Building at No. 126 Zhan Yuan Road

The building at No. 126 Zhan Yuan Road

The building at No. 126 Zhan Yuan Road is a cultural relic protection unit of Nanjing.

The building at No. 126 Zhan Yuan Road was also the former capital of the Nationalist Government—. During the Republican era, this place was known among Nanjing residents as a terrifying “dungeon”—martyrs such as Luo Dengxian, Deng Zhongxia, Huang Li, Guo Ganglin, and Gu Heng spent their final days here; while figures like Tao Zhu, Chen Geng, Ding Ling, and Tian Han were all imprisoned here.

In 1924, Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated as the Extraordinary President of the Republic of China in Guangzhou. To meet the needs of guard duties and military discipline enforcement, the gendarmerie force was established, marking the beginning of the Republican-era gendarmerie. In the same year, the second term of the Whampoa Military Academy introduced a gendarmerie division to begin training gendarmerie officers. After the outbreak of the January 28 Incident in the Shanghai War of Resistance in 1932, Chiang Kai-shek put forward slogans such as “Stabilize the domestic front before resisting foreign aggression” and “Resist Japan only after eliminating the Communists.” At the same time, the capital—was established at No. 126 Zhan Yuan Road.

The capital—was formed through the merger of the Capital Garrison Command and the Gendarmerie and Police Department under the Headquarters of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, intended for urban combat, maintaining military discipline, social order, and the capture of—. The organizational structure of the Nanjing—was highly complex, consisting not only of the gendarmerie commander, deputy commander, and chief of staff, but also thirteen departments, three bureaus, and one directly affiliated section. At that time, the Nanjing—was essentially the highest gendarmerie command authority in the country. In its early days, the ruthless Kuomintang Lieutenant General Gu Zhenglin served as the gendarmerie commander. “After the Xi'an Incident, when Zhang Xueliang accompanied Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing, he was placed under house arrest upon disembarking. He was first sent to the Soong Tse-vung’s mansion on Beiji Pavilion, and later detained here.