An urban renewal project is set to infuse life into old homes, Zhang Kun reports in Shanghai.

A view of the shikumen houses in Zhang Yuan in Shanghai's Jing'an district. (GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY)

Zhang Yuan, a community of hundreds of shikumen (a style featuring Western and Chinese elements) houses in downtown Shanghai's Jing'an district, was recently reopened to the public after its last residents were relocated late last year.

An exhibition titled, 100 Years of Zhang Yuan: Urban Renewal of Jing'an District, was launched in the compound on July 6 to commemorate the site's historical value.

"We want to bring the stories to the public and let people know about Zhang Yuan, and show how the Party and the State have done everything possible to improve people's quality of life," says Shi Yunlun, president of the Jing'an Real Estate Group, the State-owned enterprise responsible for the conservation and restoration of Zhang Yuan.

"Zhang Yuan is the first urban renewal project in Shanghai to implement a protective expropriation plan," Shi says.

"For decades, the shikumen houses were packed and the facilities overused. In order to conserve the heritage of Shanghai, the city decided to relocate all the residents in 2018 and protect the buildings."

According to the district's plans for the compound, the houses will be restored and refurbished, underground spaces will be constructed, and a commercial compound over 150,000 square meters will be introduced. Maintaining the cultural heritage and characteristics of the shikumen houses will be the top priority of this project, Shi says.

Located just off Nanjing Road West at the corner of Taixing Road and Wujiang Road, Zhang Yuan, or Zhang's Garden, is widely known as Shanghai's largest, best-preserved and most diverse shikumen compound.

Before it became a residential compound, the location was dubbed the "No 1 public garden of Shanghai". It was the place where the first electric lamp in China was lit, the first bicycle race in China took place, and where the country's first outdoor photo booth was opened. It was also the place where kung fu master Huo Yuanjia challenged Western boxers to prove to the international community that Chinese were courageous fighters. Peking Opera maestro Mei Lanfang also made his debut performance at a private event there.

A movie scene featuring a back lane of Zhang Yuan in the 1980s when neighbors watched TV as China's women volleyball team won their first world championships. (GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY)

Stories like these are what the new exhibition endeavors to share with the public. The exhibition begins with photographs that depict the early beginnings of Zhang Yuan, which was named after its founding owner Zhang Shuhe (1850-1919), a merchant from Wuxi in Jiangsu province. Zhang had bought a piece of farmland in Shanghai from a Briton named Francis Groom before building a garden home for his mother. This home was named Weichun Yuan, or Chang Su-ho's Garden, and was located in the international settlement during colonial times.

Zhang opened the garden to the public after his mother's death in 1885 and later built a Western-style mansion called Arcadia Hall, a place where people could enjoy a bird's-eye view of Shanghai. He also expanded the garden space to more than 4 hectares.

With the introduction of entertainment options such as a rollercoaster, circus performances and pleasure boats, Zhang Yuan quickly became a famous public space and one of the few private gardens that were open to the public in Shanghai. Its other amenities included a dance hall, a theater for Chinese opera, a photography studio, a tea house and restaurants.

In 1890, a Western performer took off from Zhang Yuan in a hot-air balloon before parachuting to the ground. This event was documented in the Oct 17 issue of the North China Herald.

In the late 1900s, Arcadia Hall became a popular venue for public speeches. It is believed that revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing and Cai Yuanpei gave lectures here during public rallies against the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) government. Thousands of people were reported to have had their pigtails cut off at these rallies－a symbolic act of their determination to break away from the Qing governance. In the 1910s, more entertainment parks, such as the Great World Amusement Center, were established in the city.

Zhang Yuan closed down in 1918 after a period of decline and its land was eventually sold when Zhang Shuhe died a year later. The new owner divided the land into 28 blocks and resold them to different developers to build shikumen residences.

Shikumen－the term literally means "stone-framed gate"－in Shanghai first appeared in the 1860s. After 1949, most of these residential buildings became State-owned, and the city designated up to 10 households to each building.

Interior of a residential building in Zhang Yuan. (GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY)

According to Ge Yin, a staff member with the publicity department of Jing'an district, there are more than 200 such houses in Zhang Yuan, which was home to a tightknit community of more than 1,000 families until 2019, when the first group of residents moved out. All families received compensation for the relocation.

At the exhibition, one video installation provides a glimpse of the lives of people residing in this crowded neighborhood. The video shows how people would pick vegetables, dry their laundry, and play board games with neighbors in the common outdoor area because there was simply not enough space indoors.

In recent years, filmmakers have been traveling to Zhang Yuan to re-create scenes from the 1980s and '90s. The set of a movie scene shot in the compound has also been re-created for the exhibition. In this scene, actors gathered in front of a tiny black-and-white television in a back lane and watched as China's women volleyball team won their first world championships in the 1980s.

As several families used to share a shikumen house, they often had no more than one room for the whole family.

"In some extreme cases, a small room was home to a family of three generations," Ge says.

To address this situation, some families created space by building a second level within their rooms. Today, the ladders that these people used to climb to the upper level can still be found in many of the rooms.

Through the decades, authorities from Jing'an district have made continuous efforts to improve the living conditions. The plumbing, water and gas supply were renovated so that each family could have their own kitchen space. Small bathrooms were also built in some of the homes. But many of the residents still had to resort to archaic means of human waste disposal－more than 500 households in Zhang Yuan still had to rely on chamber pots until 2018.

If you go

Zhang Yuan, 99 Taixing Road, Jing'an district, Shanghai 

9:30 am-4:30 pm, Monday-Saturday, July 1-Sept 30. 

Visitors can make appointments via Jing'an Zhangyuan WeChat account. The green health QR code has to be shown to gain entry.

Contact the writer at zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn