Former Site of the Office of the CPC Songpu Special Committee

Former Site of the Office of the CPC Songpu Special Committee

The Former Site of the Office of the CPC Songpu Special Committee is a Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit and a classic site on China’s red tourism trail.

No. 5, Lane 387, Shanhaiguan Road (formerly No. 5, Yulin Lane, Shanhaiguan Road), from the end of 1928 to 1930, served as the office location of the CPC Songpu Special Committee (abbreviated as "Songpu Special Committee").

It was an old-style Shikumen lane residence, built with brick and wood, two stories high, facing south. After the committee was disbanded, it remained a residential property. The site was confirmed in 1959 through investigations and site visits based on the recollections of Xue Chaosheng, and was designated as a Shanghai Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit by the Shanghai Municipal People's Government on November 17, 1987.

Founding of the Songpu Special Committee

On August 7, 1927, the Communist Party of China held an emergency Central Committee meeting in Hankou (the August 7th Meeting), reviewing the lessons from the failure of the Great Revolution and establishing the general guidelines for agrarian revolution and armed struggle. To implement the decisions of the August 7th Meeting, the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CPC selected 150 party cadres to go deep into rural areas across the province to organize and carry out work. After the 6th National Congress of the CPC, the Jiangsu Provincial Committee further advanced rural work and initially conceived the establishment of six special committees, including Songpu, Hu-Ning, and Xu-Hai.

In early September 1928, an inspector from the Jiangsu Provincial Committee visited the work in Fengjing and southern Pu regions and decided to establish the Songpu Special Committee. On September 13, the Songpu Special Committee was officially founded in Qianjiacao Village, Songjiang County. It was composed of five members: Hang Guoren, Chen Yun, Lin Jun, Yan Pu, and Gu Guilong. Hang Guoren served as the secretary, Chen Yun as the head of the Organization Department, and Lin Jun as the head of the Propaganda Department. The committee was tasked with unifying the leadership of the party organizations in ten counties: Shanghai, Songjiang, Jinshan, Qingpu, Nanhui, Chuansha, Fengxian, Jiading, Chongming, Baoshan, and Taicang. In the winter of 1928, the Songpu Special Committee moved to Shanghai and was initially located on the upper floor of a tobacco shop at the intersection of Tongfu Road (now Shimen 1st Road) and Changbang Road (now Yan’an Middle Road) (currently No. 2, Lane 1013, Yan’an Middle Road). It was later relocated to No. 5, Yulin Lane, Shanhaiguan Road. To maintain a cover, it claimed to be an elementary school, displaying a wooden sign for Zhengde Elementary School at the entrance.

Through the efforts of Special Committee members such as Chen Yun, the Songpu Special Committee made rapid and remarkable progress in strengthening party organization and improving both the quantity and quality of party members. It trained and cultivated a large number of key party members, laying a solid foundation for organizing mass movements. By the winter of 1929, county-level party committees in Songjiang, Jinshan, Nanhui, Qingpu, Chuansha, and Fengxian had been restored or established, with the number of party members rising to over 1,000, 129 party branches, and 121 peasant branches. Even Jiading and Chongming counties, where party activities had been suspended following the suppression of the 1927 peasant uprising, saw the re-establishment of their county committees.

As the command center for armed peasant uprisings in Shanghai’s suburban counties, the Songpu Special Committee initiated and led multiple armed struggles by peasants. During the autumn harvest season of 1928, under the leadership of the Songpu Special Committee, the Zhuanghang Uprising broke out in Fengxian. Peasant forces swiftly attacked local reactionary elements, capturing the police substation and destroying the shops and houses of profiteers and landlords. Although the uprising dealt a strong blow to the arrogance of the gentry and landlords, it also alarmed the Kuomintang authorities, prompting them to dispatch troops to suppress and encircle the rebels. The revolutionary uprising suffered a temporary setback. In October 1930, the Songpu Special Committee was disbanded, and the work in the counties it oversaw was directly overseen by the Jiangsu Provincial Committee.