No. 45 Fenyang Road Residence (Customs College)

No. 45 Fenyang Road Residence (Customs College)

No. 45 Fenyang Road Residence (Customs College) is a Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

No. 45 Fenyang Road Residence (Customs College)

No. 45 Fenyang Road, Shanghai Customs College Building 1, before liberation, was the official residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Shanghai Customs (Deputy Commissioner Ding Guitang), built in 1932.

This beautiful Spanish-style small building has three floors, with red and yellow hues, and is roughly symmetrical on both sides. Set amidst a stretch of green lawn and slightly curved in a row, it exudes the grandeur of a European royal villa. Mr. Ding Guitang moved into this building in the early 1940s after becoming the Deputy Commissioner of Shanghai Customs. Because of his patriotism, he was once arrested by the Japanese military police on charges of being “anti-Japanese-”. After his release, he was placed under house arrest here, but later escaped to Chongqing with the help of friends. After the victory of the War of Resistance, he became an official of the Kuomintang government tasked with taking over the puppet customs, and moved back into this building. He fell out with the authorities due to his disapproval of the Kuomintang officials’ practice of “the Five Promotions”. On the eve of Shanghai’s liberation, he secretly contacted the underground Communist Party, participated in protecting the customs and welcoming the liberation. He also offered an office on the seventh floor of the Bund Customs Building to the Workers' Patrol Corps as their command post, which effectively supported the liberation of Shanghai. After liberation, he was appointed as the Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs of China and transferred to Beijing. The site then became the Shanghai Customs College.

The building is a typical example of Spanish architectural style, covering an area of 8,000 square meters, including a garden area of 4,000 square meters, and was designed by the then-renowned Austro-Hungarian architect Laszlo Hudec in Shanghai. Red tiles, white walls, spiral colonnades, cement carvings, ironwork fences... all bear witness to the stories of old Shanghai.

Shanghai Customs School officially opened on September 14, 1953. As the campus had not yet been completed, classes and accommodation were temporarily held at the Shanghai Customs Building. From November 12 to 18, the school relocated to No. 45 Fenyang Road. Shanghai Customs School was the first centrally-administered secondary customs vocational school in New China. From 1953 to 1966, it was a period of development and improvement for Shanghai Customs School. A total of nine cohorts of students were enrolled, initially targeting junior high graduates, then shifting to senior high graduates, and the recruitment area expanded from Shanghai to nationwide. Starting from July 1959, the school was approved by the Ministry of Education as a confidential program, with admission criteria set accordingly for such programs, though the training goal remained to produce mid-level customs professionals. In August 1968, Shanghai Customs School was disbanded and merged into Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade. Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade ceased operation in April 1972, and both Shanghai Customs School and the dissolved Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade were incorporated into Shanghai International Studies University. This included the buildings and properties of Shanghai Customs School on Fenyang Road, which were completely distributed, given away, occupied, and lost, leading to the dispersal of staff and interrupting the education mission of training customs professionals for 12 years. On May 8, 1980, with the approval of the State Council, Shanghai Customs School was restructured into Shanghai Customs College on its original basis. Shanghai Customs College, as a higher education institution directly under the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China, was dedicated to training high-level customs management professionals nationwide. The college offered a Customs Management major, recruiting senior high graduates nationwide with a three-year program. In 1993, the General Administration issued a reply to Huaguanxiao (1993) No. 24 document "Report on the Argumentation of the Customs School Site and Opinions on Site Selection", deciding that Shanghai Customs College would relocate and build a new campus in Pudong.

Listed as part of the fifth batch of Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Units in 1989.