1. There is not just one Zhongshan Road in China. Today, there are 7 Zhongshan roads in different Middle Kingdom cities .These include Shanghai , Nanjing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Shenyang, Hangzhou and Haikou in Hainan. Beijing used to have one as well – at the northern end of Tiananmen Square. After the reconstruction of the square, it became a section of the Chang’an avenue.
2. Zhongshan road is often one of the city’s principal roads, therefore in most cases it is long and divided into numbered sections.
3. The name ‘Zhongshan Road’ usually honors Sun Yat- sen, known in Chinese as ‘Sun – Zhongshan’, who gained recognition as ‘The Father of Modern China” (He was the leader of the Republican Revolution of the early 20th century and his Kuomintang party reunified China in 1928).
4. Zhongshan Roads ‘survived’ the Cultural Revolution’s initiative to rid all the streets of the political leaders’ names. Not even Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping share the ‘privilege’ of commemoration in road names.
5. Zhongshan roads are also ubiquitous on the island of Taiwan. The practice of naming streets and even parks after Sun-Yatsen became a ‘fad’ after the Republic of China government took over Taiwan at the end of World War II.
6. Zhongshan Road in Shanghai was built in 1930s in order to prevent the expansion of the foreign concessions and to connect the three Chinese urban areas, Nanshi, Zhabei, and Jiangwan.
7. Shanghai’s Zhongshan road marks the boundary of the traditional urban area and stretches around the whole city. It is divided into numerous sections and identified by a direction and a number.
8. Before 1840s it Zhongshan road was merely a muddy, narrow lane with tall reeds. After Shanghai was established as the trading port in 1846, the street was paved and the riverside was reinforced. What followed, was the construction of commercial which brought the urban landscape we are familiar with today.
9. Obviously, the top legendary and world famous part of Zhongshan road is Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu – East Zhongshan Road Number 1, aka The Bund – the symbol of Shanghai for hundreds of years.
10. Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu houses 52 historical buildings of various architectural styles. However, we will tell you more about it in another post!
