Old grain barn turned into fashion, art landmark
An old-time grain barn in Songjiang District has been turned into a chic landmark for Shanghai's fashion and art pioneers. Yunjian Granary on Songhui Road E. was once a rice mill, flour factory and feed plant during the 1950s, which witnessed the grain industry's evolution since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
The suburban district is blessed with large patches of farmlands and crisscrossed waterways, and was once a major rice and food producer for the city and even the country.
Since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Songjiang has become the main source and storage place of grain, as well as an important grain distribution center of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, shipping thousands of tons of rice to all parts of the country.
Located at the junction of Tongbo River in the west and Renmin Canal in the east, the granary was built in 1953, known by locals as "South Gate Barn." After 1998, amid the changing socio-economic environment, its function as a grain storage declined, and the space was rented to other businesses such as hardware, warehousing and advertising.
The granary compound is teeming with art galleries, opera stages, bookstores and art studios.
In 2019, the Songjiang government launched a renovation project to turn the abandoned barn house into a fashion and art center.
The granary is composed of 60 old buildings, which have been transformed into different recreational areas according to their varied architectural features and functional purposes.
Among them, a bungalow-type bulk grain warehouse was a foreign-aid project after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, a rare sight in the countryside at that time. Today, there are dozens of such warehouses, which have been renovated as how they looked decades ago, and serve as exhibition halls and theaters.
The room-type grain warehouses have been turned into studios for artists, while the plain warehouses are redecorated and refurnished to be B&Bs and lodges.
Eight silo-type warehouses, 24 meters tall and 5.5 meters in diameter, are a highlight. They were used to store ingredients for the old Songjiang Flour Factory, but now their facades are painted with large graffiti artworks that depict four astronauts walking in the golden-yellow rice paddies and looking up at the stars. It's a theme inspired by the Songjiang rice seeds traveling to outer space with Chang'e-5 in 2020.
The granary compound is teeming with art galleries, opera stages, bookstores, an open-air cinema, bazaars and art studios.
During the renovation project, workers dug out a stone plaque, and later experts authenticated that it recorded the reconstruction of old Puzhao Temple in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In 2019, the stone inscription was listed a district-level cultural heritage.
The transfer rooms by the river before renovation.
Most of the warehouses are kept the way they looked before, including the gray bricks, red tiles, the original posts, beams, the peeling-paint walls, and even the old-fashioned lamps except that their bulbs are replaced with energy-saving ones.
"Tuyuantun," a round warehouse built with mud and grass, was a grain barn with close ties to the special social background during the 1970s, when the country called upon farmers to set up such warehouses for war preparedness, normally 8 meters in diameter, which could store 100 tons of grain. Today the round architecture is long gone, and a new sports playground has emerged.
In the old days, farmers would ferry their boats loaded with rice to the granary for storage. The rice was directly sucked in through the channel at the wharf, then transported to the transfer rooms, and finally to the warehouses.
Now the transfer rooms, two-story white buildings by the river, have become a teahouse for visitors to sip fragrant green tea and enjoy the tranquil river view.
