Former Residence of Bai

　　Originally the villa of Bai Ju, a warlord from Sichuan, located in the suburbs of Shapingba, Chongqing. In the 1930s, he built it to house his concubine. In 1938, the Military Statistics Bureau (Juntong) purchased it for 30 taels of gold. In 1939, Juntong converted it into a directly affiliated detention center known as the Chongqing Detention House of the Military Statistics Bureau, primarily used to incarcerate political prisoners deemed to be of high status by the government.

　　After the establishment of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization in 1943, the detainees at the Former Residence of Bai were transferred to Zhazidong. The site was then renamed the Third Guesthouse of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization and used to accommodate American personnel. After World War II ended, the organization was disbanded and the Americans returned home, allowing the site to revert to its role as a detention facility. Furthermore, Juntong consolidated its southwestern concentration camps — Xifeng Prison, Wanglongmen Detention Center, and Zhazidong Detention Center — into what became known as the Bai Residence Detention House, later referred to as the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics Detention House.

　　Slogans such as “When advancing, think of loyalty; when retreating, think of correcting faults” and “Uphold what is right regardless of profit, clarify the Way without calculating merit” were written on the walls inside the courtyard of the Former Residence of Bai. The original underground storage room was turned into a dungeon, the air-raid shelter into an interrogation chamber, and living quarters into prison cells. The site once held political prisoners including Huang Hsing-sheng, Zhou Junshi (president of Tongji University), Communist Party members Song Qiyun and Xu Linxia along with their young son “Little Radish Head,” among others. At its peak, over two hundred political prisoners were detained here.