Sinan Mansions

Sinan Mansions (思南公馆, Sīnán Gōngguǎn) is a block of 1920s and 1930s garden houses on and around Sinan Road in the former French Concession. Since 2010 the restored houses have held shops, restaurants, offices and a hotel, and a few new buildings have been added beside them.

The French Concession authorities planned this district in the 1920s and 1930s as a high-class residential area where only Western-style houses were allowed. The best-known group is on the east side of Sinan Road, at Nos. 51 to 95. It was called Yipin Village (义品村) and was built for a Belgian lender, Crédit Foncier d’Extrême-Orient. It has about 30 brick houses of three or four storeys in English, French and Spanish styles, each with its own garden, and it was listed in 1994 in the second batch of Shanghai Outstanding Historical Buildings. Residents included the opera performer Mei Lanfang (梅兰芳). Across Fuxing Middle Road, No. 517 was built in 1926 as a mansion for Feng Yuxiang (冯玉祥), and the poet Liu Yazi (柳亚子) rented it from 1936 to 1940.

One house inside Yipin Village has a political history. No. 73 Sinan Road is the Zhou Residence (周公馆). The Communist Party set up an office there in Shanghai during the Nationalist-Communist talks, and it was publicly described as the home of Zhou Enlai, which gave it its name. It was listed in 1959 in the first batch of Shanghai municipal protected sites.

Redevelopment began in 1999 and was entrusted to Shanghai Chengtou Yongye (上海城投永业集团). In 2004 it was named a pilot conservation project for a historic area, residents had all moved out by 2009, and the first phase opened in 2010. The project kept 51 historic buildings, nearly 30,000 square metres in all, by removing illegal additions, cleaning facades and strengthening structures. One veranda-style building was taken apart, turned 90 degrees and rebuilt as the banquet hall.

The shopping and dining street is called Beili (北里), meaning North Lane. In 2013 the tenth Shanghai Book Fair set up a branch venue there, the Sinan Literature House, with a plaque inscribed by the novelist Mo Yan (莫言).