Nanjing’s Soong Mei Ling Palace to be Restored

The China Daily (so hold your nose on this one obviously) reports that plans are afoot to restore the so-called Soong Mei-Ling (Madame Chiang) Palace in Nanjing. The project should be completed by next October and then the palace will reopen to the public. The building lies in a leafy suburb of Nanjing and was home to Chiang and Mei Ling during the time of the Republican capital being located at Nanking. The building was begun in 1931 and completed in 1934. Though it managed to survive the Japanese occupation the post-49 administration has been less than kind to the building – thoughtless conversions to provide offices for Party functionaries and bureaucrats in part of the compound, a rather awful state-run hotel in another part. Maintenance was minimal, oversight non-existant. However, it was a well built originally to a higher standard than most post-49 structures so has weathered well.

Now, of course, the tricky question – just what damage will the “renovation” do? We’re used of course to renovations not always being overly helpful in China!! However, I’d venture to suggest that Nanjing has done and can do a slightly better job than either Shanghai (pretty awful generally) or Beijing (nothing less than an architectural and historical holocaust to be honest) – the large number of universities and academics there seems to help as well as being somewhat out of the political and investment spotlight. We shall see – a while back I did a round up in a few posts of notable and interesting Nanjing preservation if anyone’s interested (here, here, here, here, here and here The restorers say – “Renovation will faithfully adhere to blueprint of mansion from 1931-34.” but, as ever we’ll have to wait and see.