Duolun Road is a short street in Hongkou, a few minutes from the Lu Xun Park, and in the 1920s and 1930s it held one of the densest concentrations of writers and artists in China. The area was part of the international settlement's northern extension, cheap enough for writers and close enough to the publishers and newspapers of the city centre, and figures including Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Guo Moruo and Ye Shengtao lived and worked within a few streets of one another. The street is protected today and its buildings have been restored rather than replaced.
What is there
The road is paved with stone and closed to most traffic, and the buildings along it are a mix of European-style villas, lane houses and small apartment blocks from the period, many occupied by galleries, bookshops, tea rooms and antique dealers. There are statues of the writers, plaques and stone tablets marking their homes, the former site of a left-wing writers' league, and a small museum. Two of the more substantial buildings are churches and former missionary institutions from the same decades. It is not a grand sight; it is a street that rewards an unhurried hour with an interest in twentieth-century Chinese literature.
The wider quarter
Hongkou holds most of the city's literary and revolutionary history, and the surrounding streets are worth extending the walk into. Lu Xun Park contains the writer's tomb and a memorial hall, and Lu Xun's former residence is a few minutes away in a lane house preserved as a museum. To the south, the streets around the former Japanese concession show a different layer of the same period, and the 1933 building - a converted abattoir now used for design and events - is within walking distance.
Practical notes
The street is free and open at all hours, and the small museums along it are usually closed on Mondays. It is a ten minute walk from a subway station on lines 3 and 8, and the whole area can be covered comfortably in half a day along with Lu Xun Park. Weekday mornings are quiet. If you have an interest in Chinese literature, the collection in the Lu Xun Memorial Hall is worth an hour, and the bookshops on the street carry translations as well as Chinese editions.
