上海的旧分界处 - 2020年03月06日

A boundary marker in Shanghai’s old town that is almost 200 years old has been relocated to ensure its protection.
The stone tablet known as a jiebei, once commonplace on corners in old Shanghai, belonged to one of the city’s earliest cemeteries for foreign missionaries built after the First Opium War (1840-1842).
The cemetery has been relocated and the former site is now an elementary school. But its boundary marker, with clear Latin letters and Chinese characters meaning “Society of Jesus” on it, was long-buried in a wall beside
the school on Tianzhushan Road in downtown Huangpu District.
Experts from Huangpu’s culture and tourism bureau dug out and moved the historic tablet to the Sanshan Guild Hall, a museum about 700 meters away in a well-preserved building built in 1909 as a meeting place for fruit industry businessmen.
The marker will be exhibited to the public after restoration and cleaning, an official of the bureau told Shanghai Daily.
Some citizens living nearby complained that the historic tablet was “lost” after the Spring Festival. They worried it might have been stolen.
“We don’t know the exact history of the tablet but our parents told us it had been there for over a century,” said a senior resident surnamed Dai.
Xue Liyong, a researcher from Shanghai History Museum, said the jiebei that remain should be better protected. He has been invited to offer professional guidance during the digging up, relocation and preservation of the markers.
There were thousands of such markers on almost every street corners in the city’s old town. They were erected before construction began on the buildings to occupy the vacant lots, according to Xue.
Most have been lost, buried or bulldozed during urban renewal, especially in Huangpu’s old town. Most of the remaining markers are being safeguarded by local housing authorities, but some smaller ones risk being stolen due to the lack of security personnel, Xue said.
But these boundary tablets had a key role in charting Shanghai’s history and development. The cemetery marked by this particular marker, for instance,
was noted for popular Italian missionary Frarcuis Brancati, who developed over 10,000 local followers, and famous Chinese artist and missionary Wu Li.
“Such boundary markers have been quite rare across the city,” said Chen Bai, curator of the Collection Museum of Shanghai Modern in the Pudong New Area, which exhibits over 40 historical stone markers.
“These markers are the roots of Shanghai. If nobody saves them, they will be gone and forgotten forever,” said Chen, who began saving them from bulldozers 10 years ago.