The Story of East Fuxing Road
This is a story about what happens when a new civil system is planted into an old one. It’s better to compare it with another road named Fangband Road which had the similar original situation and became totally different as time passed by. Both the two roads are located in the old town of Shanghai, with Fangband Road in the north, and East Fuxing Road in the south. About 100 years ago, there were two brooks running from the moat, and crossed the old town of Shanghai. Along the brooks were the sideways on the bank, which were origins of the two roads in this story.
Twenty years later the moat and the brooks were buried and the sideways were widened into roads. Around the year 1937, in the Chinese settlement, there was a trolley line laid around the old town. At the same time, in the westerners’ settlement, the lines composed a network. It implies that, at that time, the old town was comprehended as an entity, these two roads were equally important in the civil life of the old town. However, as time passed by, things changed little by little.
In 1944，the significance of these two roads began to differ. On the map of Approximate Market Value Zones can we learn that the city center area along the river was most valuable because of better public facilities, and the value dropt as their distance from the city center went up. We find that the edge between two market value zones and East Fuxing Road almost overlapped each other. Thus we can see, people at that time regarded East Fuxing Road as an obvious symbol dividing the old town into two parts.
In 1956, the whole city was redistricted. We can find the new boundary between two districts lapped over East Fuxing road rather than Fangband road or the ring road of the old town, which implies that East Fuxing Road began to play more extended role in the whole city. With the continuous development of the city, a new civil system was planted into the old town. The year 2004 was an important point, after that the significance of these two roads in the whole city became totally different. The most important event in 2004 is that East Fuxing Road was widened and a tunnel across the Huangpu River was built at the east end of the road which serves as a main passage connecting two parts of the city across the river.
Up till now, East Fuxing Road has become a main road in the whole civil traffic system. It gives rise to massive transformations along the road. As these photos show here, architectures of different times stand aside along the road, recording the whole evolution. Now, East Fuxing Road has become so wide that it is difficult to imagine its original look----- a little brook 100 years ago.
Comparatively, Fangband Road didn’t experience the same transition as East Fuxing Road did. The original dimension is kept and parts of the old buildings along the road are preserved and renovated. Along with the name of the road, the scenes along the road may remind the tourists of a brook once running across the old town. This road is now called ‘Shanghai Old Street’, which has become a part of Yuyuan commercial and tourist area. On the map, as you may find, it is a little difficult to distinguish it from the other roads around it
Looking back at the evolution of Shanghai in the past 100 years, the story of East Fuxing road may show us an epitome of what happened when a new civil system was planted into an old one.