Gaodusi Lane

Gaodusi Lane

During the Daoguang reign of the Qing Dynasty, Jinan’s banking and money industry established the Fude Guild Hall in Gaodusi Lane. Major banks such as Sanheheng, Qingtaichang, Xiejutai, Dade Tong, and Dade Heng sent people here daily to exchange information and conduct transactions, commonly referred to as “going to the customs.” In 1906, Han Shili from the German trading firm Carlowitz came to Jinan and established the Jinan branch of Carlowitz Trading Company here, which was the first foreign trading company set up in Jinan. On the first day of the first lunar month in the 11th year of the Xianfeng reign (January 1861), French Bishop Jean-Baptiste Anouilh came to Jinan to preach and claimed he would reclaim the Catholic church that had been abandoned since 1760 during the Qianlong reign. Due to the weakness and pro-foreign stance of the Qing court at the time, as well as the stipulations of unequal treaties, many residential houses on the east side of Gaodusi Lane and the lake fields to the north were seized by missionaries. From 1861 to 1869, the Catholic church was expanded several times. To prevent attacks by the public, the church was built entirely as a closed structure, resembling a fortress when viewed from afar. Even today, many elderly residents of Jinan still refer to this area as “Foreign Buildings Street.” In the 29th year of the Guangxu reign (1903), the Gongli Public School was established in Gaodusi Lane. After the Xinhai Revolution, the school was restructured. In 1914, it merged with the private Shanzuo Public School and the Jinan Government Middle School to form the Provincial No. 1 Middle School, the predecessor of Jinan No. 1 Middle School. The Huang family’s residence at Huìyuán Lǐ (No. 10–26 Gaodusi Lane), also known as the Huiyuan Lane Huang Mansion, was the former site of the Jitai Used Clothing Shop—one of the most important large businesses in Jinan’s history, whose operations once extended to cities such as Beijing and Qingdao. The compound includes main and branch lanes, encompassing six large courtyards and nearly 300 rooms, forming a lane-style community with modern architectural features. Unlike the typical traditional northern siheyuan (courtyard house), it has distinct characteristics of the period. Meanwhile, the owner of the Yuhua Stationery Store, who once lived at No. 26, even expanded branches to Shanghai and Singapore. At the time of public-private partnerships, the government valued the store at an astonishing 400 million yuan. In 2002, during the demolition of Gaodusi Lane, authorities carefully preserved certain ancient buildings of historical and research value. Beams and doors/windows from the old houses were numbered, with plans to rebuild them in their original style in the future. Today, the world’s largest retail chain, the American “Walmart,” along with its Chinese partner, Dalian Wanda Group, invested heavily to build a massive 50,000-square-meter shopping mall on this site. A historic street with over 500 years of heritage—Gaodusi Lane—disappeared from the heart of Jinan’s 2.6-square-kilometer ancient city district in Shandong Province, and can now only be found on old maps of the ancient city.