"Where people pass by, they become theaters." At the end of 2021, with a performance staged here, this line appeared on the wall of the old building of "Lane 8 of the Present Tide".
Located at the intersection of Wujin Road on North Sichuan Road in Hongkou District, this area undertakes a century-old cross-section of Shanghai and is now a new Internet celebrity landmark in Shanghai. When the media interviewed the stage designer of the performance, the other party revealed the creative inspiration: "The grass and leaves opposite the old building are instantaneous, and the old building that has undergone spring and autumn changes is an eternity." The performance is not just a stage, but multiple performance areas wrap the audience in it, allowing the audience to integrate into this dialogue that spans time, region and culture. ”
This is indeed a space where you can talk to space-time. In the early years, many "left-wing" bookstores such as Nanqiang Bookstore, Shuimu Bookstore, Xinken Bookstore, etc. were opened here, attracting many cultural celebrities who pursued new culture and new ideas. Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Feng Xuefeng, Ye Shengtao, Shen Yinmo, Ding Ling and a large number of other cultural people have shouted and fought for progressive culture here.
There are 8 lanes in Lane 8 of this tide. Born out of the private garden garden, the "Rainbow Garden", the "Public Welfare Workshop" that shows the style of Shikumen Lane, and the large mansion lintel "Yingchuan Jilu", which carries the nostalgia of Cantonese businessmen, have witnessed countless strivers and the footprints of Dr. Sun Yat-sen... Here, the building becomes a history book that opens one after another.
Rainbow Garden: A banquet was held for Sun Yat-sen
Wujin Road No. 453-457, next to Lane 8 of the present tide, is a private garden that cannot be entered without an acquaintance, built by the Cantonese businessman Zhao Qifeng in the early 20th century. At that time, about 80% of the Guangdong immigrants in Shanghai lived in Hongkou, and Hongyuan was very famous in this crowd. In the early days of Shanghai's liberation, it was the Hongkou District Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Center, which was later converted into a factory. It is said that after this transformation, the Shanghai Literature Museum will soon be settled.
The past and present lives of this building are also like a literary work.
According to the data, the rainbow garden covers an area of about 5 acres, with a mixed structure of brick, wood and stone, and is a Combination of Chinese and Western architecture in Guangdong style. The building faces north and south, and the upper and lower floors of the main façade are designed as continuous arch corridors, the ground floor corridor uses semicircular Roman arches, and the second floor is changed to a flat arch. The main building is divided into three entrances, the first and the second are connected, and the middle is designed as a built-in patio, which is built with a roof-high ceiling, with air windows, and has a good ventilation and lighting effect. The two and three entrances are designed as open-air patios, and some outdoor activities can be held in the patios.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen left many footprints in Hongkou in his early years, and also visited the charity square many times and was a guest in The Rainbow Garden. On December 25, 1911, Dr. Sun Yat-sen arrived in Shanghai for a short stop before going north to Nanjing to take office, and Huang Xing and others went to the railway station to welcome him. On December 30 and 31, the Guangdong Xiangshan Association and the Guangdong Xiangshan Brigade Shanghai Hometown Association held a banquet in The Rainbow Garden for Dr. Sun Yat-sen's election as interim president. The banquet was held in the small garden in front of the hall, during which everyone said that sun Yat-sen had persevered in his revolutionary work and finally succeeded. During the banquet, congratulations were held, and guests and hosts were happy.
On January 1, 1912, Sun Yat-sen was sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing. That night, on the temporary stage set up in the small garden of the Rainbow Garden, a string of electric lights shone like daylight, and the girls of the Qixiu Girls' School performed in support of the revolutionary army. On July 22 of the same year, Sun Yat-sen visited The Rainbow Garden again and gave a speech at the welcome meeting arranged for him by the Railway Association of the Republic of China, expressing the views that "the more railways are established, the stronger and richer the country" and "the land of China is five times more beautiful, and if you can build railways for 3.5 million miles, you can become the world's first power". In April 1913, Sun Yat-sen visited The Rainbow Garden for the third time to attend the first anniversary of the founding of the National Railway Association, during which he delivered a speech on the construction of China's railways and took a group photo with the delegates in the garden.
Sun Yat-sen attended a welcome banquet in the Rainbow Garden that year. (Hongkou Archives)
Nanqiang Bookstore in Guangdong Lane
When Dr. Sun Yat-sen last visited the Honghong Garden, the public welfare workshop on the west side of North Sichuan Road, north of Haining Road and south of Wujin Road had not yet become prosperous from farmland.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a Cantonese real estate developer named Chen Qize came to this place and saw that it was close to the Shanghai Railway Station (Laobei Railway Station), so he decided to develop a "public welfare square". After the development, there are 119 houses, with a construction area of about 20,600 square meters, and the front façade of each building has a tall green brick wall, and most of the occupants are Cantonese nationals, so it is also known as "Guangdong Lane".
In 1928, at the entrance of No. 38 of the Charity Square, Cantonese and Hokkien dialects frequently sounded.
In this year, Nanqiang Bookstore was established here. At that time, the publications published by Nanqiang Bookstore were all signed "No. 38, Shanghai North Sichuan Road Public Welfare Square" at the time of distribution. From then until the mid-1930s, the charity workshop became a gathering place for young people of Chaoshan and Fujian progressive literature. Among the young people are the Chaoshan writer Ke Bonian and the Fujian writer Ma Ning.
Born in Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province, Ke Bonian, whose original name was Li Chunfan, joined the Communist Party of China in 1924 and was a Translator, Diplomat, and Revolutionary of Marxist-Leninist writings. In 1929, Ke Bainian came to Shanghai with his wife and was incorporated into the Third Street Branch of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai Zhabei District, and served as secretary. In the same year, he joined the Left-Wing Cultural Organization Chinese Union of Social Scientists. Coopernian wrote and translated a large number of social science books. In 1929, Coopernian translated Dr. Kenneth's "Methodology of Economics" and the German workers' philosopher Detzgen's "Dialectical Materialism"; after 1930, Koebnian co-edited the "Dictionary of New Terms" and "Dictionary of Economics"; in August 1933, Koebnian wrote "Outline of Social Problems" and "How to Study Emerging Social Sciences" and other series of books; after that, he also compiled "Essentials of World Social Science Masterpieces". These treatises are all published by Nanqiang Books.
The pen name of Ma Ning, a famous writer of the "Left League" from Fujian, is a word taken from the names of Marx and Lenin. In March 1930, he joined the Chinese Left-Wing Writers Union and joined the Communist Party of China in the same year. After becoming a member of the "Left League", Ma Ning often visited the Nanqiang Bookstore as a literary youth. Pei Yiran's "Red Life History: Those Things in the Revolutionary Years (1921-1949)" wrote that the young Manin had eagerly waited for a response when he finished writing the draft of "Iron Love". The novella "Iron Love", which is set in the Guangzhou riots, was later published by Nanqiang Books.
In the same period, the "Yingchuan Jilu" located at No. 45 Gonggongfang showed the pattern of large households with considerable financial resources: using Ningbo red stone as the gatehouse, the door was made of stone strips, the half-moon pattern was built on it, and the thick wooden gate was equipped with dark paint. The whole house covers an area of more than 100 square meters, with high walls and thick doors, giving residents a sense of security. (Hongkou District Chronicle)
The bubble bookstore, the stronghold of left-wing literature
In 1928, the same year that Nanqiang Bookstore was founded, Dai Wangshu, Shi Jingcun, Du Heng, and Liu Naou founded the "First Line Bookstore" at the intersection of North Sichuan Road and Dongbaoxing Road. More than a month later, the police station sent an official document, which read, "Investigate that the first-line bookstore is suspected of publicity and redundancy, and immediately stop business."
After the bookstore was closed, the young people were not discouraged. Later, Shi Jingcun once wrote an article recalling: "We rented a single-storey second-floor Shikumen house in the Public Welfare Workshop at the Haining Intersection of North Sichuan Road and opened a foam bookstore. Upstairs, the front room is the office, and the back room is used as a bedroom for two middle school students. The two middle school students specialized in running errands, buying paper and contacting the printing house. Downstairs, the front room is a business room, which also stores printed books. ”
The Foam Bookstore is opened in the concession, there is no need to register, the store is located in the lane, and only a small signboard is hung on the door, and it will not attract attention. In the two years of 1929 and 1930, the publishing business of the Water Foam Bookstore was very lively, and many literary authors such as Hu Yipin and Ding Ling often came to the bookstore to chat or contact the manuscript. Shi Jingcun recalled: "The most frequent visitor was Feng Xuefeng. Sometimes he came to the shop to gossip during the day, and after seeing Lu Xun from Jingyun at night, he stopped by here to sit for a while. ”
General Chen Geng also visited the Charity Workshop that year. In the book "Huangyuanlou Shiyi Correspondence Collection", Lou Shiyi and Huang Yuan recounted that they had accompanied Lu Xun to meet with Chen Geng without their knowledge:
"One day, Brother Xue (Feng Xuefeng) came to me and told me: 'Mr. Lu Xun wants to meet a comrade in charge of the Soviet District, who has come to Shanghai to see a doctor, and Mr. Lu Xun intends to write a novel with the theme of the Red Army, and wants to ask him to talk about it...' At the agreed time, I went to wait in the front building of the Shuibu Bookstore, which was closed at the public welfare workshop. Zhu Jing, my comrade, brought a comrade whom I did not know, dressed in very simple clothes, with a square face and the color of wind and frost, about like a village teacher. ”
In that year, Shuimu Bookstore also published a large number of influential works in the history of Chinese literature - Liu Naou's novel collection "Urban Landscape", Dai Wangshu's poetry collection "My Bottom Memory", Shi Jiecun's novel collection "Shangyuan Lantern", Lin Xunjin's translation of the German writer Remarck's famous book "Calm and Trouble on the Western Front", Du Guoyu's translation of Marx's "Philosophical Poverty", etc., until 1931, Shuibu Bookstore closed.
Chen Zishan, a Shanghai scholar who grew up in Hongkou and lived on Dongyuhang Road as a child, commented on the Water Foam Bookstore in "In the Beautiful Time of Shanghai": "(It) deserves a page that cannot be ignored in the history of modern Chinese literature and culture. ”