http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10162321/China-prepares-to-close-down-its-city-of-the-doomed.html
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
3:12PM BST 05 Jul 2013
Founded in 1903 by British authorities and also dubbed "The City of the Doomed", Tilanqiao is the oldest still-operating prison in China.
But with Shanghai's population set to rocket to 30 million by the end of this decade and the downtown jail occupying valuable land, officials now view Tilanqiao as an obstacle to development. One hundred and ten years after welcoming its first inmates, the prison is to close.
"We will keep what is worth keeping [but] urban renovation and development is the inevitable trend," said Ruan Yisan an academic from the city's Tongji University who is part of the team planning the prison's conversion.
Planning officials have vowed to preserve the prison's "taste and flavour" while transforming its 33,285 square meters into a "multipurpose complex housing business, culture and commercial office buildings," the Shanghai Daily reported last month.
However, historians fear the closure will destroy another chapter of Shanghai's rich history.
Han Sheng, a senior political adviser, has called on Tilanqiao's developers to preserve the prison along the lines of the Tower of London and Paris' Bastille.
"We must think about how many of the city's unique memories we have lost already and prevent this from happening again," Prof Han told the Global Times newspaper. "A city without a soul is a dead city." Tilanqiao, which still houses around 3,000 inmates, began life as the Ward Street Gaol – a British-run facility for criminals operating in Shanghai's international concessions.
During the 1930s, when this booming port was known as the Paris of the East, Tilanqiao was the world's largest prison with over 6,500 prisoners divided into six cellblocks and 2,926 cells, according to historian Frank Dikotter.
Over-crowded and often violent, the so-called "City of the Doomed" suffered frequent outbreaks of influenza and tuberculosis and had a state-of-the-art execution chamber where victims' bodies would drop through a trapdoor into the mortuary.
A 1937 article in the Shanghai Times, unearthed by Prof Dikotter, painted Tilanqiao as a den of iniquity, housing "several thousand erstwhile opium smokers, hypodermic syringe wielders, and purveyors of noxious red pills." In 1949, Tilanqiao was taken over by Chairman Mao's Communists who waged war on religion and consigned many of Shanghai's leading Catholics to the prison, including the city's then bishop, *Ignatius Kung Pin-mei.* By the 1990s, the prison had acquired another nickname, "The Monkey House", and was filled with a mix of thieves, rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, petitioners and political prisoners.
A former British inmate, who spent time there during the 1990s and declined to be named, said prisoners were split into work "brigades" and forced to produce golf hats and cooking aprons for export.
Those who broke the rules were taken to the "Punishment Wing" where they were handcuffed and had a "grizzly medieval falconer's hood" placed over their heads.
Guards also used electric cattle prods to punish offenders, the former inmate claimed.
"They would often shave their heads, slap them about a bit and get the cattle prods out – but not in public. It used to interfere with the radio. You could hear it crackling. They would stick a wet cloth in their mouth and do it."
Feng Zhenghu, a Chinese lawyer held in Tilanqiao from 2001 to 2003, said he had been tortured inside the prison, which he described as "the most dictatorial place." "I was forced to sit on an 8cm wide stool, from 5am to 9pm everyday, as punishment for refusing to confess," he said.
Residents of the alley communities surrounding the prison recount equally grisly tales of prison-life. "I heard there was one prisoner who tried to escape in the 1960s by hiding under a truck," said 66-year-old Yan Yingen, a retired special forces soldier whose garden backs onto one of the prison's electrified perimeter fences. "He was caught and executed on the spot." Mr Yan said locals welcomed the prison's closure and their community's probable transformation into a car park. "We really want to be relocated – it is the only way for us poor to have a better life."
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
3:12PM BST 05 Jul 2013
Founded in 1903 by British authorities and also dubbed "The City of the Doomed", Tilanqiao is the oldest still-operating prison in China.
But with Shanghai's population set to rocket to 30 million by the end of this decade and the downtown jail occupying valuable land, officials now view Tilanqiao as an obstacle to development. One hundred and ten years after welcoming its first inmates, the prison is to close.
"We will keep what is worth keeping [but] urban renovation and development is the inevitable trend," said Ruan Yisan an academic from the city's Tongji University who is part of the team planning the prison's conversion.
Planning officials have vowed to preserve the prison's "taste and flavour" while transforming its 33,285 square meters into a "multipurpose complex housing business, culture and commercial office buildings," the Shanghai Daily reported last month.
However, historians fear the closure will destroy another chapter of Shanghai's rich history.
Han Sheng, a senior political adviser, has called on Tilanqiao's developers to preserve the prison along the lines of the Tower of London and Paris' Bastille.
"We must think about how many of the city's unique memories we have lost already and prevent this from happening again," Prof Han told the Global Times newspaper. "A city without a soul is a dead city." Tilanqiao, which still houses around 3,000 inmates, began life as the Ward Street Gaol – a British-run facility for criminals operating in Shanghai's international concessions.
During the 1930s, when this booming port was known as the Paris of the East, Tilanqiao was the world's largest prison with over 6,500 prisoners divided into six cellblocks and 2,926 cells, according to historian Frank Dikotter.
Over-crowded and often violent, the so-called "City of the Doomed" suffered frequent outbreaks of influenza and tuberculosis and had a state-of-the-art execution chamber where victims' bodies would drop through a trapdoor into the mortuary.
A 1937 article in the Shanghai Times, unearthed by Prof Dikotter, painted Tilanqiao as a den of iniquity, housing "several thousand erstwhile opium smokers, hypodermic syringe wielders, and purveyors of noxious red pills." In 1949, Tilanqiao was taken over by Chairman Mao's Communists who waged war on religion and consigned many of Shanghai's leading Catholics to the prison, including the city's then bishop, *Ignatius Kung Pin-mei.* By the 1990s, the prison had acquired another nickname, "The Monkey House", and was filled with a mix of thieves, rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, petitioners and political prisoners.
A former British inmate, who spent time there during the 1990s and declined to be named, said prisoners were split into work "brigades" and forced to produce golf hats and cooking aprons for export.
Those who broke the rules were taken to the "Punishment Wing" where they were handcuffed and had a "grizzly medieval falconer's hood" placed over their heads.
Guards also used electric cattle prods to punish offenders, the former inmate claimed.
"They would often shave their heads, slap them about a bit and get the cattle prods out – but not in public. It used to interfere with the radio. You could hear it crackling. They would stick a wet cloth in their mouth and do it."
Feng Zhenghu, a Chinese lawyer held in Tilanqiao from 2001 to 2003, said he had been tortured inside the prison, which he described as "the most dictatorial place." "I was forced to sit on an 8cm wide stool, from 5am to 9pm everyday, as punishment for refusing to confess," he said.
Residents of the alley communities surrounding the prison recount equally grisly tales of prison-life. "I heard there was one prisoner who tried to escape in the 1960s by hiding under a truck," said 66-year-old Yan Yingen, a retired special forces soldier whose garden backs onto one of the prison's electrified perimeter fences. "He was caught and executed on the spot." Mr Yan said locals welcomed the prison's closure and their community's probable transformation into a car park. "We really want to be relocated – it is the only way for us poor to have a better life."
