Duolun Road (duō lún lù 多伦路) (formerly named Doulean Road transliteration) is a little street in Shanghai, north of the Sichuanbei Road Trade Area, and south of Lu Xun Park (lǔ xùn gōng yuán 鲁迅公园) and Hongkou Football Field (hóng kǒu zú qiú chǎng 虹口足球场), with its back to the Inner Ring Viaduct and Jewel Light Track. The length of it is only about half a mile. The street is both narrow and short, and is also winding and deep and quiet, edged by little buildings of various styles, row upon row. Through in the maps it can hardly be found, it's a major scene in the history of literature of modern times.

     
In the past century, Shanghai has gone through a course of many vicissitudes. Once a fishing village and then a metropolis infested with foreign adventures, now it has become one of the great cities in the east. This course of history is showed concentratively in one aspect in Duo Lun Road and its surrounding areas, which can be, in fact, summarized as they say:" Shanghai, a city of hundred years, can be seen in Duo Lun, a little street." During this historical period, its historical position as "the famous and major district of modern literature" was established by great literature masters such as Lu Xun (lǔ xùn 鲁迅), Mao Dun (máo dùn 茅盾), Guo Moruo (guō mò ruò 郭沫若), Ye Shentao (yè shèng táo 叶圣陶), and by authors of "The Left-wing Authors Alien" such as Ding Lin and Rou Shi. Meanwhile it was made into "an open museum of Shanghai-fasion Buildings" bye the famous Gongfei cafe(relics) and Honde Hall, and by the residences of various styles such as Kong(xiangxi) Residence, Bai(Chongxi) Residence and Tang(Enbo) Residence. Above all, a strong flavour of culture has been formed in this area by famous men of letters such as Qu Qiubai, Chen Wangdao, Zhao Shiyan and Uchiyama Kanzo, and by the major cultural spots such as Jinyun Lane, Arts University of China, Arts Drama Troupe and many other residences of famous persons and many other lanes in old Shanghai fashion. All these linger in our minds and we can't tear ourselves away.

    
Those past decades of years formed a brilliant scene and to get it reappeared. Cared and supported by Gong Xueping, the vice-secretary of Shanghai Committee of the Communist Party of China, the People's Government of Hongkou District decides to reconstruct Duolun Road into a "street of famous cultural persons". According to the plan of developing it as a whole and to the rule "Rebuild it as the former", we will manage to concentrate the hundred years history of Shanghai in the new street in future to reappear the fashion of culture and humanity of Shanghai in 1920s and 1930s. We plan to build about two dozens of various museums, arts halls and exhibition centers and all kinds of Cultural-relaxation places. Thus Duolun Road will become a hot spot of tourist trade that charactered by its special scenes of letters and museums and by its high quality of culture. Ranged along the sides of the street, the museums, the exhibition centers, the houses of antique and curio and calligraphy and painting, the bookshops, the literary clubs, the teahouse and the wine bars will frame an wonderful place for the guests home and abroad. They can go there for touring and sightseeing, for recalling the past times and beguiling their leisure times, and for cultural consuming.

Walking on Duolun Road, you seem to hear the thunders that once made great sounds in the literary world. Walking on Duolun Road, you seem to feel the pulse of the "National Soul" that once beat mightily here. Walking on Duolun Road, you seem to breathe the refreshing breath of the modern culture of China. Walking on Duolun Road, you can surely appreciate the custom and fashion that have performed and changed in Shanghai for about one century. Waling on Duolun Road, you can surely see what you haven't seen before, and be told of what you never knew, and think of what are strange to your mind, and gain what you never owned. A market-street of culture and musems and a social district for leisure time, that is a sketch of the wide future scene of the developed Duolun Road tomorrow.

According to the plan of developing it as a whole, the developed Duolun Road will be mainly a street of cultural scene that will help to form a series of net-knots of cultural trade. The cultural scene will be mainly the result of convex-showing the charactered appearance of the building along the cultural street in future, and of producing the cultural atmosphere in the street. Added to these, the pavement, the trees, the street lamps, all designed beautiflly and pearl-like along the street, will help to establish the general appearance of the street of culture. One this basis, the resuming-and rebuilding of the famous old cultural spots such as "Gongfei Cafe" and "Uchiyama Bookshop", and the constructing of the new spots of culture and for leisure time such as "Century Clock Tower", Street-center Garden" and "Square of Status of Famous Persons", and especially the introducing-and-establishing of about two dozens places for cultural activities such as "Folk Collection Hall", "(various) Museum(s)" and "(various) Arts Hall(s)", will together form completely a morket-street charactered of culture and museums.

Meanwhile, as the largest leisure-time market-street in the future in shanghai, and as one of the main branches of Sichuanbei Road the trade street, Duolun Road in the future will begiven a cultural sales scope that give emphatic consideration both to cultural taste and to trade benefit. And we should put stress on that the street will be given characteristics of the 1930s'. The cream of various cultural products of China will be invited from all sides to join in competitions in the trading places such as famous painters' gallery, artistic ceramics market, house of the four tresures of the study, antique market, Shikumen-Inn and so on.

Location: Duolun Road
Transportation: No.21, 939, 231, 47, 854, 79, 18 buses will take you there.
Opening time: always open
Admission fee: free
Evaluation: this was the meeting place for many of the great thinkers and artists of the 1930s  which embodies the cultural atmosphere in shanghai of that time.

Tags: Travel in Shanghai     Travel in Beijing