中国历史最悠久的国际学校—上海美国学校 - 2016年11月11日

IN 1923, a representative from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington called the new Shanghai American School “the most surprising change in a city of great changes.”

Three old buildings from the campus survive today, somewhat concealed in a big yard of the 704 Shanghai Marine Equipment Research Institute of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corp on Hengshan Road. The site is not open to the general public.

The founding of the Shanghai American School in 1912 reflected the large colony of American expatriates living in Shanghai in the early 20th century and the influence of American missionaries in China.

“While the British, French, German and Japanese all had their schools in Shanghai at the time, there was no American school to prepare American children for American colleges,” says He Fangyu, an associate professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The nonprofit, coeducational American school became one of the most renowned of international schools in the city. When it opened on a site in Hongkou District, the school enrolled 38 students. Today, it operates two campuses in Shanghai, with more than 3,000 students from 40 countries and regions. The school offers a US-based curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade.

In its early days, when the school needed to expand, it purchased land to build the new campus on Avenue Petain, a broad boulevard named for the World War I French general, which later became Hengshan Road.

“The new campus was built on approximately 15 acres of open, rural farmland, scattered here and there with tomb hillocks,” according to the book “A story of Shanghai American School (1912-2008).”

“Large expanses of open fields lay outside the split bamboo fence encircling the school property. Unrelieved by trees or plantings, the campus in the first few years was almost barren. Shrubs, flower beds, ivy and trees were planted, softening the contours of the buildings.”

Today, the former administration building, the girls’ dormitory and the school’s signature water tower still stand around an open quadrangle of the former campus. The long, pitched roofs of the administration building and girls’ dormitory are punctuated with dormers, and each building is topped by a white cupola and an ornament or weathervane. Doors and window frames are painted white, and colonnades paved with brick parquet and graced with white columns join the buildings.

“The designer, American architect Henry Murphy, was the most influential foreign architect in modern China,” says Wang Xiaoqian, an associate professor of architectural history at Southeast University in Nanjing. “He designed many Christian schools, banks, memorial buildings, libraries and commercial offices in cities that included Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and Guangzhou.”

Murphy opened a studio on the Bund in 1918, bringing “adaptive designs” that absorbed the essence of traditional Chinese architecture, Wang says. But the Shanghai American School was designed in the colonial Williamsburg-style of the US.

Every building on campus was steam-heated and equipped with modern plumbing. There was no need for coal stoves or hot-water carriers, which were common features of old Victorian buildings in Hongkou.

The administration building formerly housed the principal, classrooms, a science lab, a lecture hall, a student bank, a bookstore and an assembly hall, with an adjacent library on the two ground floors. The third floor was a dormitory for boys.

The girls’ dormitory was a separate four-story red brick building. Each twin-share room had two desks and two built-in closets.

Among the three surviving buildings, the picturesque water tower became a famous landmark in the city. It stands 70 feet (21 meters) high over an artesian well 313 feet deep. The tower had an electrically operated pump and a tank capacity of 9,000 gallons. Students loved to climb the interior stairs of the tower and carve their initials on the wooden railings and window frames.

Students who attended the school came from Sichuan, Fujian and almost all the neighboring provinces of Shanghai.

“As the first American school in East China, it was founded at the right time, in the right city and by the right people,” says He. “It was an influential school in terms of funding, quality of students and educational program.”

The school was closed during the years of Japanese occupation. It reopened after the war but closed again in 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded.

With the normalization of relations between China and the US, the school reopened once again and became the largest international school in China, with campuses today in Pudong and Puxi.

Aficionados of local architecture note the similarity between the school’s old water tower and the tower of Shanghai Library.

“I designed the sharp tower top for Shanghai Library to show respect for historical buildings in this neighborhood,” says Shanghai architect Tang Yu’en, who designed the library in the 1990s. “It’s kind of a symbolic echo of the water tower of the Shanghai American School.”

Alumni of the Shanghai American School often return to visit the campus.

One group of returning students was comprised of “very old American men and women,” recalls Ding Jiangping, a staff member of the 704 Research Institute who was among the welcoming party. “Hand-in-hand, they circled around the water tower, recalling memories of the campus and their school days, and singing their old songs.”