The Wuhan Bund



Customs House, constructed 1922.

Cornerstone laid by Sir Frances Aglen, Inspector General of Customs. The original Customs building was constructed in 1862. Aglen was dismissed from his post in 1927 after growing too powerful for the banking interests. Banking and customs were intertwined in the foreign concessions. The last foreign Inspector General was an American, Lester Knox Little, who resigned in 1950.



The Wuhan Bund in the 1920s

The Bund,2011

I’m leaving China in a few days and for my last posting to this blog wanted to visit one of my favorite parts of Wuhan, the old foreign “concession” area in Hankou. Thirty years ago this was a neglected area. Most of the colonial-era banks and trading houses on the Bund that runs beside the Changjiang (Yangtze River) were boarded up. There wasn’t much traffic along the river road then.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting place to visit. Jianghan Lu was a dull shopping street, not the bustling pedestrian mall it is now, but as one reached the corner of Jianghan Lu and turned onto the Bund adjacent to the former Customs House, one had the sensation of stepping into a European city.

You wondered about the history of these buildings: who’d designed and built them, and what had happened to their one-time occupants during China’s upheavals in the twentieth century: the fight to overthrow the Qing Dynasty which had decimated Hankou in the 1910s; nationalist attacks on the concessions in the late 1920s; the epic 1938 Battle of Wuhan against the Japanese invaders, followed by Japanese occupation; the civil war of the 1940s; the political turbulence of the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention periodic flooding of the whole riverfront area. And, finally, starting in the late 70s, the astonishing economic boom.

View of former English concession, 1930s



Art deco building, visible in 1930s picture above this one, is still a bank

Over the past decade the city government has refurbished buildings along the Bund and in the foreign concessions area, some of them fine examples of period architecture, particularly 20s art deco. Informational plaques, some in English, have been put up on the buildings identifying the building’s original owner, builder and designer. Informative historical markers are scattered around the old concessions section.


Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, 1917



American consulate, 1905

 The former American consulate, built in 1905 in baroque style, one of the most attractive buildings along the half-mile stretch, has been beautifully restored; it now contains Hubei government offices. The imposing former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building is now Everbright Bank; its lobby with classic frosted glass skylights, marble columns and chandeliers, looks much as it must have done almost a century ago.

Restoration of the ornate Banque de l’Indo-Chine building, once French-owned, was just completed; scaffolding went up a few weeks ago around The National City Bank of New York building in preparation for a facelift.



The National City Bank of New York, 1921

 Perhaps it’s a sign of China’s renewed self-confidence that these old buildings, reminders of the humiliating unequal treaties foreign powers imposed at gunpoint in the nineteenth century, are being so carefully restored. They are a draw for Chinese and foreign visitors, a quietly distinctive part of a city that in its helter-skelter development resembles any number of cities.

Foreign concessions were enclaves controlled by foreign powers, each administering its own concession area and developing a culture and architecture distinct from the rest of China. Institutions typical of the foreign country – churches, hotels, taverns, a racetrack, restaurants – made the concession feel like home for foreigners.

Foreign concession area Hankou, 1920s

Former YMCA building

Wuhan’s concession at its height in the 1920s was a narrow strip of land a few blocks wide, running west to Zhongshan Dadao, which marked its western boundary. The British established their concession in 1861, the French and Russians in 1886, Japan in 1898. The area prospered as Wuhan became an industrial center and key trading port in China’s modernization drive of the 1910s and 20s. Most of the big commercial and bank buildings date from that period. The U.S. had no concession area in Wuhan, but the American presence in the area is evident, not only in the consulate but in the old YMCA building, well-preserved and still in use (though not by the YMCA), and in missionary-related former churches, residences, and schools scattered throughout the concession.

The concessions were neutral ground during the 1911 republican revolution, although there was fighting all around the concessions as Qing imperialist forces shelled opponents across the river in the rebel capital of Wuchang and rebels replied. Frederick McCormick in the Flowery Republic (1913) writes that Hankou was the only place in China where foreigners were caught between the lines of contending Chinese armies. Foreign warships came up the Changjiang to protect the foreign concessions; there were as many as twenty-two British, American, German, and Japanese warships anchored near the Hankou concessions at one point. Foreign women and children were evacuated at the height of the fighting. Three quarters of Hankou was destroyed during the battle. 

Revolutionary forces in Hankou 1911 revolution

 After the Manchu overthrow, the concession system began to dissolve. The Russians returned their concession area to Chinese administration in 1920.

1926 flood


In 1927, following a major flood the year before, the British Concession was attacked by Chinese nationalists; British and American naval landing parties came ashore to protect the concession. The British agreed to surrender the concession following a two year transition period.

British concession 1927 after attack: barricades, warships

 Japanese and French concessions returned to Chinese control after the war. The “concession” period was over, but the old buildings remain, put to new uses, a favorite site for young couples to pose for wedding pictures.


Wedding pictures on the Bund



A residential street in the foreign concessions area

 

Graduate class of 1979-1981 - Thirty years after



Graduate class of 1981, L to R: Li Qingsheng, Shi Kuan, Huang Ke, Liu Hanbing, Ying Laixi, Luo Cheng



Campus tour

 From June 3 to June 5, six of the twelve members of the 1979-1981 Wuhan University English graduate class, the first English graduate class at Wuda in many years, gathered along with some of their former teachers for a thirty year reunion and commemoration. The other six, scattered around the globe, were unable to join us for various reasons. We missed each one of them.


In our old classroom

It was a lively three days of memories and discussion. On our first morning we met at the campus guesthouse where most of the group was staying and walked the campus, visiting former classrooms and the old library building, recalling having to get there early to find a seat among the hundreds of students silently reading.

Another former classroom

June 3, 2011

July 1981



Success? What is it?



Bing returns to the study hall



Huang Ke & Yang Yasha, 1980



Professor Xu Hailan conducts MA thesis defense 1981



Graduating English students 2011

 We caught up on each other’s stories and talked about absent members. There were revelations about the past, such as that Zhou Xin Ping (“Pete”), now director of the new C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Berkeley, had memorized an entire English dictionary while a student, or that Huang Ke, now an executive at Imax corporation, had felt herself behind the other English students and had to study extra hard. Liu Han Bing (“Ann”) remembered worrying about this strange, bearded foreign teacher who didn’t seem to know how to dress for the Wuhan winter.

English Department luncheon June 3

 Amidst discussions of what constitutes “success” in today’s China, spearheaded by the ever-skeptical Ying Laixi (“Larry”), who had remarked to me in 1981 that "China is a big country, but actually it's very small," we compared notes on our various and varied lives over three decades: the business career of Liu Hanbing (“Bing”) in Columbus, Ohio, and her enjoyment of her garden; Ying Lai Xi’s entrepreneurial undertakings, including six years working on a telecommunications project in Saudi Arabia; the academic careers of Shi Kuan (“Ken”), now at Foshan University’s Foreign Affairs office and an active member of the China Democratic party; Li Qingsheng, English professor and the only class member still at Wuda; and Luo Cheng, professor of linguistics at Brock University in Canada.


Presentation of commemorative plaque

We regretted the absences of Yang Yasha, in the U.S. for her daughter’s graduation from Yale and subsequent move to New York, where she will work at Columbia University; of Cao Lupin (“Lucy”), whose teaching obligations kept her in California and of Zhou Xinping, Song Xiaoping, Zhu Chenghai and Chen Jianling.
 

Departmental symposium

 This seemed to me a singularly successful and enterprising group. Indeed, only their long ago foreign teacher who didn’t know how to dress for winter had not made much of himself in the interim: he’d been a professor at a small Midwest college when he came to China in 1979, and was still working at the same college when he retired in 2009. He will try harder in future.

Professor Zhang Yujiu and students

With former professors (L to R): Zhang Yujiu, Yuan Jingxiang, Ruan Shen

With members of English Department

 After our campus tour, the class gathered with English Department members for a luncheon at the Fengyi Hotel on Bayi Lu, just off campus. Afterward, an informal symposium was held to talk about the past, present and future of graduate education in China. It brought together some of the senior teachers who’d taught the students with current teachers and department leaders. A large, handsome plaque engraved with cherry blossoms and commemorative inscription from the English Department's first graduate class was presented to the Department.

After the symposium, senior faculty and department members gathered on the steps of the Foreign Language building for pictures. Then several of them joined us for a banquet which included, by my count, eighteen excellent dishes including:

Graduate class dinner with colleagues, former professors

small fried crayfish and shrimp; black mushrooms; fish soup with tofu; bitter melon and cauliflower; crunchy little fried birds that I couldn’t identify, but that were definitely small birds.

Professor Yuan and Ying Laixi

Phoenix Hotsprings Hotel arcade

Also, tree ears and thin sliced pork; mutton ribs, and “melt-in-mouth” steamed pork, about the consistency of tofu; lotus root cakes, guotie (fried dumplings), Wuchang Yu (Wuchang fish), rice cakes, noodle soup, and a xigua (watermelon) and pineapple plate. And, of course, plenty of mi fan (rice).

The next morning, Saturday the 4th, the six of us – sadly, Liu Hanbing could not join us -- left early in a van for Xianning, 75 miles south of Wuhan, a hot springs area undergoing major development as a resort built around the Phoenix Hot Spring Hotel.

The Hotel has a Las Vegas air of polished floors, marble statues, and rococo Italianate arcade lined with designer fashion stores like Gucci and my own favorite, Boloni – none yet open. Some apartment buildings for the development are almost finished; there are models for Italian-looking duplex town homes. Just a railway stop from Wuhan yet amidst dense, wooded mountains, Xianning Country Garden is likely to be a smash hit with the new, wealthy elite.

Model of planned duplex

Our plans to go to the Yinshui cave in the afternoon were scrubbed due to heavy rain, but that didn’t stop us heading for the nearest hot springs resort, where we lounged the afternoon away in hot springs baths with various temperatures and features, such as herbs or tiny, nibbling fish that formed a gray corona around one’s toes.

Li Qingsheng & Huang Ke

Yinshui Cave

That evening, after dumplings at a Xianning dumpling restaurant, the group visited a KTV for karaoke. I’d seen KTV places all over China, but hadn’t been in one. They offer small private rooms, darkly lit, equipped with comfortable couches, tables, and a sophisticated karaoke setup with screen showing MTV-type performances for lip-syncing to old and new Chinese hits. Our group was still singing happily away long after younger customers had stumbled home. There were good voices in our group, but Luo Cheng was indisputably the karaoke king, with a baritone resembling that of another Canadian, the late Robert Goulet. Everyone, except me of course, had a large repertoire.

Train through Yinshui cave

 Sunday morning, the 5th, we traveled on what the tourist poster calls a “special nuclear power road” – no explanation of what that means -- to Yinshui cave, “mysterious underground pearl palace,” and “ten miles water gallery,” according to the promotional sign, since water rushes through the whole cave, requiring alternation between walking paths, lock-controlled boat rides, and a small train to navigate the cave as it steadily descends: “Traveling by train in the complicated cave,” says a tourist poster, “would give you the feeling of gods flying in water, with endless beautiful illusions.” The cave is lit to highlight its sculptured forms, many with fanciful names like “Frog Prince and Witch,” or “Dragon Heads Raising.”

On our way back to Wuhan we stopped at a rustic restaurant on a lake, complete with ancient bridge and water wheel. We were back in Wuhan by late afternoon, and said our goodbyes, at the end of a memorable weekend.

Rustic restaurant

My thanks to all who helped me return to Wuhan for a great year of relearning China, and for planning and implementing the thirty-year reunion: 谢谢. Perhaps there will be another: a fortieth, even a fiftieth? Who knows? We had been in a cave of endless, beautiful illusions. How could we not imagine pursuing success and having new stories to tell twenty years from now?

Tiny fish for lunch