School Above the Sea: Shanghai Municipal Council Polytechnic Public School

The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) Polytechnic, or Gezhi Academy, was founded in 1874, and remarkably, this pioneering institution, with its links to missionaries, reformers, scientists, and revolutionaries, is still going strong. Today, it’s the Shanghai Gezhi High School. In 2005, I was privileged to meet two then-octogenarian alumni, who shared their story and the story of their beloved alma mater.

In a clear, sure voice, Xu Xiyuan begins singing: “Young and light of heart are we, in our school above the sea, all together we are one, all together we are strong.”

At 83, his speaking voice sometimes falters, but as he sings the old Gezhi school song, beaming and waving his hand to a steady beat, it becomes strong again. His vowels are round, his enunciation flawless, as if the years have fallen away, and he is once again 15 years old in that school assembly hall where he first learned this song in 1937.

Xu is a proud alumnus of the Shanghai Gezhi High School, and both are a bit of living history. Although all that is left of the architectural history of Gezhi is one stylish Art Deco building that dates from 1928—the rest was demolished to make way for a modern campus, with buildings better able to serve the students of the 21st century—such is Gezhi’s pride in their history that a design from the doorway of that 1928 building serves as their logo.

A Bold Experiment

But then, Gezhi has a lot of which to be proud. The school was founded as a Polytechnic Institute in 1874 on the initiative of Dr W.H. Medhurst, the first British consul-general in Shanghai, and Xu Shou, a Chinese pioneer of modern science and education. With the missionary Dr John Fryer as one of the prime movers, the school was funded by Chinese subscriptions (mostly likely from the local elite), and was one of the first schools to be established in the Concessions (but not the first—that honor went to St Francis Xavier’s College, established in 1864 in Hongkou District.

While most of the early schools in Shanghai were missionary schools intended for the education—and conversion—of Chinese pupils, Gezhi was different. Like Shanghai itself, it was a bold experiment: a British-Chinese collaboration whose aim was to instruct Chinese pupils in Western scientific thought.

It was also a smart move. The Second Opium War had just ended (in 1860). Creating an educational institution where British culture and education were imparted was a deft public relations move—and objectively, one that had the effect of advancing Chinese education, says Zhu Songqiao, historian at Gezhi school (in 2005). He adds, pragmatically, that “the pursuit of culture and education is universal—the motives (of the British) were less important than the effect.”

In addition to teaching the sciences, Gezhi had an open-stack reading room, a revolutionary concept at the time. “It allowed students to read whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted – intellectual freedom,” says Zhu, who adds that the only other library of its kind in Shanghai at the time was the Jesuit Library in Siccawei (today’s Xujiahui).

Gezhi’s stature in the sciences was such that the school even had its own museum, with items related to science, particularly engineering, on loan from the British Museum. “It was the Shanghai center for the spread of Western education,” says Zhu.

Self-Strengthening

That effect, says Zhu, was pioneering the reform of what he calls “feudal education” – through natural science and Western educational methods. The timing was perfect: in the late 19th century, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) had been ravaged by the post-Industrial Revolution: in 1860, Anglo-French forces sacked and destroyed Yuanmingyuan, the imperial summer palace in Beijing, the Chinese had been defeated in both Opium Wars and the elite and intellectuals were beginning to ask why. How was it these Westerners had contrived military strategies to beat the Chinese? How come their guns shot so far?

For an answer, they turned to Western models of science, medicine and technology as the weapons that would destroy the backwardness of China. Known as the self-strengthening movement (1861-94) this period saw the reformers seek to modernize the military while retaining the tenets of Confucianism.

Li Hongzhang, prime minister at that time and also one of the most prominent reformers of the period, ran the Jiangnan arsenal, where Western weapons and firearms were produced, and Western military training conducted. Gezhi school co-founder Fryer was also involved in the arsenal, and later, so was the school, which trained students with the Western scientific knowledge that would enable them to work at the arsenal.

Fryer

Fryer, known in Chinese as Fu Lanya, translated Western books on science for the arsenal – over 100 volumes in his 30-year career there, and is credited with introducing modern science and technology to China through his translations. A lay missionary when he arrived in Hong Kong in 1861, Fryer left China in 1896 to become the first Agassiz Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

By 1917, though, the trustees were beginning to question the purpose of the school. The efforts of the reformers had not halted an embarrassing defeat to Japan in 1895, nor had it prevented a second sacking of Yuanmingyuan by the Allied troops in 1900. By 1917, the Qing Dynasty had fallen, Fryer had left and without a force behind it, the trustees decided to turn over the school to the Shanghai Municipal Council, the body that ran the city at that time. The focus continued to be natural sciences.

Although missionaries had been running schools for local Chinese almost since the inception of the Concessions, the Shanghai Municipal Council only began operating schools for Chinese in 1904, the first being the Public School for Chinese. The council ran four schools altogether, three for boys and one for girls.

It was just 20 years after the council took over that Xu Xiyuan, who was the son of the chief accountant of an American car company, enrolled. As an employee of a foreign company, the elder Xu thought that the type of education provided by Gezhi was the key to success.

In those days, Xu recalls, most of Gezhi students were like him, young men from middle-class families. “Gezhi students had a reputation of being ideal candidates for foreign companies,” he says. “Foreign companies came and recruited here.”

Their teachers were Chinese, English and, after 1941, Japanese, and their uniform, he remembers, was the traditional changpao, the long robe of the scholar worn with a cotton jacket.

Upon graduation in 1942, Xu worked as an airplane mechanic for China National Aviation Corp, operating out of Longhua Airport, (“I worked on C-46 and C-47 prop aeroplanes,” he relates) and, in 1949, joined the People’s Liberation Army, where he spent the rest of his career.

During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Gezhi school became a Japanese hospital, and the student body moved around the city to various buildings that served as makeshift schools, including the Sichuan Road Army-Navy YMCA.

It was also a time of increasing foment in Shanghai, and Yu Zhongde, who attended the school from 1943 to 1947, was an active member of the Communist Party branch at Gezhi.

“I came from a much poorer family,” says Yu, who grew up in a “shikumen” (stone-gate) lane house on what was then Hardoon Road (today’s Tongren Road). “People like me went to night school, but I was lucky – I won a scholarship to Gezhi.”

It was a studious culture, he recalls, and everyone worked hard. For Yu, though, revolution called: he left Gezhi before graduation, did underground political work for the Communist Party in 1946, and later became the editor of the magazine Xue Shi (Study), the predecessor of Hong Qi (Red Flag), the official voice of the party. “What I learned at Gezhi I took with me throughout my life,” says Yu. “Self-cultivation, hard study, learning how to treat your peers.”

Xu begins the anthem again: “All together, we’ll prevail, in the fight of might and right, all together, we are one.” The song floats from the 10th floor conference room, out to the construction site, where new buildings are going up to house another generation of Gezhi students. The 1928 building is there as well; Gezhi Principal Lin Lixun says it will become the school history museum. It’s a nice idea, but listening to Xu and Yu, one can’t help thinking it really is not necessary:  Gezhi and its alumnae are living history, and the spirit of the school is embodied in its students.

This article was first published in the Shanghai Daily as “The School Above the Sea” on April 25, 2005. The 1928 building is still there, and the history museum was installed, but it’s not open to the public.

Sources:
John Fryer and the Shanghai Polytechnic: Making Space for Science in Nineteenth Century China. The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 1 – 16

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400033835