Chairman Mao’s old Shanghai home reopening inside luxury mall known as a cradle of ‘cosmopolitan chic’

| December 26, 2013

STR/AFP/Getty ImagesA gold and jade statue of Mao Zedong is displayed at an exhibition in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province on Dec. 13, 2013. The statue, worth more than $US16 million was unveiled on December 13, in the latest example of Communist China's indecision over how to commemorate its founding father's 120th anniversary.

Mao Zedong’s former Shanghai residence, a two-storey house where the Communist revolutionary lived nearly a century ago, is to reopen — in the middle of a luxury shopping complex.

Three Lions / Getty ImagesDec. 26, 2013 marks 120 years since the birth of the communist founder of the People's Republic of China Mao Zedong (pictured in 1969). 

A 26-year-old Mao spent three months living on what is now called Anyi Road after arriving in the Chinese port city in early 1920.
It was here that China’s future leader first came into contact with the writings of Karl Marx, according to Zhang Sheng, a historian from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences who has studied the building.
It was also at this time that Mao began associating with Chen Duxiu, a teacher and revolutionary who would go on to found the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai in 1921.
However, 93 years after Mao moved out, his former home has been swallowed up by the Jing An Kerry Centre, a gleaming shopping and entertainment complex that describes itself not as the cradle of Communism but of “cosmopolitan chic.”

Keystone / Getty ImagesChinese leader Mao Zedong, accompanied by his second-in-command Lin Biao, passes along the ranks of revolutionaries during a rally in Tiananmen Square, Peking (Beijing) in 1966.

The website of the recently opened complex boasts: “The Jing An Kerry Centre creates a stage to celebrate Shanghai’s ever-evolving affluence and aspirations.”
There can be few more potent symbols of the monumental changes that Chinese society has undergone over the past 100 years than Mao’s first Shanghai home.

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When China’s future leader lived here, he and five colleagues paid about 250 yuan a month for their cramped home, said Dr. Zhang, who developers commissioned to research the building’s little known history.
Their landlord was Silas Aaron Hardoon, a Baghdad-born property magnate and British subject who became one of Asia’s richest men. Mao washed laundry and delivered newspapers to make ends meet, and slept on the top floor.

Jing An Kerry Centre A rendering of the Jing An Kerry Centre in Shanghai, a luxury mall complex and site of Mao Zedong's former home.

Today, 37 years after Mao’s death freed China’s leaders to usher in a period of once inconceivable economic growth, China’s late leader would find his former stamping ground unrecognizable.
The house, which reopened as a museum Thursday as part of celebrations of the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth, has become the unlikely centrepiece of a 4.8-million sq ft shoppers’ paradise. Dr. Zhang, the historian, conceded the area’s transformation into a hotbed of consumerism would have Mao turning in his grave.

Jing An Kerry Centre A rendering of the Jing An Kerry Centre in Shanghai.

“The house is a symbol, a temple to Mao, and now it is surrounded by capitalist power. [It is] very strange,” he said.
Passers-by appeared less concerned about the contradiction, and many professed ignorance when asked who had once lived in the house.
“I have no idea what this house is,” said a 25-year-old office worker, who admitted the building looked “a bit out of place.” “Whenever we call taxi, we tell the driver to park in front of the antique-looking house and wait there since it is so easy to recognize,” she giggled.

Feng Li/Getty ImagesAn 83-year-old Chinese man wearing the Red Guard uniform walks at Mao Zedong's mausoleum after visiting the remains of Mao in Tiananmen Square on Dec. 26, 2013 in Beijing, China. Chinese president Xi Jinping and other six top leaders make three bows toward Mao's statue and pay a visit to the remains of Mao to mark the 120th birthday of Mao, the founder of modern China, at Mao's mausoleum on Thursday.

Feng Li/Getty Images)A man poses for photos as he visits an art exhibition to mark the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong at National Museum on Dec. 26, 2013 in Beijing, China.