Description
This talk examines a prison established by the British in 1900s Shanghai, subsequent and current perceptions of the colonial-origin prison, and a recent proposal for future transformations of the prison compound. Foreign imperial powers erected several purpose-built penal institutions c1900 during the Late Qing reforms, one aspect of which was to model police and penal systems after those of Japan and the West. The Ward Road Prison, the first and largest such establishment in China, was intended to incarcerate Chinese offenders caught in Shanghai’s International Settlement—the major enclave of British, American and other foreign subjects. Contemporary reformists acclaimed the Ward Road institution as a model prison although it later gained an unenviable reputation for colonial racism. The prison changed hands several times during WWII (1937-1945). It mainly functioned as a political prison in which the pro-Japanese and the communist Chinese were imprisoned and Japanese war criminals were executed.The precinct remains in use today as Tilanqiao Prison. Current narratives are largely unconcerned with its colonial past. Instead, they portray the prison as a place for patriotism, given its history as a contested place between the Chinese and the Japanese and between the Communist and Nationalist Chinese. Situated at a previously peripheral but now central location, the prison is scheduled to be relocated to the city outskirt in the next few years, as part of a regeneration plan to transform the North Bund area into the third Central Business Area of Shanghai. It is proposed to transform the prison compound into a mixed-use development to incubate cultural and creative industries and become an iconic ‘place-maker’ in the future. Intriguingly, lost memories about the colonial past, and the role of this prison in accelerating penal reform, are rekindled and come flooding back.
| Period | 25 May 2022 |
|---|---|
| Held at | University of Guelph, Canada |
| Degree of Recognition | International |