Former Site of the Overseas Chinese Guesthouse

Former Site of the Overseas Chinese Guesthouse

The former site of the Overseas Chinese Guesthouse is a cultural heritage conservation unit of Jiangsu Province.

The former site of the Overseas Chinese Guesthouse of the Nationalist Government is located at No. 81 Zhongshan North Road.

The building was originally designed by Fan Wenzhao, a famous modern Chinese architect, built in 1930, and completed in 1933. It is a traditional classical Chinese building in the style of palace gardens. The main structure faces east and sits to the west, with three floors and a construction area of 5,000 square meters. It features a steel-concrete structure, vermilion square pillars, carved and painted beams, upturned eaves, and flying rafters.

During the Republican era, it initially served as the guesthouse of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission of the Nationalist Government. After 1947, it was converted into a commercial institution and became one of the foreign-affairs hotels in Nanjing at the time, hosting diplomats. It was also a gathering place for Kuomintang political, military, and business elites. After the victory of the War of Resistance, it briefly housed the Forward Command Headquarters, the vanguard unit of the Kuomintang army. After the liberation of Nanjing, senior Chinese Communist leaders such as Liu Bocheng and Song Renqiong used the site to receive representatives from the scientific, cultural, and business communities to promote the policies of the CCP. It was later renamed successively as the Jiangsu Provincial Guesthouse and the office building of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee, and is now known as Jiangsu Yishiyuan (an affiliate of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee).

At the end of 2006, the newly built modern main building was skillfully integrated with the 1930s palace-garden-style Republican-era building designed by Mr. Fan Wenzhao, creating an elegant and atmospheric ensemble that complements each other and is quite eye-catching. In 2006, the building was approved by the Jiangsu Provincial Government as a Nanjing Municipal Cultural Heritage Conservation Unit, and it is currently well preserved.

Further Reading:

· Seventh Batch of Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Heritage Conservation Units