The above picture shows Li Mu 187 1 (72 years old) in Tianjin. At that time, 72 years old was already a high life. From the photos, I can see some traces of the hardships of his mother's early life.
There used to be a corridor wall with three round holes on the south facade of this Lao Li wooden house, but now it has been sealed, but traces of the past can still be seen. Behind the wall is a 3-meter wide entrance corridor. This was the main passage to the southeast of the villa in those days, and people in the small courtyard stepped into the villa from here. But now, the southeast door of the house has also been sealed, and the original 3-meter-wide porch has been separated into a room as a home. The picture below shows the entrance of the villa from the entrance to the hall. Now the original porch has been cut off, and the porch inside is a ready-made family room.
From the outside of the villa, it is a tower building with one or two floors. The area of the bottom layer is larger, and the area of the second layer is slightly smaller after shrinkage. The rooms on the east and west sides of the ground floor are partitioned to form an octagonal room. The roof is double-eaved, with one corner upturned. It is said that in the past, there were decorations such as kissing animals in traditional buildings, and a crane was once built on the roof on the second floor (meaning longevity). But now these ornaments have long since disappeared. It is said that during the overhaul in the late 1970s, was it? Omit? Yes, and it has been more than 40 years.
This is a photo taken in the southwest of the villa.
The exterior wall of this brick-wood villa is made of concrete and pebbles. Walking into the small building, you can see that the inner wall is pasted with cement now, while the inner slats were pasted with mud earlier. The decorative wood of this building is said to be sandalwood.
But as far as the author is concerned, the floor, doors, windows, stairs and other structures and components preserved in this building are of excellent materials, but the details are still relatively general. The picture below shows the porch hall inlaid with shell carving screens. The most striking thing in the hall is that the wooden door cover in the back is hollowed out and hung. These log tic-tac-toe frames, about 30 cm long, still remain on the ceiling of the main room.
The picture shows that this photo was taken in the center of the villa hall, facing east. On the left is the stairs, and on the right is the original porch and the original architectural decoration hanger that is still preserved.
The red hoop aunt on duty also told the author that this Li Mansion was originally inhabited by later generations and moved to the United States before the liberation of Shanghai. After liberation, the villa was assigned to the staff of Shanghai Radio Station. As far as I know, most of Li Hongzhang's descendants engaged in diplomacy and immigrated to the United States.
According to relevant historical records, Li Hongzhang, as the first minister in the late Qing Dynasty, did not live in Shanghai for a long time, but his Westernization Movement left many marks in Shanghai: Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, Nanyang Public College, China Merchants Bank, Tongshang Bank, Huasheng Textile, Shanghai Machine Weaving Bureau and so on. And this small courtyard and villa have been preserved to this day. As far as the author is concerned, it is really a loss for the two multi-storey factories built in the small courtyard in the 1980 s. Otherwise, such a small courtyard with such a low building density may have been completely demolished long ago to rebuild a new building.
In addition to the villa at No.44 Lixia Road and the pillow apartment on Huashan Road, Li Hongzhang and his family have many private houses in Shanghai. In addition, some memorial buildings of Li have not disappeared in Shanghai, such as some physical buildings (see figure, Huashan Road 1906, 1628). Gong Li Temple is the school building of Fudan College. It is also the predecessor of Fudan University today. From this point of view, today's Jiaotong University (Nanyang College is also on Huashan Road today) and Fudan used to be close neighbors.