In the summer of 1938, Zhang Ailing, a legendary contemporary Shanghai female writer, had just turned 18 and, after being placed under house arrest by her father, finally fled to her aunt's apartment to reunite with her long-divorced mother.
Portrait of Zhang Ailing (1920-1995)
The apartment building is four stories high, facing north and south, with clear water walls. One ladder and two households, glass on the door, teak wall skirt around the wall of the room, and a fireplace; Hot water is available in the kitchen and bathroom. It is said that many of the materials used to build the apartments were original goods that came directly from Britain. The overall style of the apartment was the modernist style popular at the time, with terraces, cloisters and lightning rods on the top floor. It can be said that it was the first to lead the trend and atmosphere of the year. The people who can live in such an apartment are not noble and prominent, at least they are also people with solid families.
Exterior of Jinwuding Apartment (Kaina Apartment)
Located at 1375 on the middle of Kaina Road, this apartment was obviously a "landmark" building on Kaina Road at that time, because it was called Kaina Apartment.
The exterior of the present-day Wuding apartment (Kaina apartment) nameplate
Kai Na Road was built in 1911 by the Public Concession Ministry of Works Bureau to cross the boundary and is named after the British businessman "Wang Ji Yang Hang" Tai Pan Kai Na. In October 1943, the concession disappeared, and Kaina Road was renamed Kaiyuan Road, and in 1950 it was changed to Wuding Road, named after the county of Yunnan Province. Later, Wuding Road was extended to the east, and this section of Wuding Road was called "Wuding West Road".
Present-day Wuding West Road View
Nowadays, Wuding West Road starts from Wuning South Road in the east to Jiangsu Road in the west, and the most flavorful is the section from Wanhangdu Road to Jiangsu Road.
The total length of the road is only about 600 meters, all the way, you can see a Western-style garden house everywhere, with unique gables, coupon arch windows, slope roofs, red brick walls, log shutters and other Western architectural "symbols" quietly exude European style. Rows of shops along the street with wooden pillars sticking out from the second floor and triangular eaves, as well as fenced balconies... It is permeated with the smell and smell of a Small European Town.
The old bungalow in the alley of wuding west road
Although the bustling Jing'an Temple business district is close at hand, but this small road that is not accessible to public vehicles, slightly curved, seems to be somewhat silent and lonely, many houses are old, just like the twilight beauty, it is rare that it is still calm and relaxed, independent of the world, revealing a kind of aristocratic atmosphere in the bones. The houses here can be said to have a story.
Turning from Jiangsu Road to Wuding West Road, you can see a statue of the Austrian musician "King of Waltz" Johann Strauss Jr. in the middle of the flower bed on the north side. The musician wrote more than 500 pieces of music in his lifetime, and his round dance song "Blue Danube" is world-famous and has been passed down to this day. This dynamic statue makes people feel that the beautiful melody seems to be slowly flowing from the violin in his hand, and the aftersound is lingering, adding musical symbols to the moody Wuding West Road.
Statue of Strauss on present-day Wuding West Road
Walking a few meters past the statue, through the hollow fence, a classical garden house attracts the attention again. Built after 1912, the main façade is clearly divided into three sections, with two Ionic columns running through two floors, with an open portico and a two-story platform. The front of the house is green with grass and the canopy of the trees is like a cloud.
Present-day Wuding West Road Philharmonic Orchestra is located
Originally a private residence of Pan's family, the house became the seat of the Shanghai Film Orchestra after 1949 and, in recent years, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra. This artistic Western building has always been associated with elegant music.
Now the gate of the Wuding West Road Philharmonic Orchestra
Diagonally opposite the Philharmonic Orchestra is a French-style tavern with a restaurant, and the façade is exaggerated and strangely shaped with colored cement, like a fairy tale mushroom room, adding a few jumping colors and notes to the quiet Wuding West Road.
Decoration on the present-day Wuding West Road
There are many similar decorative details on Wuding West Road, which seem to show its exotic style. Along the road wall are decorated with some niches, inlaid with Western-style vases in the middle, and the metal leaves on them look a little ostentatious... Even more surprising are some sculptural sketches, such as "Frog in the Rain" in front of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and Film, a man blowing a saxophone under the red wall, a European man carrying a Si Tiq and his sharpie dog... These sculptures bring relaxation and pleasure to the lonely West Wuding Road.
Sculpture on present-day Wuding West Road
Today, No. 1357-1359 Wuding West Road is the former residence of Ms. Shi Liang, a famous Chinese jurist, barrister, and one of the famous "Seven Gentlemen" of the Democratic Revolution.
The former residence of Shi Liang on present-day Wuding West Road
Portrait of Shi Liang (1900-1985)
The former residence is a three-storey European-style garden house built in the 1920s. Shi Liang was born in 1900 and died in 1985. From 1946 to 1952, she lived in the eastern half of the building, during which time she led the underground struggle in the NLD's East China region and secretly recruited patriots into the league. The former residence is currently closed to the public and is only limited to visitors on the annual Heritage Day.
Nameplate of Shi Liang's former residence
Kaina Apartment has also been renamed Wuding Apartment with Wuding West Road, but some of the stories that once happened inside and outside the apartment have become history and are still remembered and enjoyed.
The nameplate of the former site of the CPC cadre training class
In 1929, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee secretly held a cadre training class here, with Yun Daiying as the class teacher, Yu Zehong as the deputy class teacher, and Zhou Enlai and Chen Tanqiu often came here to guide the work.
Opposite the Kaina Apartment is Mingyue New Village, built in 1937 and belonging to the new-style lane house. In 1938, Zhang Ailing's uncle's family also moved to Mingyue New Village. Zhang Ailing's mother and Zhang Ailing's uncle are a pair of twin brothers and sisters, the feelings are very good, so Zhang Ailing has deep feelings for her uncle, and gets along well with her cousin and cousin, every day at noon, Zhang Ailing will bring a bowl of vegetables, cross the Kaina Road, to her uncle's house to eat and chat with her cousin and cousin.
The gate of Mingyue New Village on present-day Wuding West Road
More than forty years later, Zhang Ailing, who was far away in the United States, wrote in her long essay "Talking about Eating and Painting Bread to Fill Hunger":
During a period when I lived with my mother in Shanghai, I went to my uncle's house on the other side of the street every day to eat and bring a bowl of vegetables. During the season when amaranth is on the market, I always hold a bowl of amaranth with black oil purple red and dark green silk, and the fat white garlic cloves inside are dyed pink. Crossing the street in the light of day, like holding a pot of common unknown Western potted plants, small pink flowers, speckled dark red moss green same serrated edges of the big pointed leaves, vermilion away from the cape, but this flower is not fragrant, there is no hot amaranth fragrance.
Zhang Ailing is good at tracing, extravagance and rendering, and her words are as vivid and condensed as paintings, making the life of the citizens of old Shanghai colorful.
Zhang Ailing and Changde Apartment
During the period in The Kai na apartment was the warmest time in Zhang Ailing's life, and her mother paid a high price to ask a Jewish teacher to teach her English; Her uncle told her family stories... Although the precocious Zhang Ailing often walks around the terrace on the roof of the apartment, "suffering between the boasting of minors and inferiority", her mood is generally relaxed and bright, so she can write a bowl of ordinary amaranth so gorgeously, and she can also see that she really misses the days of living in the "Kai Na Apartment".