Former Residence of Kong Xiangxi

Former Residence of Kong Xiangxi

The Former Residence of Kong Xiangxi is a cultural tourism attraction.

Kong Xiangxi, the 75th-generation descendant of Confucius, had the largest private fortune among the "Four Big Families" of Chiang Kai-shek, Soong, Kong, and Chen during the Republican era. His wife was Soong Ai-ling. The Kong family amassed enormous wealth through unscrupulous means throughout their lives, owning as many as four mansions in Shanghai alone.

Within the tall walls at No. 383 Yongjia Road in Shanghai stands a hybrid-style garden villa shaded by green trees, owned by Kong Xiangxi, who once controlled half of the economic lifeline of old China.

The Kong residence is a relatively intact hybrid-style garden villa, designed in 1935 by Fan Wenzhao, a renowned Chinese architect of the time. Fan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States in 1922, founded the Fan Wenzhao Architectural Firm in 1927, and served as president of the Shanghai Architects Association in 1928.

The residence has two floors, faces south, and is built with a brick-concrete structure, consisting of a main building and an auxiliary building, making it quite large in scale. It features red-tiled sloping roofs with wooden brackets under the eaves, exhibiting characteristics of British country-style architecture. The exterior walls are cement-textured (yellow), while the wall corners and chimneys are constructed with exposed red bricks. The ground floor facade porch uses ancient Roman-style columns. This craftsmanship technique is generally not mixed with the "country-style" half-timbering, mainly due to the ideas of the owner and the Chinese architect, objectively forming a "hybrid-style" architectural style.

Entering from the north entrance, you’ll find a fountain pool. Passing the pool leads to the grand living room. At the time, the living room was elegantly furnished, with marble steps on the inner staircase that spiral upward with bronze-patterned handrails. Each floor is covered with soft printed carpets, and the walls feature teak wainscoting up to 1.4 meters high. The upstairs living room displays many calligraphy works and paintings. Adjacent to the reception room is a spacious bedroom, and nearby is a small, elegant study with the Four Treasures of the Study on the desk, along with some exquisite antiques. To the north are a small dining room, storage rooms, and other fully equipped facilities.

After the liberation of Shanghai, this residence was used by the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. On September 23, 1999, it was listed as a protected unit of outstanding modern architecture in Shanghai.

In addition to the Yongjia Road residence, Kong Xiangxi also owned a garden villa at No. 250 Duolun Road in what is now Hongkou District, featuring a strong Islamic flavor and typical Arabic architectural style. Such buildings typically have domes, minarets, horseshoe arches, stone lattice windows, and glazed ceramic tiles on the exterior walls. This house was built in 1924, covering a land area of 1,080 square meters and a construction area of 450 square meters, with a mixed brick-and-wood structure.

The residence centers around the curved facade at the northwest corner, extending southeastward, reflecting the balance and symmetry emphasized in Islamic architectural design. The roof features two horseshoe-arched square pavilions, which originally had domes but were removed in the 1960s, standing out prominently with a sense of upward movement. The main entrance and the window frames of the curved exterior walls both use continuous horseshoe arches, paired with ancient oriental columns. The inner edges of the arches are decorated with gear-like patterns, characteristic of North African, Spanish, and Islamic architecture since the 12th century. Columns and arches are not only used for doors and windows but also serve as exterior wall decorations, adorning the upper parts of the walls.

Pushing open the exquisitely forged iron door into the hall, you’ll see dazzling Arabic-style colored tiles covering the walls from floor to ceiling, including the stair railings, all intricately carved and exquisitely crafted. The carved patterns are mostly geometric or plant motifs, strictly adhering to the Islamic architectural prohibition against using human figures for decoration. The indoor doors and windows are perfect combinations of circles and arches, creating a delightful visual effect.

This residence originally had a main building and an auxiliary building, separated by a courtyard. The third floor of the main building housed the master’s bedrooms and offices, while the second floor of the auxiliary building was for staff and servants. In front of the hall was a small open-air foyer, enclosed on three sides with rows of arches. The side walls under the eaves were divided into two sections: the upper part featured alternating real and false windows that projected and recessed, combining solid and void elements; the lower part consisted of continuous round arch windows paired with slender columns. In front of the foyer were three continuous arches forming the entrance, which originally had finely crafted iron doors inscribed with the year “1924.” In 1958, the iron doors at the main entrance were removed and melted down as scrap iron during the “Great Leap Forward” steel-smelting campaign. To the left of the gate entrance hangs a sign reading “Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit,” designating it as a protected site of outstanding modern architecture in Shanghai, reflecting the historical value of the building.

Kong Xiangxi also owned two other residences, located at No. 9 Dongping Road and No. 1472 Hongqiao Road in present-day Shanghai. No. 9 Dongping Road is a German-style building, while No. 1472 Hongqiao Road is a Spanish-style building.

Kong Xiangxi (1880–1967), courtesy name Yongzhi, art name Ziyuan, was from Taigu, Shanxi.

Born on September 10, 1882 (the eighth year of the Guangxu reign), in Kong Family Residence, Chengjiazhuang, western suburbs of Taigu County, Shanxi, he was the 75th-generation descendant of Confucius. Kong Xiangxi lost his mother at age six, and his father never remarried. In 1901, he went to Oberlin College in the United States, and in 1905, he entered the graduate school of Yale University to study mineralogy. After graduating in 1909, he declined official positions offered by the Qing government’s Postal and Communications Ministry, expressing his desire to emulate the spirit of Oberlin by going to remote and impoverished areas... More details about Kong Xiangxi ++

Soong Ai-ling was born in 1889 in Shanghai. Her father was Charlie Soong (original name Soong Jiazu, courtesy name Yaoru, Western name Charles Jones Soong). On May 15, 1904, at the age of 15, she went to the United States to attend Wesleyan College in Georgia, becoming the first Chinese woman to study in America. In 1905, she attended a banquet hosted by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House with her uncle, W. W. Wing. In 1910, Soong Ai-ling completed all her courses at Wesleyan College with excellent grades and received her diploma. After returning to China, she was recommended by her father to serve as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary. Fluent in five languages, she traveled across the country with Sun Yat-sen... More details about Soong Ai-ling ++