Hongyadong Old Residence

Last Kuixing Pavilion

Marine fossil

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- There is a Bayu cultural museum hidden among old buildings with Chinese and Western style at Chuqimen, Yuzhong District. Come here to know the story of Chongqing, Hongyadong and Linjiangmen Kuixinglou.

Taking the elevator on Kaixuan Road to Chuqimen Crossroad, you can see the old site of the Kuomintang Military Commission on the right. Consisted of 3 buildings with black bricks, it looks different at the prosperous Jiefangbei although going through nearly a hundred years.

The museum and the Bayu Cultural Experience Center are located in the same building where the Han bricks and an antique carved stone tank are set at the door. Walking into the first floor of museum with many diplomas of students in the Republic of China and contracts between the common people, you seem to have a trip to the Chongqing a hundred years ago. 

Lots of old photographs are on display at the first floor, showing the buildings, streets and lanes of Chongqing nearly a hundred years ago, such as the disappeared buildings like Kuixing Pavilion, Kuomintang Office Building as well as the changed places like Hongyadong Old Residence and bamboo dwellings outside Jinzimen and along the Yangtze River.

Shen Xuehua, the person in charge of the museum, told that these old photos are taken from the Chongqing prints in the 1920s and 1930s. Pointing out a picture called Last Kuixing Pavilion, Shen said that "Many places showed in these photos have disappeared and only leave their name.” As we know, the Kuixinglou is a place name in Chongqing but now there is without Kuixing Pavilion.

Kuixing Pavilion was a subsidiary building of Fuwenmiao which was near Fuzichi around the Jiefangbei at that time. Specifically, it is located in the center of the street outside the left gate of Fuwenmiao, that is the present Zourong Intersection. According to the old photograph, the Kuixing Pavilion is a tower-style building with four floors and the construction site was in front of it. After 1949, the Kuixing Pavilion was demolished to widen the road from Linjiang Hengjie to Linjiangmen and solve the traffic jam at that time, according to the magazine Chongqing Old Street and Lane.

Chongqing was covered by sea

"Rich people now prefer to buy riverside houses. However, only poor people lived in the places along the river in the past.” These old photos collected by Shen Xuehua also record dwellings in Linjiangmen, Hongyadong and Jinzimen along the river.

"This is the former Hongyadong and this is the present one. From the two, you can see the urban change of Chongqing,” Shen Xuehua told the reporter with a smile.

Through these old photos, you only can know a little about Bayu culture. About the original form of Chongqing, Shen said that "Hundreds of millions of years ago, Chongqing and Sichuan were covered by sea. And a mountainous city was formed on the eastern edge of the Sichuan Basin due to the continuous geological movement."

The above words he said is true. And he introduced that there is an uneven stone picked up from a mountain of Chongqing in the museum.

The museum and Bayu Cultural Experience Center may be open in the first half of this year and you can visit it free of charge. (Translated by Jiang Yuling, Fathom Language Limited)