Honesty lays foundation of a "Tudor-style" Shanghai building
A golden key opened the new clubhouse of International Recreation Club on the Bubbling Well Road on May 1, 1929. This imposing edifice, now at today’s 722 Nanjing Road W., reveals intriguing stories of a former racecourse and a garden that was turned into a sanatorium.
Now served as Chunlan’s Shanghai headquarter and investment company, the former IRC clubhouse remains largely the same as its opening day in 1929.
“It was Chinese merchant Ye Yiquan (T. U. Yih) who founded the International Recreation Club which operated the former Jiangwan (Kiangwan) Racecourse in today’s Yangpu District. He opened a head office on Bubbling Well Road for selling tickets and attracting members,” says Tongji University professor Qian Zonghao, an expert of Shanghai architectural history.
Ye Yiquan inherited wealth from his father, Ye Chengzhong (Yih Ching-chong), a legendary Chinese tycoon who earned the first bucket of gold by doing a good deed.
According to the book “The Century-Old Famous Factories and Stores in Shanghai,” Ye Chengzhong, who was born to a poor family in Ningbo of Zhejiang Province, had a humble beginning in Shanghai by selling food to foreign sailors on a small boat.
In 1862 an American businessman hired Ye’s boat for a ride but left behind a briefcase full of cash and valuables. Ye Chengzhong waited for a long time for the owner to return for the briefcase, who was greatly touched by the young man’s honesty and helped him open the city’s first hardware shop. As Ye’s hardware business boomed, he further expanded into areas of finance, industry and shipping before he died in 1899.
According to researcher Chen Yangyang’s thesis “Kiangwan Racecourse during the Republic of China (1912-49),” Ye Yiquan bought an 800,000-square-meter farm in Jiangwan Town of north Shanghai to build a racecourse in 1908, which allowed the Chinese to be club members. The foreign-owned Shanghai Recreation Fund became a major shareholder. Near the racecourse, Ye built a breathtakingly beautiful Chinese garden for the members to rest and relax, which he later donated to open a pulmonary sanatorium in 1933 at the advice of his teacher, famous medical educator Ye Fuqing.
File photo of Kiangwan Racecourse in the 1920s
IRC clubhouse
Professor Qian believed Ye built the IRC clubhouse on the Bubbling Well Road not long after 1908. On a 1913 map of Shanghai from his archival collections, the International Recreation Club perched on the site was juxtaposed between today’s Nanjing Road W. and Fengyang Road.
“The map showed the clubhouse already existed in 1913. But both the layout and the building’s specific location at the northwest corner of the site differed from the current building on 722 Nanjing Road W.,” he said.
Reports in an old English newspaper answered his quests. The old clubhouse premises on the 1913 map had been demolished to build a new clubhouse in 1928, which is today’s 722 Nanjing Road W.
A North-China Herald piece on March 31, 1928 said demolition work had been completed on the grounds at Bubbling Well Road, formerly occupied by “the old clubhouse.” And the “steady growth” of the International Recreation Club was well illustrated in the plans of the new quarters drawn by Messrs. Palmer & Turner.
“The IRC was established in 1908 when Mr Brodie Clarke and Mr T. U Yih sponsored the undertaking. At the start there were 100 members. At the present time, the records show 1,400 members of all nationalities. The Kiangwan Racecourse is perhaps the IRC’s chief claim to glory, being as it has been frequently called the finest racecourse in the Far East. Twenty racing days are held there annually, and the popularity of the course is attested to at each meet,” the report said.
The report also recounted IRC’s building activities in Kiangwan Town, which built the concert stand of the course in 1921, the new clubhouse at Kiangwan in 1924 and the polo section with a golf course in 1925. By 1928, Chinese members had composed 60 percent, British 30 percent and other nationalities about 10 percent of IRC. The roll also revealed 30 lady members.
A lottery ticket issued by the International Recreation Club for the annual race meeting
When the new clubhouse on the Bubbling Well Road was finally unveiled, the building “overwhelmed” visitors and was described “beyond compare in Shanghai” by the North-China Herald on May 4, 1929.
“‘Tudor style’ they say it is: to the ordinary man who is going to enjoy its comforts it is ‘a mighty pretty little place’ — something unique and distinctly attractive in its red brick neatness amongst the heavy commercial stuff which now is defiling Bubbling Well Road. Within, it is a place of solid comfort, even as regards the rooms, which are set apart for the ladies, and wherein they may discuss hats what time they are forgetting the trump suit,” the report stated.
A place of solid comfort, the ground floor of the former IRC clubhouse features spacious halls and commodious rooms.
There were wide verandas, spacious halls and commodious rooms. Each room was heavily and comfortably paneled in teak, suggestive of mugs, punch-bowls and rollicking choruses. The typical club furniture by Arts & Crafts was in keeping with the building, both in style and quality.
The ground floor featured a commodious suite of administrative offices “unequalled in the most princely of Shanghai’s commercial houses,” a bar, a magnificent apartment, reading and smoking rooms. On the upper floor there was “the finest billiard room in Shanghai” and “the finest ball-room in the settlement.” The ballroom was a glorious place of 21 meters by 12 meters, with a starlit glass roof and a spring floor.
In the following 90 years the building endured many changes but remained largely the same as this opening day.
Ye’s racecourse in Kiangwan ceased operations and was later destroyed by bombing during the war in the late 1930s.
The new clubhouse on the Bubbling Well Road was subsequently used by the International Club of Shanghai and US Navy Enlistedmens’ Club. Some articles say it was also used as a Jewish club.
After 1949 it served as a friendship club attached to The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee and later was used by Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Religious Affairs.
Chunlan’s Shanghai office
The building was then purchased by Chunlan Group, an enterprise from Jiangsu Province, when it was China’s largest air conditioner producer in the 1990s.
“We restored the building before we moved in. Last year we replaced deteriorated roof tiles with new ones tailor-made according to historical look,” says Wang Yongchun from Chunlan’s Shanghai office.
“The ballroom still had the starlit glass roof and the spring floor. Now it served as Chunlan’s Shanghai headquarter and investment company.”
The ballroom is a glorious place of 21 meters by 12 meters, with a starlit glass roof and a spring floor.
During the grand opening ceremony of the building on May 1, 1929, General Zhang Qun, the then Mayor of Greater Shanghai, said “the magnificence of the new building appealed to him as a bright augury of the club’s future.”
Ye Yiquan handed to Brodie Clarke, president of the club a golden key, with which he unlocked the front doors. The large company “which was thoroughly representative of all nationalities in the Shanghai area then entered to inspect and enthuse over the new building.”
Though the magnificence of the new building did not bring a bright augury of the club’s future, it survived almost intact until today as well as Yih’s Garden which now houses Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital.
All these incredible building stories originated from a young man’s good heart.
Yesterday: International Recreation Club
Today: Shanghai Headquarter of Chunlan Group
Architects: Messrs, Palmer & Turner
Architectural style: Classical style Address: 722 Nanjing Road W.
Tips: The building is not open to the public but the graceful façade, tranquil yard and a lush period tree can be admired from its gateway.
Philanthropic benefactor donates hospital to care for city’s suffering
An important and praiseworthy piece of philanthropy for the welfare of citizens in Shanghai was revealed here yesterday in the donation of the famous Yih’s Garden in Kiangwan by its owner. Mr T. U. Yih, prominent local businessman, for the purpose of an up-to-date hospital which will soon be erected in the garden to take special care of invalids suffering from tuberculosis and nerve diseases as well as convalescents recovering from illness.
The garden, which is near the Kiangwan Racecourse, is recognized as the most beautiful Chinese garden in Shanghai. It occupies a spacious ground of more than 80 mow and is worth about US$1,000,000.
Mr T. U. Yih, the donor, is a wealthy businessman in Shanghai. He is also a well-known philanthropist and sports enthusiast, being one of the founders of the International Recreation Club. He is the son of Mr Yih Ching-chong, wealthy merchant from Ningpo, who was noted in his day as a typical Chinese merchant with his word of promise more reliable than a written contract. Mr Yih Ching-chong, who died years ago, was the founder of a middle school now bearing his name.
The new hospital to be built in Mr T. U. Yih’s garden will be known as the Ching Chong Medical Hospital in memory of his father who, in the early days of Shanghai, helped to make this city an important commercial metropolis.
The new hospital will be composed of three units, namely, a tuberculosis sanitarium, a mental and nerve disease hospital and a convalescent home for general cases, for all of which the garden property is not only admirably fitted, but of which the community is in great need.
Up to present, there is not a single sanitarium specially devoted to the treatment of tuberculosis patients and generally the ordinary hospitals are not the ideal places for curing lung diseases. For sufferers from tuberculosis have their special needs, such as fresh air, good environment, and plenty of sunshine, which the ordinary hospitals do not find it easy to provide. The Yih’s Garden, being in the rural district is therefore an ideal place for a tuberculosis sanitarium.
Steps have already been taken to renovate and equip the first unit of the sanitarium with 40 beds, 20 of which at least will be free for poor patients. The Rockefeller Foundation has already donated a sum of Tls 1,500 for the purchase of a set of X-ray apparatus, while other necessary equipment such as diathermy, pneumothorax, etc., have been loaned by such organizations as the National Health Administration and the National Medical College of Shanghai.
The numerous pavilions and buildings in the garden have now been turned into wards, each forming a unit by itself and equipped with bedroom, bath, toilet and commanding fine views. Renovation work is now being pushed and it is scheduled that this first unit will be ready to receive all types of tubercular patients, including pulmonary, granular and bone tuberculosis, on June 15.
— Excerpt from The China Press, June 8,
The Yih’s Garden in today’s Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital
