 12 two-storey "20,000 households" here will be preserved as a whole and converted into a characteristic historical building complex open to the public.
The "Putuo Village" in Putuo District has only undergone several repairs, and it is impossible to avoid the end of the aging of the building structure, most of which have purchased separate houses, and the "20,000 households" left behind have been mainly lent to the foreign population.
Today, one of Shanghai's last "20,000" workers' homes will be demolished in its entirety in the near future. The "20,000 households" in Putuo District will also become history.