Mao Dun's Former Residence

Cultural heritage

Mao Dun's Former Residence stands at no. 17 Guanqian Street in Wuzhen, a four-bay, two-court brick-and-timber dwelling of the Qing Jiangnan vernacular, about 550 square metres in area. The literary giant Mao Dun (born Shen Yanbing) was born here on 4 July 1896 and spent his childhood and youth in the house, returning many times in later years to write. Manuscripts, letters and life displays are shown within, making it a key site for the study of modern Chinese literature; it was listed as a third-batch nationally protected cultural heritage site in 1988.

Visiting: Pushing open the wooden door, one finds the courtyard, lattice windows and old furnishings still as they were, and in the study one seems to catch the author's bent back at his desk; the exhibition hall, with manuscripts and photographs of Midnight and The Shop of the Lin Family, carries one back to China in the first half of the twentieth century. The house stands by the East Zone old street—step out to wander the lanes Mao Dun once wrote of, step in to read the homesickness of a great writer.