Text | Shushu
If you are going to come to Wukang Road, I will tell you that what Shaw once said is no longer applicable today, and this great literary hero described Wukang Road 80 years ago.
Walking in here, people who can't write poetry want to write poetry, people who can't paint want to paint, people who can't sing want to sing, it feels wonderful.
At the end of the movie "Color Ring", after Wang Jiazhi let Mr. Yi go, he said to the rickshaw driver: "Go to Fukaisen Road", the former Fukaisen Road is now Wukang Road.
In order to write this topic, I revisited Jin Chengwu's "Like You" filmed by Jin Chengwu and Zhou Dongyu a few years ago, and I didn't remember anything, I remembered the way they finally watched the sunset on the balcony of the Wukang Building, and the line said that this was the most beautiful sunset in the city.
I love history, love temperament, love Jincheng Wu, but it is really difficult to fall in love with today's Wukang Road from the heart because of the sunset of the wumao special effect at the end of the film, a female chef who can't afford to buy dog food, and a male billionaire who is worth 35 billion US dollars in jinchengwu, because obsessive-compulsive disorder and food are set in the Wukang building to watch the wumao special effects sunset to talk about love, which is out of the spectrum.
As for today's Wukang Road, ACW professional level 10 temperament car clerk Shu Shu commented on it like this:
Walking into here, people who don't drink coffee will buy a cup of coffee, people who don't taste red wine will come to a glass of red wine, people who don't know what salami is will order a salami platter, people who don't like to take pictures stand in front of the Wukang building and click anyway, when strolling under the plane trees on Wukang Road, they feel that they are petty bourgeois.
Although today's Wukang Road has seen the commercial extremes in the past, I still chose Volvo, which I loved since childhood, and stayed on this road for nearly three hours.
Because the current Wukang Road at first glance looks like Internet celebrities and petty bourgeoisie, but the aroma of coffee is the story of this place from 1907, and it is also these stories that make this Wukang Road a flag planting place for many merchants.
Wukang Road is not long, was built in 1907, when the car just entered Shanghai, Shanghai's original dirt road can not meet the needs of cars, so the French Concession Public Administration Bureau in the concession inside and outside the road widened and repaired this road, and will be partially straightened, the dirt road paved into coal road, increase the hardness of the road surface, while the west of Xujiahui Road directly opened, so that this road can be used for cars to drive.
When the French Concession Bureau expanded its territory, it was deadlocked with Britain, the United States and other countries, and when the road was built, it clashed with the Siming Office (Ningbo Guild Hall), so there was a bloody case.
Fortunately, Liu Kunyi, the governor of Liangjiang at that time, had a very good personal relationship with Fu Kaisen, so he asked Fu Kaisen to assist Yu Lianyuan of Shanghai Daotai in handling the expansion of the concession in the name of the Chinese demarcation committee, and annexed the aftermath of the Siming Office.
In 1914, the western district where Fukaisen Road is located was officially classified into the French Concession, and the first French consul in Shanghai, Mintény, made an overall plan for Fukaisen Road and its surroundings in accordance with the most advanced urban construction concept in the West at that time.
In 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out, this story I have told many times in the "Rolling Road Series", the French Concession entered a four-year period of isolated islands, merchants and rich people came here to escape the war, and formed a deformed prosperity and development that was contrary to the society at that time.
When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, this story I also told many times in the "Rolling Road Series", the Wang puppet government took the opportunity to announce the acceptance of the French Concession, and renamed the French Concession as the Special Eighth District of Shanghai, with a good impression of Wukang Moganshan, Wang Jingwei named Fukaisen Road Wukang Road.
Still said many times, where there are plane trees in Shanghai, there are stories and celebrities, so Wukang Road is no exception, and the main theme of its story starts from the Wukang Building.
No. 858 Wukang Road, located at the intersection of Wukang Road and Huaihai Road, is the most iconic building on this road.
The Wukang Building was built in 1924 by the French and Merchants International Savings Association, designed by the famous Hungarian architect Hudak, and is one of Hudak's early works, it is the first porch-style apartment building in Shanghai and one of the only three remaining ship-shaped buildings in the world.
Because the Wukang building was formerly known as the Normandy Apartment, many people misunderstood that this name had nothing to do with the Normandy Peninsula, in fact, it had nothing to do with it, it was to commemorate a French warship named Normandy in World War I, which achieved outstanding results and was later sunk by German submarines.
Hudak's design idea for the interior of the Normandy apartment is that the first and second floors of the apartment are for shops such as storefronts; from the third floor, as a residential house; the housing type is divided into 4 types of one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom households, with a total of 63 suites, and more than 30 maid's houses; the kitchen and bathroom of each unit are generally arranged on the north side, and the bathroom has a special ventilation channel; in addition to the swing staircase, there are also 3 passenger and cargo elevators.
According to the records in the Shanghai Street Guide column of the "China Directory" published by Zi Lin Yangxing in 1937, the general sales agent of Jiadi Fire Oil Property Company, the manager of the Shanghai office of Meiya Insurance Company, and the manager of Siemens Shanghai Company were all staying here.
Later, because there are two film companies next to the Wukang Building, Xinhua Pictures and Lianhua Pictures, many film industry people have been rented here, including the famous film actor Wu Yin, and Wang Renmei, who is popular in half the sky because of a "Fishing Light Song".
After the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, a large number of expatriates were either imprisoned or deported by the Japanese army, and by 1945, only one-third of the entire suite was still inhabited, so Kong Xiangxi's daughter bought the entire building and became the largest owner of the Normandy apartment alone.
After the founding of New China, the Normandy apartment was taken over by the Shanghai Municipal Government and renamed Wukang Building. Film performance artist Sun Daolin and Yue opera performance artist Wang Wenjuan and his wife once lived here, the famous film artist Zheng Junli once lived here, Zhao Dan and his wife Huang Zongying lived here and later moved to Hunan Road, and well-known old artists such as Qin Yi also stopped here to rest.
Today's Wukang building, there is a café on the first floor, there are home stores, and bookstores, looking up, bustling inside is full of people, I saw a family on the window sill of the spring blossoms are particularly beautiful, suddenly realized that next month will be the spring equinox.
No. 393 Wukang Road, former residence of Huang Xing, known as Huang Mansion.
The early part of the Huang Mansion was built in 1912 in the neoclassical architectural style, and the subsequent part was built in 1933 in the Art Deco style, where Huang Xing lived from 1912 to 1916, and Dr. Sun Yat-sen also spent many nights here to discuss the revolution.
In 1929, Li Shi, one of the four elders of the National Name Party, lived here, and in 1932, Cai Yuanpei, Wu Zhihui and others founded the Shanghai International Library here, as a branch library of the China International Library in Geneva, it was also the first international professional library in China, and then in 1937 the library moved to Beiping, which is now Beijing.
Because it was once the office building of the Shanghai Film Factory, large black-and-white photographs of former stars such as Bai Yang, Zhang Ruifang, and Shangguan Yunzhu are still hanging on the staircase wall.
Now here, it is the Wukang Road Tourist Information Center.
No. 230 Wukang Road, Hunan Villa. It's a building with its doors closed all year round, and for more than half a century it has been sparsely visited, so we can't get a glimpse of it, and in the summer, this Spanish-style garden house will be well hidden by dense greenery.
In the spring of 1943, Zhou Fohai, the finance minister of the Wang puppet regime, bought this garden, and it was also because of the arrival of Zhou Fohai, a Hunan native, that the Zhuerdian Road at the entrance that bordered Wukang Road was renamed Hunan Road. And Zhang Ailing was also here, hearing the story of the Central Command's use of beauty to assassinate Ding Mocun, and only then did she use this as a material to write "Color Ring".
No. 390 Wukang Road, once the residence of the Italian consul, is now the seat of THE SHANGHAI AUTOMOTIVE Group.
This small house with red roof and white wall, the overall style is slightly different from the small bungalow on Wukang Road. It was built in 1932 in the Mediterranean style, mainly imitating the bungalow style of Greece, Italy, southern France and other regions, while the bungalows in Shanghai are mostly garden-style buildings, so this building is particularly precious today.
As I drive my Volvo S60 past here, I feel like I've betrayed the MARVEL R that I brought here last time.
No. 113 Wukang Road, Ba Jin's former residence, is also one of the few celebrity bungalows that have been opened, of course, now because of the epidemic is not open to the public, Ba Jin's last time has stayed here.
This small bungalow was built in 1923, was a Soviet commercial representative office, since 1955 Ba Jin and his daughter Li Xiaolin family lived here, Ba Jin has dozens of homes in Shanghai, but this is the longest home he has lived in, but also the last home he lived in, a residence is more than 40 years.
Translations and novels such as Caprice, Creative Memoirs, Past Events and Caprice, Long Night, and A Pair of Beautiful Eyes were created here.
When I passed in front of the door of Ba Jin's former residence, I thought that Wukang Road at that time must have been much quieter than today, so that this old man who had experienced vicissitudes could record the real spiritual world here.
Wukang Road is also worth mentioning is No. 1 Lane 40, which was the former residence of Tang Shaoyi, the first prime minister of the Republic of China, who came to live here in 1937, and on September 30 of the following year, the military commander assassin assassinated him in his home as an antique dealer.
Not far from the Tang Mansion, another 3-storey cottage, Zhengguang and the old house, are also worth mentioning.
The nameplate on the outer wall tells that this was once the residence of the British businessman Zhengguang and soda shop, McGregor once lived here, and after liberation, the house was confiscated as a guest house of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, and later Liu Jingji, former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, returned to Shanghai to live here.
If you have never been here but feel familiar, then don't doubt, you must have been here in "Color Ring", and the footage of Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi's private meeting was filmed here.
Standing here, I only feel that the sky above Shanghai is the same as the change in the wind and clouds when I first saw it on the Huangpu River, but the changes at that time were more in my eyes, and now I am in my heart.
I drove the Volvo S60 around Wukang Road a lot of times, from two o'clock in the afternoon to four o'clock, the traffic police who circled around the streets all remembered me, and also went around to the road to collect parking fees The little brother who looked at me with a little more playfulness.
What do I see, you ask?
Putting aside history, let's talk about a little impression of driving around.
First of all, there is a primary school on Wukang Road, and at about 3:30 I was very badly blocked, and the transportation of parents who picked up their children was polarized, one was a small electric donkey, the other was a luxury brand car, no matter what, I just felt that they lived in the most prosperous area of the city and had a school district house on Wukang Road.
I told my colleagues who shot me that if I could afford to have my kids in elementary school here, I would have kids too.
Wukang Road parking space more than I thought, the charge is not excessive, the first hour 15 yuan, more than 1 hour according to 20 yuan charge, I stopped for an hour more than ten minutes or so, the other party did not let me make up the fee, the city has actually been friendly.
And the traffic police on and around the road are also more than I thought, they are really tired, I often stop to wait for the lights when I hear them tirelessly let the tourists who take pictures go to a safe place, and stop the cars trying to "scurry" normally and slowly.
Finally, the two types of people who walk the most on this road are those who take pictures and those who are photographed, and those who are cleaners on the road and waiters in the surrounding coffee taverns.
The former looks for possible fragments of life here, while the latter lives a real busy life here.
The biggest question in my mind was that in the more than three hours I stopped, the municipal cleaners were really busy, and it was their non-stop that made this road full of plane trees spotless, and there were hardly a few fallen leaves.
Later, I parked the S60 in a parking space on the side of the road and walked on this road that was more than a kilometer long.
There are many cafes, many taverns, many flower shops, many designer boutiques, almost a separate manuscript to elaborate, because it does not feel like shopping, but a beautiful art exhibition, each store itself is a unique art exhibition, behind each shop is hidden a rich and capital-supported boss who does not want to lose.
From the intersection of Wukang Road and Huaihai Road to the intersection of Wukang Road and Anfu Road, I rubbed shoulders with couples taking wedding photos, passed by foreign friends who were pacing, passed by pairs of little sisters, and even passed by a couple of little couples.
Do they know what the nearly three thousand words were, I don't know, just as I don't know how many people will see it here.
I saw the famous bow balcony, although the bow is no longer there, but there are still people taking pictures there, and the moment I raise the camera, the grandfather on the second floor is collecting clothes, frankly I am a little sorry, I feel that I have disturbed the normal life of people, so I will not put the photo.
The biggest gain of this trip was to find that when I first came to Shanghai two years ago, I first quarreled and broke up with my ex, and the bar he asked me to send him to was originally on this street, when I cried badly, I was not familiar with Shanghai at all, I only remembered the narrow road, and I thought that he had always been introverted to me, and I always thought that he was a poor old tavern after the breakup.
Suddenly, it seems to have been hit by the soul, and it is one of the most prosperous streets in Shanghai.
You see, a lot of things, when you see the essence, you will know whether you have to spend time and energy to continue.
Like I told you, a Wukang Road, now only French sycamores and small bungalows, bows are no longer there, there are many coffee shops in Shanghai, Wukang buildings are all played with by little red books, no need to waste time.
But if you come from the previous text, I think you will still be like me, and want to come again in the early summer when the sycamores are lush.
Just as I have always insisted that I will become a Volvo owner one day, even if when I got this S60, I took a photo in the circle of friends and sent a message "I really still like Volvo, really", and the most poignant message at the bottom is "Tu a lucky one?" ”
I replied back with another friend's reply: "Hang nowhere in the trailer."
As for what I really want, it is about feelings and products.
Emotional level, since I was a child, I have liked the Volvo S90, derived from what I have forgotten, may initially be a good look, if you believe in the life, then use the life to explain.
Later, the story of Geely's acquisition of Volvo also satisfies my sentiments, and the representative of the Ghent factory union asked Li Shufu during the negotiation, "Can you describe it in 3 words, where is Geely's advantage over other competitors?" ”
Li Shufu's answer was only - "I love you."
As we all know, I believe in love, and the bigger things I am, the more I tend to answer simply, so the Volvo I saw later was not only as good as ever, but also better, and every week I would consolidate this better concept in "Guarding the Liberation of the West" and Luo Xiang's videos.
In terms of products, this S60, which I need to drive nearly 400 kilometers for work, is as I was impressed, like my next boyfriend.
At the launch of the S60 in 2019, I still remember that when I first met, it was Gao Xiaosong, Han Han, Lang Lang and others who took turns to blow up, but at the juncture of thinking that they wanted to show the highlights of the model and the price list, ChinPeige, president of Volvo Cars Greater China Sales Company, came to the stage and read a poem by irish poet Roy Clift -
I love you, not only because of the way you look, but also because of the way I looked when I was with you.
I love you, not only because of what you do for me, but also because of what I can do for you.
I love you because you can summon the truest part of me.
I couldn't resist everything in the name of love.
Because we love life and love every traffic participant, we have seen today's Volvo, even the most beginner Volvo S60, must be "entry is safe", "low is standard".
When I drove it home, because I was driving a little fast on the highway, there was a small bump in the ground, and I didn't feel it myself when I was fast over the bump, but the seat belt gave me a tight squeeze, I didn't think it was abrupt, I just thought it was it.
There is also a moment, because I don't pay attention to the distance in front of the car (please don't learn from sensible children), it is very quick to intervene in the automatic intervention, in my experience, without this, there is a high probability that there will be no real problem, but it is more concerned about myself on the road than I am.
As for the rest, the low-key and good-looking appearance streamlines, the wrapped comfortable leather seats, the simple and smooth car engine system, the abundant power of the drag racing worry-free and so on... That's why I like it, so let's stop at 5200 words.
Even if it is an auspicious picture, based on sincerity, bricks for the past, and love for the name, then what is the problem.
Come to Wukang Road, waste time, and don't buy coffee.
"Let's take a walk together"