Villa Bayankara, Mayflower building et al.

Zhou Xiangyun’s property, shown in the drawing below, consisted of a commercial building on the corner (“Mayflower Building”) and a residence to the south (Villa Bayankara), consisting of the main mansion, a service building, an ancestral hall, a conservatory and an entertainment pavilion.

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Bayankara (Bayan Har; 巴颜喀拉山) is a mountain range in Northwest China, Qinghai Province. The name of the villa is, probably, a play off the name of the street, Chinhai (Qinghai) Road, on which it stands. 

The client – the real estate tycoon Zhou Xiangyun – enlisted his compradore nephew Li Jinghan to oversee the construction of the residence. Li spared no expense to hire a top-level architect (Emmanuel Gran) and commission most technologically and stylistically advanced buildings. With the total spending of 400,000 French francs, the client’s son, Zhou Changsan, reportedly chided his cousin for spending the equivalent of the cost of Cathay Hotel (Sassoon House) on the Bund. a

The facade of the main mansion, faced with greenish glazed brick, has a staggered shape emphasizing horizontal lines. The flat roof is surrounded by a parapet wall; it can be reached by an internal elevator, which was a rare feature for a low-rise property. The overall style, including the cylindrical sun parlor extruding from the corner, is similar to Dr. Woo’s residence on the corner of Avenue and Hardoon Roads, designed by L. E. Hudec in 1935.

The mansion is extended from east to west, with the principal facade facing south, toward the garden and the hall for ancestral worship at its southern end. The garden had a traditional Chinese layout and contained two sprawling camphor trees, evergreens, small bridges, flowing water, gnarled rocks and winding paths. To the north of the mansion there is a rectangular service building, with a separate entrance and a back patio. A long corridor connects all the rooms in the service building. There is also a gatehouse on the property, connected to the main mansion with an intercom.

The main mansion has 52 rooms. The entrance hall is reached by a central revolving door, a fashionable feature at the time. The electric rolling door was operated by a button hidden behind the plaque with a mountain view. Upon entry, to right of the wide vestibule is the reception room and to the left is the dining room; at the end there is the back hall. The right wall of the vestibule has a built-in clock in a stained glass round window, which continues to work accurately to this day. 

Stairs on both sides of the vestibule lead to the living room upstairs. The master bedroom faces south and has a round sun room and a glazed terrace connecting to another bedroom and another living room. 

The built-in wall clock, the elevator and the electric roll-up doors are only some of the advanced technological contraptions filling the house. Besides flush toilets, already widespread at that time, there are pedal-operated self-rinsing spittoons in the corridors, sand-filtered tap water and a movable bar behind a small door on the ground floor. There are three secret safes in the master bedroom, and two master keys opening all the doors in the house. The craftsmanship and the materials are of extremely high grade and include Belgian stained glass, French chandeliers, and imported Italian marble floors. 

Zhou Xiangyun died in 1943 but his family continued living on the property until the end of the 1940s. The multiple rooms in the mansion served to exhibit Zhou’s extensive collection of Chinese antiques and art. Soon after the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949, the East China Bureau of the Department for Foreign Trade rented the building. Later it passed to Fifth Public Medical Clinic and eventually to Yueyang Hospital’s clinic, which continues to occupy it to this day.

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The “Mayflower Building” (originally not called that) housed Van’s Dutch Village Inn, which moved from a nearby location on Bubbling Well Road in 1936. In 1939 the owner A. H. F. van Herwijnen sold the business to Fred Stern, who remodeled the space and opened the Café Europe. In 1941 the business became May Flower Restaurant 美华酒楼, which stayed open through the 1940s. In 1996, a new 6-story commercial building, 五月花商务楼, was built on the footprint of the original one (perhaps as add-on floors?).

Also:

• “Villa Bayankara and other hidden landmarks off West Nanjing Road” https://avezink.livejournal.com/313983.html

• “Emmanuel Gran’s project on Chinhai Road” https://avezink.livejournal.com/302037.html

• Ying Zhou, Urban Loopholes. Creative Alliances of Spatial Production in Shanghai's City Center (2017).

• 青海路44号——隐藏在深处的豪宅: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/5vPcFtaPxnNB9HO_WU4y7w