Xujiahui Source Scenic Area 徐家汇源景区

Dear friends, we now arrive at Xujiahui Academy. This is a brand-new cultural landmark that only officially opened to the public in 2023, and from the moment it opened it became one of Shanghai's cultural hotspots — many visitors even come to Xujiahui specifically for it.

The building of Xujiahui Academy is itself well worth a close look. It was designed by the renowned architect Yu Ting, its façade combining fair-faced concrete with a glass curtain wall, the overall style modern and restrained. Seen from outside, the building takes the form of a gently curving arc, said to be inspired by the brushwork of Chinese calligraphy in the very characters for "academy." At the entrance is a distinctive fair-faced concrete wall, inlaid with the four characters for "Xujiahui Origin" in different scripts — the first photo stop.

Step through the doors, and the "Liangnuo" art installation in the atrium is the most eye-catching feature. The name "Liangnuo" comes from Xu Guangqi's courtesy name "Zixian" and his sobriquet "Liangnuo"; it is formed of more than thirty thousand transparent acrylic tubes hanging down to create a spectacular "wall of light." The lighting changes colour through the day — warm white in the morning, golden yellow in the afternoon, and a soft blue-violet at dusk. If you take a photo in front of this wall of light, remember to wipe your phone lens clean, because the acrylic tubes produce rich refractions of light, and any fingerprints on the lens will make the photo look hazy.

The Academy's collection is impressive, with around five hundred thousand volumes covering history, Shanghai-style culture, modern art, children's books and more. Especially worth noting is the "Xujiahui Origin Themed Exhibition Area" on the third floor, which uses text, images, objects and multimedia to present systematically the historical thread of Xujiahui as the birthplace of Shanghai culture. If you were intrigued by the "six cultural calling cards" you heard about at the Visitor Center, this is where you can explore the story behind each of them in greater depth.

The Academy's top-floor viewing platform is a hidden treasure. From here you can look across at the level of the twin towers of St. Ignatius Cathedral — one of the best angles for photographing the cathedral's exterior, especially in the late afternoon near dusk, when the setting sun strikes from the west and bathes the cathedral's red-brick walls in a warm glow. Many photography enthusiasts come specially to the top floor of the Academy for this shot, with far better results than looking up from across the road.

Note that the Academy is free to enter and requires no reservation. It is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 21:00, with last entry at 20:30, and is closed on Mondays. Inside there is a cultural-creative market, a coffee corner and regularly held special exhibitions, so if time allows, set aside an hour to browse at leisure here.

Coming out of the Academy, our next destination is St. Ignatius Cathedral, right beside it, just a two-minute walk away. You can first take a "preview" photo of the cathedral from the Academy's top floor, and then we will go over for a close look at this "Far East's Greatest Cathedral."

Dear friends, the magnificent building you now see before you is St. Ignatius Cathedral. It was begun in 1906 and completed in 1910, so it is now more than a hundred and ten years old. It is the largest Catholic church in Shanghai, once hailed as the "Far East's Greatest Cathedral."

Let us first look at the exterior — a typical example of French Gothic Revival architecture. Look up at the two bell towers on the main façade — are they not strikingly tall? These two towers stand about fifty metres high, an iconic presence on the Xujiahui skyline. The outer walls are of red brick, interspersed with bands of grey brick, and this alternation of red and grey is very distinctive among Shanghai's church buildings. Above the main door is a great rose window, about six metres in diameter, made of stained glass; when the sunlight streams through, it casts a play of colour onto the floor — exceptionally beautiful.

As you step inside, the light suddenly dims — an effect deliberately created in Gothic churches, drawing one's attention from the outer world toward the inner self. Have you counted? The arcade inside has thirty-six columns in all, each running unbroken from floor to vault; this structure, called "clustered columns," is a typical feature of Gothic architecture. The vault is about twenty-eight metres high, and standing beneath it and looking up gives a powerful sense of upward space.

Notice the stained-glass windows in the two transepts — these windows are no ordinary decoration; the pattern on each window tells a Bible story, including Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the Nativity of Jesus and more. This glass was remade according to the original designs during the restoration in the last century, preserving the artistic style of a hundred years ago. If you stand in the nave and look east, above the main altar is a large mural depicting the Coronation of the Virgin Mary, rich and full in colour.

This remains an active place of worship to this day, with Mass held on weekends and religious festivals. If you happen to come upon one, you may choose to observe quietly, but remember to set your phone to silent and refrain from using flash. At ordinary times outside religious services, the interior of the cathedral is open to the public free of charge, generally during specific hours on Saturdays and Sundays and in the afternoons on weekdays; the exact times are subject to change, so we suggest you check the day's opening schedule in advance.

Photography tip: the best panorama of the cathedral's front is taken from the square diagonally opposite, where there is an open expanse of lawn from which you can frame both towers and the red-brick walls. On a clear day, we suggest coming between 9:00 and 11:00 in the morning, when the sun strikes from the east and the red brick of the façade glows brightly. If you want to capture the cathedral in relation to its surroundings, return to the top-floor viewing platform of Xujiahui Academy and look across at the twin towers from on high — a "postcard"-style shot.

Coming out of the cathedral, our next destination is the Shanghai Meteorological Museum, the former Xujiahui Observatory, just a two-minute walk away. Remember to check — did you make a reservation in advance? If not, you may not be able to enter today's session, but we can look at the building's exterior and then carry on with the rest of the route.

Dear friends, we now arrive at the Shanghai Meteorological Museum, the former Xujiahui Observatory. This building was completed in 1872, so it is now more than a hundred and fifty years old. It was the first observatory on the Chinese coast, and is one of the longest continuously operating weather stations in the world.

First, an impressive fact: in 1879, the meteorologists here issued the first typhoon warning in Chinese history. In an age without satellites or radar, relying entirely on ground observation and hand-drawn charts, they could predict the path of a typhoon in advance — truly remarkable. In 2012, the World Meteorological Organization formally certified this site as a "Centennial Climate Station," an honour held by only a handful of weather stations worldwide.

Let us look at the building itself — a three-storey fair-faced red-brick structure in typical Renaissance style. Notice the windows on the second floor — are they not round? These are called "oeil-de-boeuf" or "bull's-eye" windows, common in nineteenth-century European scientific buildings, both attractive and able to let light fall evenly into the interior. At the top of the building is a tall mast for the weather vane and lightning rod; from 1872 this mast has been at work, and it is still in use today.

The museum is divided into several exhibition areas. The first floor mainly presents the history of Shanghai's meteorological development, with many old-style instruments including thermometers, barometers and rain gauges used in the 1870s — original pieces shipped over from Europe, their markings still clearly legible after a hundred and fifty years. The second floor is an interactive science area, with a device simulating how a typhoon forms; turn the handle and you can see how the eye of the typhoon takes shape — especially good for visiting with children. The third floor recreates the original appearance of the observatory, preserving the offices, library and reception room of those days, with late-nineteenth-century French meteorological journals still on the shelves, the pages yellowed but neatly bound.

Do you know why the Xujiahui Observatory was set up here? It has to do with the geography of Xujiahui — the ground here is relatively high, far from the Huangpu River wharves of the time, and the air relatively clean, suited to long-term meteorological observation. From 1873, the observatory carried out twenty-four-hour observation every day, with data recorded continuously to this day, a body of data of extremely high scientific value for studying climate change in eastern China.

Visiting reminder: this museum requires advance reservation via the "Shanghai Meteorological Museum" WeChat official account. It opens only two sessions a day, at 10:00 in the morning and 2:00 in the afternoon, each limited to thirty visitors, with entry closing five minutes after the session starts, so be sure to book ahead. If you did not manage to reserve today, do not be too disappointed — the building's exterior is well worth seeing, and the whole group of buildings along Puxi Road has great character, so you can take some photos outside first, and then we will carry on to the next attraction.

Coming out of the Meteorological Museum, a walk of about three minutes brings you to the former site of Xuhui Public School, now the Chongsi Building of Shanghai Xuhui Middle School. This building is almost contemporary with the observatory, but completely different in style, so let us go and take a look.

Dear friends, the exquisite red-brick building you now see is the Chongsi Building, the former site of Xuhui Public School. Xuhui Public School was founded in 1850, one of the earliest schools in modern Shanghai established on the Western model, and it is now more than a hundred and seventy years old.

Where do the two characters "Chongsi" come from? When the Chongsi Building was completed in 1918, the headmaster of the time had the name inscribed; it means "to revere thought and pursue truth." Look up at the exterior of the building — does it not have a real feel of French Renaissance architecture? The whole building is three storeys high, with fair-faced red-brick walls, the window lintels and cornice decorated in white stone, red and white interspersed, very elegant. This style was representative of the missionary-school architecture of early-twentieth-century Shanghai.

Step inside (if it is open that day), and the most worthwhile thing to see is the central hall, two storeys high, surrounded by an arcaded gallery, the floor laid with terrazzo, with bronze skirting from over a hundred years ago still visible in places, exceptionally well preserved. The building underwent a fairly thorough restoration in the 2000s, using the original materials and techniques as far as possible, so what you see today differs little from what the students of a hundred years ago saw as they walked in each day.

Xuhui Public School holds a special place in the history of modern Chinese education. It was one of the first schools to systematically introduce the Western modern curriculum (including mathematics, physics, chemistry and geography) into the education of Chinese students. Many of its early graduates later became China's first generation of modern scientists, engineers and translators. As you walk through the Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area, you will find that behind every building here lies a real history of Chinese-Western cultural exchange.

The Chongsi Building is still in use today as part of Shanghai Xuhui Middle School, so its opening hours depend on the school schedule. Generally, there may be special openings during the school's winter and summer holidays, while at other times public group visits require reservation. If a visit inside is not part of this trip, there is no need for regret at all — the exterior of the Chongsi Building is itself very photogenic, especially in the afternoon when the sunlight slants across the red-brick walls, with a wonderful play of light and shadow; find an angle on the lawn in front and you can fit all three storeys of the façade into the frame.

Photography tip: the best angle for the Chongsi Building is from the square in front, using a wide-angle lens shooting upward from below, capturing both the depth of the building and the layering of the arcaded gallery. If you come in spring, the few magnolia trees at the edge of the square will be in bloom, and the pink-white blossoms against the red-brick walls have a special Shanghai-style flavour.

Coming out of the Chongsi Building, our next destination is the EMI Building, the Memorial Hall of the Recording Site of March of the Volunteers. It is inside Xujiahui Park, about an eight-minute walk from here. On the way, take in the scale of the streets in this part of Xujiahui — not wide, but lined with thick French plane trees, wonderfully cool to walk beneath in summer.

Dear friends, we now enter Xujiahui Park, and the three-storey little red building nestled among the green trees before you is the EMI Building. Built in 1921, it is a typical French-style building, with a steeply sloped roof of red flat tiles, fair-faced red-brick walls, and narrow black French doors and windows — if you have seen colonial-style buildings in old photographs of Shanghai, this form should look familiar.

This little building holds a place in the history of Chinese music that may fairly be called unique. In the 1920s, this was the recording department and headquarters of the Pathé Orient record company. China's first batch of records was made here. On 3 May 1935, the recording of March of the Volunteers, the theme song of the film Children of Troubled Times, was completed here — a song that later became the national anthem of the People's Republic of China. So this building is not only a beautiful historic structure but also a "red culture" landmark, carrying a very concrete and real national memory.

If you go inside (it is now a memorial hall, open free of charge), the first floor is a recreation of the original recording studio. The reverberation of this studio was the finest in all of China at the time — the walls were specially made double walls, filled with soundproofing material, and part of the wall surface could be moved and adjusted, changing the reverberation time by altering the wall positions to suit different types of music recording. In the 1920s, few recording studios anywhere in the world could achieve this.

The second floor is the historical exhibition area, using text, images, objects and multimedia to present the development of Pathé records in China, and the complete story of March of the Volunteers from composition and recording to becoming the national anthem. The exhibition also includes old photographs and reproductions of artefacts of modern music figures such as Nie Er, Zhou Xuan and Li Jinhui during their time here. If you are interested in these historical figures, this is where you can connect many names you may previously have seen only in textbooks to a concrete physical place.

The third floor was originally the living quarters of the head of the Pathé company, and is now also used as an exhibition space, occasionally hosting small special concerts or cultural salons. Looking out from the windows of the building, you can see the greenery of Xujiahui Park below — an interesting perspective: a hundred years ago, beyond the windows lay broad farmland and church buildings, and now it is one of Shanghai's busiest commercial districts.

Photography tip: the most beautiful angle on the EMI Building is to stand within Xujiahui Park and shoot a panorama from the southeast — capturing the red steeply sloped roof, the black French doors and windows and the surrounding green trees all together. If you come in autumn, the surrounding plane-tree leaves turn golden, and against the red walls the layering of colour is especially rich. Also, behind the building is a very tall dawn redwood, said to have been planted when the building was constructed, now more than a hundred years old; standing beneath it and looking up gives a special sense of time.

Coming out of the EMI Building, our next destination is the Shanghai Film Museum, about a five-minute walk away. If you are interested in Chinese cinema, the next stop is absolutely worth a careful look.

Dear friends, we now arrive at the Shanghai Film Museum. This museum officially opened in 2013, with an exhibition area of about fifteen thousand square metres. It is one of the largest thematic film museums in China, and an important window onto the complete journey of Chinese cinema from its origins to the present day.

Did you know that the birthplace of Chinese cinema is Shanghai, and one of the birthplaces of Shanghai cinema is Xujiahui? The museum's location — No. 595 Caoxi North Road — was originally the headquarters of the Shanghai Film Group, so creating a film museum in this building carries a sense of "preservation on the original site." The museum has four exhibition floors, each with its own theme, and we can view them in order, floor by floor.

The first floor's theme is the "River of Film History," which uses a timeline to present the development of Chinese cinema from the very first film, Dingjunshan, in 1905, to the present day. The exhibition area holds many precious artefacts, such as hand-painted film posters from the 1920s, early cameras, editing tables, and the costumes and personal belongings of early film stars such as Ruan Lingyu and Hu Die. Especially worth noting is an interactive touchscreen, which records basic information on more than eight thousand Chinese films from 1905 to the present, searchable by year, director or actor — remarkably comprehensive.

The second floor is the "Memories of Light and Shadow" area, mainly presenting the development of film art design, costume, props and special-effects technology. You can see original props from many classic films — for example, the costume worn by Leslie Cheung in Farewell My Concubine, the original hand-drawn artwork for Havoc in Heaven, and the special-effects make-up moulds used in contemporary films. This area also has a very popular interactive feature: you can stand before a green screen and "share the frame" with characters from classic films, and the system automatically replaces the background, with the resulting photo available to take away by scanning a code.

The third floor is the "Film Workshop," which presents the complete process of filmmaking — from script writing, casting, shooting and editing to distribution — through interactive installations. A recreated "Foley studio" is especially interesting: you can use all sorts of everyday objects (such as crushing dry leaves to mimic footsteps, or using coconut shells to mimic the sound of hooves) to add sound effects to a silent film clip, experiencing first-hand the work of a film Foley artist.

The fourth floor holds the "Hall of Honour" and a viewing platform. The Hall of Honour displays the winning works of the Golden Goblet Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival over the years, along with introductions to the filmmakers. The fourth-floor viewing platform is a hidden highlight of the museum — standing here, you can look down 360 degrees over a panorama of the Xujiahui commercial district, and on a clear day you can even see the Pudong skyline. Many visitors climb specifically to the fourth floor for this "past-and-present in one frame" photo: in the foreground, the museum bearing a century of film history, and in the distance, the cluster of skyscrapers representing the heights of contemporary Shanghai.

Ticket information: the Shanghai Film Museum requires a ticket to enter, about ¥60 for adults, with a discount for students. It is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30, and closed on Mondays. We suggest allowing at least one and a half to two hours for your visit; if you like to take your time with the interactive installations, two and a half hours is not too much.

Coming out of the Film Museum, our next destination is Guangqi Park and the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall, about a ten-minute walk away. Xu Guangqi is the source of the name Xujiahui, and the most important historical figure on this journey to the source of culture, so let us go and learn his story properly.

Dear friends, we now arrive at Guangqi Park and, within it, the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall. The name Xujiahui comes from this Ming dynasty scientist, so this stop may be called the "source" stop of the entire Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area, well worth taking your time over.

First, who was Xu Guangqi? He was born in 1562 and died in 1633, a scientist, agronomist, astronomer and translator of the late Ming dynasty. If you have read Elements of Geometry, you will know the book — it is a classic of European classical mathematics, translated into Chinese by Xu Guangqi in collaboration with the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci. This was the first time a work of Western science had been systematically introduced to China, and Xu Guangqi is therefore called "the first to bring together Chinese and Western cultures." His Complete Treatise on Agricultural Administration is one of the most systematic works of agricultural science in ancient China, still studied by scholars today.

Guangqi Park itself is a very quiet Jiangnan-style garden. Within it stands the tomb of Xu Guangqi, a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level. Look this way — stone figures such as stone horses, stone sheep and stone tigers stand on either side of the tomb path; this was the burial standard for a first-rank official of the Ming dynasty (Xu Guangqi rose in his lifetime to Minister of Rites and Grand Academician of the Wenyuan Pavilion, equivalent to a minister today). The tombstone is inscribed "Tomb of Lord Xu Wending, the Late Ming Grand Master for Splendid Happiness, Grand Tutor to the Heir Apparent, and Grand Academician of the Wenyuan Pavilion" — "Wending" being the posthumous title bestowed on Xu Guangqi after his death.

The Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall is on the north side of the park, created by relocating a Ming dynasty building called "Nanchunhua Hall." This building was originally in the eastern countryside of Meilong, and in 2003, in order to create the memorial hall, it was relocated and rebuilt exactly as it was within Guangqi Park — a very special form of heritage preservation, letting an old building "move house" and continue to serve a cultural function. The memorial hall is divided into two main parts, "The Life of Xu Guangqi" and "Scientific Achievements," and inside are a reproduction of the Ming woodblock edition of Elements of Geometry, a facsimile of the manuscript of the Complete Treatise on Agricultural Administration, and a very precious portrait of Xu Guangqi in his official robes.

Pay particular attention to one area of the memorial hall: it shows how Xu Guangqi promoted the cultivation of the sweet potato in Shanghai. The sweet potato is an American crop, introduced to China by way of the Philippines, and Xu Guangqi was one of the first Chinese officials to recognize its value as food and to systematically test and promote its cultivation. The sweet potatoes you see on Shanghai's tables today trace their history back more than four hundred years to the agricultural experiments Xu Guangqi conducted in Xujiahui.

Both Guangqi Park and the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall are open free of charge, with no reservation required, open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 16:30, with last entry at 16:00, and closed on Mondays. The park has many old trees, including several ginkgoes and camphor trees over a hundred years old; if you come in autumn, the ginkgo leaves turn golden, and against the Ming-style memorial-hall architecture they make an especially picturesque scene.

Coming out of Guangqi Park, our next destination is the Tushanwan Museum, about a five-minute walk away. The name Tushanwan may sound a little strange, but behind it lies a very special history of modern Chinese-Western artistic exchange, so let us go and take a look.

Dear friends, we now arrive at the Tushanwan Museum. This museum stands on the site of the Tushanwan Orphanage, founded in 1864, and this history may be the most moving chapter in the whole Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area — it tells how, in the Shanghai of more than a hundred and fifty years ago, a group of orphans, under the guidance of missionaries, learned and mastered the crafts of Western painting, woodwork, metalwork, printing and more, and ultimately influenced the development of modern Chinese arts and crafts.

Where does the name "Tushanwan" come from? It is said that there was once a small hill here built up from earth, shaped like the character for "earth" (tu), and the bend in the river beside it was called "Tushanwan" — the "earth-hill bend." In 1864, the Catholic Jesuits founded an orphanage at Tushanwan, taking in orphans and teaching them craft skills so that, on leaving the orphanage, they would have a trade and could make an independent living. The starting point was very simple, but the cultural influence it produced far exceeded expectations.

The most famous exhibit in the museum is the "Chinese Pailou" archway. This archway was made in the 1910s by apprentices of the Tushanwan woodworking workshop, three storeys high, built entirely with traditional Chinese mortise-and-tenon joinery, without a single nail. In 1915, this archway was shipped to San Francisco in the United States to take part in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, where it was highly acclaimed. After the exposition it was lost overseas, and after more than a hundred years of wandering it was finally located and brought back to China in recent years, and is now displayed in the Tushanwan Museum. When you go in shortly, be sure to take a good look at this precious artefact, which has crossed a century and ten thousand miles.

Tushanwan holds a very special title in the history of Chinese art — "the cradle of Western painting in China." Why is this said? Because from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the painting workshop at Tushanwan trained China's first generation of Chinese painters to systematically study Western oil painting, watercolour and copperplate engraving. The most famous among them were the painter Xu Yongqing and the sculptor Zhang Chongren — if you know a little about modern Chinese cultural figures, these two names should be familiar. The Tushanwan painting workshop also produced a great many religious oil paintings for churches across China, and some of these works can still be seen today in museums in Europe and America.

The museum's exhibition areas are divided into several parts: a display of Tushanwan's history and culture, a presentation of modern Chinese arts and crafts, an introduction to the orphanage's educational model, and a special area for the "Chinese Pailou" archway. The museum also recreates a woodworking workshop and a painting workshop of those days, with the tools, workbenches and half-finished pieces all arranged exactly as in historical photographs, so that stepping inside gives a sense of "time turned back."

The Tushanwan Museum is open free of charge, with no reservation required, open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 16:30, with last entry at 16:00, and closed on Mondays. The museum is not large in floor area, and a careful visit takes about forty-five minutes to an hour.

Coming out of the Tushanwan Museum, our final stop is the former site of Notre Dame, now the "Shanghai Old Station" restaurant, about a three-minute walk away. This European-style building, completed in 1926, and the two century-old train carriages it houses, will bring our journey through Xujiahui Origin to a most interesting close.

Dear friends, the final stop of our journey through the Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area is this European-style building before us — the former site of Notre Dame, which now also goes by a more famous name, the "Shanghai Old Station" restaurant.

First, the history of the Notre Dame convent. This building was constructed in 1926 and is the only surviving main part of the former Xujiahui Convent of Notre Dame. The story of the convent goes back to 1843, when the Jesuit missionary Xue Kongzhao founded a convent at Hengtang in Qingpu; from 1868 it gradually moved to Xujiahui, establishing convents such as the Society for the Dying and the Society of the Presentation, collectively named the "Xujiahui Convent of Notre Dame." In its heyday, this was one of the most important centres of Catholic women's religious activity in Shanghai, where the nuns engaged in education, medicine and charity work.

This building, completed in 1926, is a five-storey reinforced-concrete structure in European style, weighty and elegant in appearance. At the end of the last century, the nuns moved to the Tangmuqiao Catholic Church in Pudong, and the building was later put to other uses; it is now leased and run by the Shanghai Old Station restaurant.

The most distinctive feature inside the building is the two antique train carriages it houses. One is a passenger carriage built by the Hanover Railway Carriage Works in Germany in 1899, the other a boxcar built by the Yekaterina Railway Carriage Works in Russia in 1919. Both carriages have been moved whole into the interior of the restaurant — in other words, you can dine inside an old train carriage from more than a hundred and twenty years ago, an experience probably unique in all of Shanghai.

You may wonder: how could train carriages be moved into a building from 1926? It has to do with the founder of the "Shanghai Old Station" restaurant — a dedicated lover of railway culture, who spent years tracking down these two historically significant old carriages from Europe and Russia, then found a way to dismantle them, transport them into the building, and reassemble them. The whole process was far more complex than one might imagine, because many parts of the old carriages were long out of production and had to be restored one by one using traditional craft.

If you are interested in trains or industrial heritage, this is absolutely a place worth a special trip. Even if you do not dine here, you can call ahead to ask whether you might come in for a brief look inside the carriages — sometimes the restaurant allows non-dining visitors a short look, provided it does not disturb the diners.

Photography tip: the exterior of the former Notre Dame site is especially beautiful at dusk, when the setting sun strikes the west-facing façade and the arched windows and cornice of the European building are outlined in a rich play of light and shadow. If you have spent a day walking through the Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area and reach this final stop at around five or six in the evening, you can take a panorama of the building from the small square opposite as the closing photo of your day of cultural exploration.

And so, our journey through the Xujiahui Origin Scenic Area comes to an end here. Setting out from Xujiahui Academy, we have passed through a century-old academy, the Far East's greatest cathedral, the place where China's first typhoon warning was issued, the birthplace of Chinese recorded music, and one of the birthplaces of Chinese cinema, finally reaching the resting place of "the first to bring together Chinese and Western cultures" and "the cradle of Western painting in China." Having walked this whole route, you will surely now have a very concrete feeling for what is meant by the "Source of Shanghai Culture." Xujiahui is not only Shanghai's Xujiahui; it is also a very special node in the history of Chinese-Western cultural exchange, well worth visiting again and again.