Streets Worth a Stroll in Nanking 1 – Fuhougang

A bit of work and a lot of downtime in Nanking recently so a chance to stroll around a bit. Now Nanking has taken a battering over the last few decades like most Chinese cities – the property developers are running riot, nothing is safe and the city has a bit of a schizo crisis over its own history – for instance there is not one sign around the whole town that this is the 100th anniversary of the 1911 revolution. It is quite difficult to now appreciate the ‘Nanking Decade’ in Nanking, when the city was the Republic of China’s capital from 1927 to 1937. The broad axis of streets created after Sun Yat-sen’s death remain but a lot of architecture has been gutted and replaced with the eponymous and generic malls. Of course Nanking took a battering off the Japanese previously and then during the Civil War too. History has been harsh to Nanking. Still a few streets remain worth a stroll.

Fuhougang is probably one of the best – a network of streets that, though not an architectural preservation area like Baiziting nearby (and subject of another post as this street is threatened), is full of nice old buildings. It is, of course, being nibbled away at and a couple of nice places I saw last time I was there a few years ago are gone but some do remain as good examples of ‘Republican era’ architecture.