Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 - 2017 | Page 502

The New Tales of Old Shanghai
Victoria Shanghai Academy, Cheng, Heidi - 11
I
have been to Shanghai once, in 2010, to see the Shanghai World Expo. Even though I never travelled outside the expo
venue, I still know that it has quite an interesting history.
Shanghai has two sections, which are called Puxi and Pudong. Yet, it wasn’t always like this. Historically, only Puxi, meaning
“West Bank” (of the Huangpu River), was known as Shanghai. The northern part of Puxi was opened up as a port by the Treaty
of Nanking. Slowly, merchants from different countries began to move there and so the foreign concessions, places that were not
subject to Chinese law, were created. The southern part of Puxi, however, was not opened and still belonged to China. So, it was
known as the Chinese City. Now that the foreign concessions no longer exist in Shanghai, it is known as the Old City of
Shanghai.
The wall surrounding the Old City of Shanghai was circular, surrounding the city completely, unlike the Great Wall, which
forms a wiggly line. The only way people could pass through the wall was through the nine original gates surrounding the city,
six of which were on land, which meant that they were built over roads, three of which were water gates, which meant that they
were built over the protective moat that surrounded the city at the time. In 1860, one new gate was built and in 1909, three new
gates were built. The new gates were all built on land. In 1912, the government decided to tear down the wall and the gates but
leave two very small sections. Those sections are still there today.
The city had defensive works starting from the 11th century, during the Sung Dynasty. There are still two very small sections of
the walls there today but they’re definitely not from the Sung Dynasty. They are from the Ming Dynasty and were built to keep
out “wokou”, which were pirates that raided the shores of Japan, China and Korea. It was dismantled in 1912 but two parts of
the wall were left behind. Those sections still survive to this day.
Two roads ran along the city walls. The one that ran along the southern walls was always called Zhonghua Road. The one that
ran along the northern walls is now called Renmin Road but it changed names a few times. At the very beginning, it had a
French name, which was, “Boulevard des Deux Republiques”, literally meaning, “Boulevard of the Two Republics”. Since the
road separates the walled city, belonging to China (back then, the Republic of China) and the French concession, belonging,
obviously, to France, the two republics mentioned in the name of the road are the Republic of China and the French Third
Republic. It was then changed into “Minguo Road”. The name of this road, “Minguo”, combined with the name of the
southern section, “Zhonghua”, made “Zhonghua Minguo”, which translates into “Republic of China”. That was the reason
behind the name change. When the CCP took over, the name of the road became what it’s called now.