Shanghai used to have many old houses and old buildings, but they were all demolished on a large scale in the process of the city. But if you look outside the city, you can also find many centuries-old mansions. Zhoupu is also a thousand-year-old town, known as "Little Shanghai". The rapidly developing Zhoupu has undergone large-scale demolition and transformation of the old city in recent years, but there are still some historical relics scattered in nearby villages.
In Pingqiao, Flagstaff Village, Zhoupu Town, Pudong, there is an old house of the Gu family, which has been baptized for nearly 200 years and is quite famous in the village, and you can get a detailed route by simply asking the villagers. This five-bay mansion was built in the Daoguang years and took 10 years to complete, with a total of 28 rooms and an area of more than two acres.
This is a standard Shanghai stranded house, similar to the courtyard in Beijing, but called "stranded" in Shanghai. The strand is older and more authentic than the Shikumen. Today, the house as a whole is very well preserved, but the appearance looks a little older, because it is a private property, and it is slightly deficient in protection and maintenance.
The house has a total of five bays, the first flat column has five houses, and there are also three or seven bays, depending on the owner's financial resources. The middle one is called the wall door room, that is, the gate of the entire house, which is somewhat different from the courtyard in Beijing, the gate of the courtyard is generally open in a corner; there is one room on the left and right of the wall door, which is called the second room; the two sides of the second room are connected to each other, all called the end room.
Walking into the middle of the courtyard, there is a huge patio, which often has a patio in the general Huizhou ancient buildings, and the patio of Gu's old mansion is much larger. The patio is paved with large green bricks, and the flowers and grass planted by the owner are now displayed, as well as clothes drying poles. In the back of the second entrance, in the middle of the guest hall, it was picked up by the owner, and the family tree of the Gu clan was hung on the wall. On both sides of the courtyard, there are three compartments.
The hanging circle house was once a representative Shanghai house, and there were many such houses in the suburbs of Shanghai in the past. But in recent years, with the process of urbanization, such old houses have disappeared rapidly for various reasons. Is there such a twisted house around you, and when was it demolished?