Shanghai Daily news

The garden villa at 284 Anfu Road before (above) and after (top) a fire which gutted the house on Christmas Day. It was built by a Japanese businessman in the late 1920s or early 1930s and has been a restaurant in recent years.

A stylish garden villa on Anfu Road has celebrated its last festive season -- on Christmas Day it was ablaze and another link with old Shanghai is in ruins, writes Michelle Qiao.
Sometimes we don't appreciate a thing of beauty that is before our eyes until it is gone. The garden villa at 284 Anfu Road, almost destroyed by fire in the early hours of Christmas Day, is one such beautiful thing.
Before the fire, the house was seldom mentioned even by Shanghai's historical house researchers. Among a galaxy of period villas in the city, or even along Anfu Road, this British country house stood quietly in its garden, set well back from the road. It had been converted into a continental restaurant named ``Red'' and maybe it was not exactly the most eye-catching villa in the area.
It's also hard to dig out the house's history because it's not included in most Chinese books about Shanghai's old houses. Now that it's suddenly vanished, people are trying to find out what they can about the old, elegant wooden villa that once graced quiet and ``arty'' Anfu Road.
Probably it's too late. We can only try to piece together a vague account of the past of this now derelict house from a few archival photographs, the researches of an expert and the memory of a former visitor to the villa.
It's a great pity that the house missed last week's rare snowfall because the snow would have beautified its gray walls and red wooden windows one more time. After the fire, the snow-covered lawn made a painful contrast with the charcoal-hued ruins of the old house.
The fire began some time after the Christmas Eve celebrations on the second floor and soon spread to the third floor. Flames from the wooden 892-square-meter villa rose as high as a five-story building.
``The house's lavish use of wood in its construction was fatal to its survival,'' says Wu Rongfa, deputy director of Archive Center of the Housing and Land Administration Bureau of Xuhui District. ``In addition to much exposed wood on the outer walls, the house has interior teak-wood wainscots that extend to the ceiling. Most old houses usually have wooden wainscots that only go halfway up inside walls.''
The two-hour fire blew out through the windows of the second and third floors and burned through the roof above the third floor.
The Shanghai Drama Arts Center has been renting the villa to the restaurant for some 10,000 yuan (US$1,219) a month. The first floor was used as a restaurant, the second as a bar with a roof terrace and there were private dining rooms on the third floor. At night the restaurant was lit by a line of red lanterns.
Qian Zonghao, an expert on architectural history at the Shanghai History Museum, says the house in the early 20th century seems to have belonged to a wealthy Japanese family.
"Archival documents from 1936 show that the British country villa at 284 `Route Dupleix' -- the former name for Anfu Road -- was built by a Japanese named T.N. Mitsui as his home,'' says Qian. ``Mitsui was an influential Japanese family trading company which arrived in Shanghai in the late-19th century. The company's time in Shanghai ended with World War II.''
Before the former French Concession expanded to Xujiahui in 1914, the area around Anfu Road was farmland. The French built Anfu Road between 1915 and 1916 and named it ``Route Dupleix'' after a French navy officer. The quiet, 862-meter-long street, running from Changshu Road to Wukang Road, was in typical French style.
``At that time, the Japanese used to live in Hongkou District but some of the wealthier Japanese loved to live in the French Concession,'' says Qian. ``I also referred to the `Who's Who' list of celebrities in old Shanghai and it has the names `H. Mitsui' and `S. Mitsui.' Therefore, I believe that the house owner listed as `T.N. Mitsui' was the first generation of the Mitsui family and he built the house in the late 1920s or early 1930s. At that time, this man may have retired from business and decided to build a home for his twilight years. That's why his name was not in `Who's Who' of 1936.''
Coincidentally, the Xuhui District Government was applying to have the house put in the fourth group of ``the city's excellent modern architecture'' at the time of the fire. Now the district government will have to wait for public opinion to be assessed and a certificate may still soon be issued if there is no opposition.
``From my observation, the western part of the roof was burned through but the whole structure remains,'' says Zhu Zhirong, director of Housing and Land Administration Bureau of Xuhui District and a visitor to the house in the past. ``Technically speaking the house can be renovated. We will ask the Shanghai Drama Arts Center to repair the house according to photographs in our archives. Although it hasn't got the certificate, we will treat it as an example of `excellent modern architecture' for renovations.''
But everyone knows we can never re-create the home exactly as it was built for the old retired Japanese businessman in the last century. It's not the first -- and it won't be the last -- old house to grieve our hearts when it is gone.
``I have always disagreed with allowing restaurants to be built in old houses,'' says Jin Yumin, an official from the Xuhui District Cultural Bureau who has been collecting information and carrying out preservation work on old houses in the district. ``The damage comes not only from fire. In an old house on Huaihai Road that we are renovating so it will be a small museum, the walls are still stained with grease and dirt from the former restaurant that was in the place.''
Today, the ruined villa at 284 Anfu Road is secured behind an iron barricade and passers-by can only glimpse it from a distance. We should have secured and protected more of these historic architectural gems in our city earlier before they are destroyed. So much has gone -- what remains, must remain.