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New life as movie set
By Michelle Qiao (Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2004-11-18 10:04
Pictures of the house at 52 Yongfu Road look like they could have been
clipped from a travel magazine, perhaps for a story about a Mediterranean
resort.
A niche of green enameled bricks graces a bright yellow wall - a
typical Spanish-style touch - while orange-hued ivy climbs over the red-tiled
building.
The interior decor is straight out of the early part of the
last century - there's a gigantic, elaborately carved stone fireplace and in the
grand hall on the first floor are two colossal, twisted stone
columns.
The columns - together with the wooden decorative columns on the
bookshelves in the reading room and the wooden handrail on the stairs - have a
twisted rope pattern. In addition, there are copper dividers between the columns
and the wall, which have exquisite carvings of birds - mostly eagles - and
animals and plants. The ceiling of the hall has exposed wooden beams.
On
the second floor, most of the rooms have large ensuite bathrooms and each room
has a door leading to the next room.
The house and its spacious, lush
garden is now the office of the Shanghai Paradise Corp, the city's leading film
distribution company which has maintained the residence in good shape, retaining
the original fireplace, doors, windows and even the built-in
bookshelves.
"We don't use any bright lamps inside the house, only those
with a gentle yellowish lighting," says Guo Ruxing, a manager for
the company. "There used to be two big camphor-laurel trees and a
500-square-meter swimming pool in the 2,000-square-meter garden.
"The
pool was filled in to build more buildings and one of the camphor-laurel tree
died during the 'cultural revolution' (1966-76). The surviving tree has a shade
area of 500 square meters," he says.
There are only a few records in the
archives about the past history of the beautiful residence.
Qian zonghao,
associate research professor at Shanghai History Museum, says: "I have only been
able to find records in English about the early days of the house from stories
in the old North China Daily News. The newspaper clippings say the renowned
American architect Elliott Hazzard built the house in 1932. The first residents
were Mr and Mrs R. Buchan, who owned Allan & Buchan, a currency and bullion
brokerage. In 1939 they sold the house to a Chinese named C.S. Tung, who was a
foreign exchange broker."
According to Chinese author Song Luxia in the
book, "Shanghai's Old Foreign Houses," the house was later taken over by the
wealthy Sun brothers as their residence.
Sun duoxin and his brother Sun
Duosen came from an influential family in Anhui Province. One of their ancestors
was teacher of the Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908) in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
The brothers' grandfather, Li Hanzhang, was the elder brother of Li Hongzhang,
prime minister and chief representative in foreign affairs in the last years of
the Qing era.
The brothers were inspired by the success of the Zengyu
Flour Factory established by foreign enterprises in 1894 in Yangshupu in the
city's northeastern Yangpu District.
They studied the wheat industry and
even traveled overseas to study flour-making technology. Finally, they decided
to import machinery from the United States for an enormous price of US$220,000
and built an American-designed factory.
In 1898, they opened the Fuxing
Flour Company on Moganshan Road, the first Chinese-owned flour mill and factory
in Shanghai. The company could produce up to 47,000 sacks of flour every day and
was the largest flour mill in China at that time.
Warlord yuan Shih-kai
asked Sun Duosen to work for him and Sun was made first president of the China
Bank from December 1912 to June 1913.
After liberation in 1949, the
Fuxing Flour Company became a joint firm in 1955 and in 1966 changed its named
to the Shanghai Flour Company.
"Many films have been shot here and it is
often shown as the home of a wealthy lady," says Guo.
Perhaps the real
history of the house and its past residents would also make an interesting
movie.
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