淮海路
1.Shanghainese name - Wahae Lu.
2.It had 5 different names before it became Huai hai road.
3.It was built in 1901 as Rue Sikiang 西江路.
Five years later it was renamed Route Paul Brunat 宝昌路.
In 1915 the named changed to Avenue Joffre to honor the French general Joseph Joffre, who visited Shanghai and attended an official renaming ceremony in 1922.
In 1943 Avenue Joffre was renamed Taishan Road (Chinese: 泰山路) after Mount Taishan. The name only lasted two years.
In 1945 the Kuomintang government defeated Japan (that occupied Shanghai during World war II) and renamed the street Lin Sen Road in honor of Lin Sen, the former President of the Republic of China who had died in 1943.
The Communist defeated the Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War and took over Shanghai in 1949. A year later the Communist government gave the street the current name, to commemorate its victorious Huaihai Campaign ( one of the military conflicts in the late stage of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party).
4. In the 1920s Avenue Joffre became an enclave of a large community of Russians who escaped the Communist revolution in their homeland.
5. In the 1930s, this boulevard was well known in the Far East and reputed as "Oriental Avenue des Champs-Elysees.
6. Today's Huaihai Road comprises three sections, which were formerly three distinct streets:
1) West Huaihai Road, formerly called Jordan Road, is 1,510 meters (4,950 ft) long and forms part of the boundary between Changning District and Xuhui District.
2) East Huaihai Road, formerly Ningbo Road, is 373 meters (1,224 ft) long and was the boundary road between Huangpu and Nanshi districts before the two districts merged.
3) Middle Huaihai Road, the main section, is 5,500 meters (18,000 ft) long. Most of this section lies in the former Luwan District (which was also merged into Huangpu in 2010), and extends west into Xuhui and Changning districts.
7.Huai Hai Road is chock-full of history. From the Soong Ching Ling ( second wife of Sun Yat- sen and one of the Heads if the State of China till 1972) memorial residence to the American Consulate-General and the French Consul-General's residence.
It also hosts Wukang Mansion (1850 Huai Hai Zhong Lu - one of Shanghai’s signature Art Deco apartment buildings, designed by Shanghai’s master builder Laszlo Hudec) and Lincoln Apartments ( 1554-1568 Huai Hai Zhong Lu).
No. 1610 on Huaihai Road M is a lane called "Yi Cun" which has a group of eight Spanish villas. Building No. 2, simple and clean, was once the home of Chiang Kai-shek's( the one who led the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975 – was an influential member of the Kuomintang ) son and daughter-in-law, Chiang Ching-kuo and Faina.
