Discover Shanghai
Duolun Road Cultural Celebrities Street
多伦路文化名人街
A 550m street in Hongkou lined with twenty-odd 1910s-1920s mansions in English, French, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish and Islamic styles, where Lu Xun and the League of Left-Wing Writers met in the Gongfei cafe. Named China's first historical cultural celebrities street in 2010 and still almost entirely free of tourists.
The story
What makes this place special
Duolun Road and the lanes around it, in Hongkou, were where Shanghai's left-wing literary world lived and met in the 1920s and 1930s. Jingyun Li, at 35 Hengbang Road, was built in 1925 and was Lu Xun's first Shanghai address: he arrived in the city on 3 October 1927 and moved into number 23 on 8 October, living in the lane for two years and seven months, later at numbers 18 and 17. Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, Rou Shi and Feng Xuefeng also lived there. The League of Left-Wing Writers held its first preparatory meeting on the upper floor of the Gongfei Cafe near the North Sichuan Road tram terminus. Duolun Road now holds more than a dozen sites connected to that period.
What you’ll discover
A short curving street of restored 1920s and 1930s buildings with plaques, including churches, a former bank, a few villas and the League of Left-Wing Writers memorial, leading into the lilong lanes behind - Jingyun Li among them - which are still lived in rather than museumised. The buildings are modest; this is a reading-and-looking walk where the interest is entirely in who stood where. An hour and a half.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Jingyun Li in the lane off Hengbang Road is the substance and it is not on Duolun Road itself. Lu Xun's first Shanghai home was number 23; the lane is residential and you walk in quietly.
- Do this with the Lu Xun Memorial Hall and Lu Xun Park, a short walk north, and the Lu Xun Former Residence on Shanyin Road. Duolun Road on its own is thin; the cluster together is a proper half day.
- The plaques are mostly Chinese-only and the street has been restored into something smarter than it was. Reading a page on the League of Left-Wing Writers before you go is the difference between a nice street and a significant one.
- The 1933 Old Millfun is a fifteen-minute walk away, which makes a good Hongkou day: slaughterhouse architecture in the morning, literary history in the afternoon.
- People live in these lanes. Look up at the facades rather than into windows.
When to come
Morning or late afternoon on a weekday, when the lanes are quiet and you can walk them without feeling intrusive. Spring and autumn.
Getting around
The main street is flat, paved and easy for a wheelchair and for a bad knee. The lilong lanes behind are narrower, with uneven paving, parked scooters and raised thresholds at the lane entrances - passable with a helper but tight. The memorial-hall interiors have steps at their doors and the upper floors of the small museums are stairs only.
Worth knowing before you go
Read the bronze plaques on each house - they are the whole point, naming the writers and generals who lived there. Continue north to Shanyin Road and Lu Xun Park, where Lu Xun's actual former residence and tomb are.
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