Chapter 13 12. Ups and downs on West Nanjing Road

The four of them wore all black woolen overcoats, walked side by side among the welcoming crowd, and entered the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building.On the far left is Rong Yiren. Rong Yiren, 40, is also the youngest of the four, but he is already one of the most well-known businessmen in Shanghai.Then there are 61-year-old Hu Juewen and 74-year-old Sheng Pihua.All three of them had red flowers on their chests. Rong Yiren took off the top hat he was wearing and held it in his hand, smiling at the welcoming crowd.Hu Juewen and Sheng Pihua did not show smiles on their faces.They know that from this day onwards, they will give up all the property they have earned all their lives.Du Dagong, the vice chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Industry and Commerce, who was walking on the far right, was all smiles, applauding as he walked forward.The onlookers also applauded.

All three are well-known corporate tycoons in Shanghai, working in industries ranging from flour to textiles to machinery. After 1949, they did not choose to relocate their companies overseas like some of their peers did. They also immigrated to Hong Kong, Taiwan or other countries farther away. On the contrary, the three of them have been patriots since the Anti-Japanese War appeared and interacted with the Communist Party.Now, the new regime is again calling on them to lead by example.This time, as representatives of Shanghai's industrial and commercial circles, they will step into the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building, which has just been built, and submit an application signed collectively by Shanghai's industrial and commercial circles to the public-private partnership application conference held here, expressing that the business class "actively accepts desire for socialist transformation".

All three of them later became prominent in the new regime, serving as the deputy mayor of Shanghai and the vice chairman of the Federation of Industry and Commerce. The younger Rong Yiren was even praised as a "red capitalist". For the rest of his life, his reputation as a businessman did not disappear, but was strengthened in the later period. In the 1980s, he was selected as one of the world's 50 famous entrepreneurs by "Fortune" magazine. This is the first time that a businessman in mainland China was praised as a world-class entrepreneur by an international magazine.

One year before they walked into the venue and announced that their industries were willing to undergo socialist transformation, this building called the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building had just been completed. It is a symbol of Sino-Soviet friendship and was jointly built by Chinese and Soviet engineers in Shanghai. The first exhibition hall.It came about because the nascent Chinese regime at that time decided to hold a large-scale exhibition in Shanghai on the achievements of the Soviet Union's economic and cultural construction.For this exhibition, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee decided to build a commensurate exhibition hall in Shanghai.From the start of construction on May 4, 1954 to the completion in March 1955, it experienced a two-month rainy season, typhoons of magnitude 8 to 9, tides that were rare in decades, and severe cold of minus ten degrees in Shanghai.There is a gold-plated five-pointed star on the top of this building.Legend has it that a lot of gold leaf was used to make this Venus.Moreover, at that time, there seemed to be an unwritten rule in Shanghai's construction industry: the height of all buildings could not exceed the shining gold star of the Soviet Union's Big Brother.The Sino-Soviet Friendship Building has also become the first commanding height in Shanghai.

However, in the minds of the three Shanghai tycoons who walked into this new Shanghai landmark building in 1956, it was inevitable that they would think of the famous Shanghai Hartong Garden occupied by the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building and its owner Os. Ai Ha At the same time, Xinsheng sighed when he saw him building a tall building, seeing him entertaining guests, and seeing his building collapse. In 1873, 22-year-old Oss E. Hartung came to Shanghai alone and found a job at Sassoon & Co.He was a Jew born in Baghdad, and moved with his parents to Bombay, India, the British colony at any time, where the Hartung family joined the British nationality. At the age of 21, Hartung went to Hong Kong, another jewel of the British Empire.In the second year, he moved to Shanghai, the most famous paradise for adventurers in the Far East.

Hartung, who came to Shanghai, was penniless, and he was able to get a job as a janitor in Sassoon only because his uncle knew the old Sassoon, the boss of Sassoon.But then Hartong became one of the most famous Shanghai taipans on Nanjing West Road and even the whole Shanghai Bund. He first went from a doorman to a street boy who handles goods, collects accounts, and contacts business in a foreign firm to Sassoon Matheson, and also engaged in real estate business.At the same time, it was rumored that he was secretly engaged in the opium and usury business. In 1887, Hartung served as a director of the Shanghai French Concession Public Board of Directors, and in 1898 he became a director of the Shanghai Public Concession Industry Bureau.But it wasn't until 1901 that he left Sassoon & Co. to establish Hartung & Co., which specializes in real estate, that he achieved the highest achievement an adventurer can achieve in Shanghai.Hartung Co., Ltd. owns nearly 44% of the real estate on Nanjing Road—this commercial street called Yongquan Road by the British was first built by the British in 1862. It was just a barren road at the beginning, only for living in the concession and the city. Shanghai residents used it for outings in Jing'an Temple, but later it became one of the most prosperous streets in Shanghai.Hartung's most famous business move is that he invested 600,000 taels of silver to pave part of Nanjing Road with iron li wood, which not only increased Hartung's popularity in Shanghai, but also greatly increased the value of his real estate on Nanjing Road.

In 1868, Hartung married Luo Jialing (formerly known as Li Sui), a Chinese-French mixed race. In 1904, the private garden he built on Nanjing West Road was named after his wife and himself: Aili Garden.People also like to call Aili Garden Hartong Garden.The garden took 5 years and 700,000 taels of silver to build, covering an area of ​​300 mu. It was designed by the famous monk Huang Zongyang in the late Qing Dynasty in imitation of the Zhongdaguan Garden. It was the most luxurious private garden in Shanghai at that time, known as the Grand View Garden on the Sea. The Hartungs were also keen to invite the most famous socialites and political and business tycoons in Shanghai at that time to attend the banquet in the garden. The wedding was held in the famous Tianyan circle in Harbin Garden; Cai E, a famous general of the National Defense Movement, had recuperated in the garden before going east to Japan for medical treatment...

Hartong, who is passionate about Chinese culture, once spent a lot of money to collect oracle bones unearthed in Anyang, Henan, and invited famous scholars such as Luo Zhenyu to live in Hartong Garden to study oracle bones.Mrs. Hartung believed in Buddhism, and she founded Huayan University, the earliest Buddhist university in China in the park—later, Hartung founded another university, Shengcang Mingzhi University, in the park.Wang Guowei and Xu Beihong also lived in Hartong Garden.It was really a boom time. The childless Hartung couple adopted 11 foreign orphans as adopted children, and 9 Chinese orphans as nephews. On June 19, 1931, Hartung died of illness in Ailiyuan, leaving a huge inheritance of 172 million yuan. Luo Jialing passed away in 1941, but the wills left by the couple were quite different, resulting in the famous Hartung estate case at that time.

After Shanghai was invaded by Japan, Hartong Garden was occupied by the Japanese army as a camp, and the buildings in the garden were completely destroyed. During this period, it suffered several fires. By 1945, there were only a few bungalows left in Hartong Garden, which is famous in the Far East. "Like an old photo from many years ago," Eileen Chang wrote. The Sino-Soviet Friendship Building built on the ruins of this garden can be said to bury the Shanghai Taipan and the most luxurious private garden in the Far East built by him.With the establishment of the new regime, all the taipans who once called the wind and rain in Shanghai Bund like Harton also dispersed.Merry is always blown away by the rain and the wind, and now there is a new face and protagonist here.Mao Zedong once met with local political figures in Shanghai in the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building; Zhou Enlai once hosted a banquet here for visiting US President Nixon...

This whole Nanjing Road is also like Hardoon Garden, with its ups and downs.Once upon a time, the Majestic Grand Theater and the Paramount Hotel were brightly lit, singing and dancing, and the never-ending love-hate and legendary stories were staged; celebrities gathered in Zhangyuan and Ailiyuan, chatting and laughing; The road forms the western half of the luxury ten-mile foreign market.After the Japanese army occupied the concession, the business withered and the romance dispersed.After 1945, it returned to prosperity.But after 1949, capital flowed and business withered, and the former luxury area only became a sales place for middle and low-end goods, and it was dimmed in the national economic downturn and the subsequent Cultural Revolution.

The real recovery of West Nanjing Road came after 1992.The protagonists of this commercial street have changed several times, from Daban Hartong, the owner of Hartong Garden, to the three national capitalists Rong Yiren, Hu Juewen, and Sheng Pihua who voluntarily handed over their properties, and now they are the new real estate tycoons.Among them, the most prominent are the three owners of the famous Golden Triangle on Nanjing West Road: Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong Hutchison Whampoa, the major shareholder of Westgate Plaza; Chen Qizong of Hong Kong Hang Lung Group, the owner of Hang Lung Plaza; and the CITIC Pacific Rong family, the owner of CITIC Pacific Building. Completed in 2001, Plaza 66 was the tallest building in Puxi at that time. Today, with a height of 288 meters, it still maintains the crown of the fourth tallest building in Shanghai.Plaza 66 gathers well-known international luxury brands, including Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Chanel, Dior, Celine, Escada, Bvlgari, Fendi, Loewe, Prada, Versace, Lanvin, etc.Westgate Plaza, which was built by Li Ka-shing unexpectedly entering the Shanghai real estate industry during the financial crisis, is the shopping center with the largest traffic in the Golden Triangle.CITIC Pacific Plaza in the Golden Triangle and Shanghai Mall near Plaza 66 (where 40 branches of Fortune 500 companies are distributed), and the Shanghai Exhibition Center renamed from the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building (its latest goal is to become Shanghai's Lu The floating palace) are famous landmark buildings in Shanghai.Moreover, new well-known commercial buildings are constantly appearing, including the Kerry Center and the second phase of Jing’an Kerry Center invested and built by Malaysian Chinese tycoons, as well as the Jiuguang Department Store that opened in 2004.Like Huaihai Road and Xujiahui, Nanjing West Road has once again become one of the most expensive locations and the most prosperous commercial centers in Shanghai. Chang'an Avenue has existed as the most famous street in China for a long time, and since the founding of the capital of the People's Republic of China in Beijing, the dispute over the capital planning of Chang'an Avenue has drawn more attention to this street.It is an east-west axis in Beijing. Old Chang'an Street starts from Jianguomen in the east and ends at Fuxingmen in the west. It is known as the "Ten Mile Long Street". "Ten Mile Long Street Sending off the Prime Minister" happened on this street.Tiananmen Square is located on the north side of the midpoint of Chang'an Avenue, and Tiananmen Square is located on the south side of the midpoint of Chang'an Avenue. Along Chang'an Avenue, there are also many government agencies and commercial centers built later. Chang'an Avenue was built from the fourth year to the eighteenth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1406-1420). It was built at the same time as the Beijing Imperial City. It was an important part of Beijing's urban planning in the Ming Dynasty. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, architects, urban planners and politicians debated how the city of Beijing should be planned.Among them, the planning along Chang'an Avenue occupies an important position in this debate.The planning of Chang'an Avenue and Beijing City almost determines how cities across the country are planned, and they have followed suit in terms of architectural style and road strategy.Chang'an Avenue is almost the most important street in China, and it and the planning along it also determine the appearance and function of the main roads and along the main roads in most cities in China.