Shanghai’s Forgotten Courtyard

You’d think there’d be no more surprises left in Shanghai – surely drones, digital maps, and amateur historians have unearthed them all. But here, just a building’s breadth from busy Wulumuqi Lu, stands a timeless Chinese courtyard house.

Imagine away everything around it, and this house could be from a thousand years ago: after all, Chinese farmhouses have been built the same way for centuries.

Above the lintel, an auspicious greeting welcomes visitors:

“May you always have wealth and good luck” 長發其祥.

Madame Xia, granddaughter of the original owners (far right) and other residents of the courtyard house. Above the lintel, the auspicious blessing has welcomed guests for nearly a hundred years.

Outside the house, a petite woman with a pixie haircut rises from her seat in the shade, welcoming us with the same warmth. “You’ve come to see our house,” says the granddaughter of the original owners, even though she wasn’t expecting us, even though we’re intruders into her home. It’s countryside hospitality, because this was once the countryside.

Madame Xia’s grandfather and his brother built this house in 1923; just three years after the road was laid out and given a foreign name. Eleven years earlier, the area had been Chinese territory, but a 1914 agreement had given the French control of this ‘extra-settlement road’. World War I interrupted much actual development, and it also interrupted the life of 21-year-old Shanghai resident Louis Dufour,  alumni of the Thomas Hanbury School. He gave his life on the battlefields of France, and his name to this road that ran through rural Shanghai.

Each day, as dawn began to tint the sky, the Xia brothers left their house to farm their land, which lay across the Zhaojia Creek. They didn’t have far to go, heading south just a few paces, and crossing the wooden bridge that spanned the creek. Their sons continued to farm the land, even as the French Concession developed more and more of the area. Just a few years later, in 1929, the red brick buildings of the Blue Hospital would go up, casting its shadow into the courtyard.

Their granddaughter doesn’t remember that rural life. “She’s too young to remember,” chimes in another resident – several have gathered around to offer their stories – “but I do. I’m 68. I remember when Zhaojiabang Road was a creek. There were many wooden bridges over the creek, at Wuxing Road, all over the area.” Indeed, Zhaojia Creek was covered over and laid out as a road only between 1954-57 – within living memory.

Inside, the single courtyard, surrounded by rooms, is open to the sky. Unlike so many other courtyards and airwells in Shanghai, it hasn’t been covered over for convenience, or to make more space. But don’t make the mistake of calling it a siheyuan, a courtyard house. “That’s for Beijing,” scoffs Madame Xia. “This is a bendi fangzi.” A local house, vernacular architecture.

To build their house, the brothers Xia probably sat down with a stonemason and described what they wanted. There wouldn’t have been much variation on other traditional farmhouses in the area, and, according to architect Dong Dayou, probably no blueprints, either. “[Traditionally], buildings were put up by masons and carpenters without the help of plans,” he wrote.[1] “Smaller houses were built on the basis of verbal descriptions. For larger buildings, a written description of the number of rooms and their dimensions, and specifications of materials for the exterior and interior, were probably all that was necessary.”

The courtyard is surrounded by rooms, linked by a passageway. Tiger windows (dormers) were added about 15 years ago, and today, instead of the original two families, the house is now home to ten, with a neat communal kitchen. The once-breezy house, complain older residents, has become more stuffy with more people.

The original ceiling beams in Madam Xia’s room.

“You want to see where I live?” Mrs. Xia, ever the gracious hostess, invites us into her spacious room, graced with thick ceiling beams standing on stout wooden columns, and a loft space, all of which have been there since the house was built. The original dark wood has been painted white, she says, to brighten up the room.

What will become of this house, sitting on valuable real estate, at the edge of one of Shanghai’s major arteries? “Oh, they’ve forgotten about us behind this wall,” says Madam Xia.  Which raises an interesting question: can a nearly century-old farmhouse survive in modern Shanghai? We sure hope so.

[1] Doon Dayu, “Architecture Chronicle,” China Heritage Quarterly June 2010. Accessed July 30, 2019.