Yuyuan Bazaar, Shanghai

1 · POSITION

Yuyuan Bazaar is the market quarter of Shanghai’s Old City, gathered between the City God Temple and Yu Garden. Its hundreds of shops sell jewellery, silk, antiques, crafts, souvenirs and local snacks. The quarter exists because a temple drew worshippers and worshippers drew trade: the streets around it became a busy marketplace, and the district still carries the temple’s name, Chenghuangmiao, while English calls it after the garden. [1, 2]

2 · A TEMPLE THAT MADE A MARKET

The City God Temple was made in 1403, under the Yongle Emperor, by converting an older temple to the spirit of Jinshan. Its city gods include Huo Guang, a Han chancellor, and Qin Yubo, a Yuan official anointed after his death in 1373; the third is Chen Huacheng, a Qing general killed defending Shanghai against the British in 1842. The temple was closed in the Cultural Revolution and its main hall used as a jewellery shop; it returned to religious use in 1994 and reopened after a full restoration in October 2006. [2]

3 · A GARDEN BUILT FOR A FATHER

Pan Yunduan began Yu Garden in 1559 as a comfort for his ageing father, the minister Pan En, and named it for the pleasure of parents. Made governor of Sichuan, he left it for nearly twenty years and resumed in 1577. It became the largest and most prestigious garden in the city, and its cost helped ruin the family. Today it covers two hectares around rockeries, zigzag bridges and the Exquisite Jade Rock, a porous boulder of five tons. [1]

4 · THE TEAHOUSE ON THE POND

The Huxinting Teahouse stands on the garden pond, reached by a zigzag bridge, and is still in use. The garden was occupied more than once in the nineteenth century: British troops used the teahouse as a base for several days in 1842, and the Small Swords Society held Dianchun Hall from September 1853 to February 1855. The garden was repaired between 1956 and 1961, opened to the public in 1961 and declared a national monument in 1982. [1]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ No source read gives the bazaar itself a founding date; it is recorded here as the market that grew around the temple, not as an institution with a year. The teahouse is dated 1855 in one caption and placed at the 1842 occupation in the same article, a contradiction the source does not resolve and this entry does not settle. The shops, the snacks and the opening hours are not described from a visit. [1–2]