Modernizing Urban Food Provisioning. The 1936 Shanghai Fish Market

The Lecture

As a natural resource, fish not only provides sustenance for people but also converts into a marketable commodity that contributes to the economy. In 1933, the Chinese Ministry of Industry embarked on planning for the new Shanghai Fish Market with the aim of presiding over the supply chain; this would be accomplished through the establishment of a wholesale facility that would serve as a linchpin for producers and distributors. Shanghai, located at the center of China’s coastline and the mouth of the Yangtze River, was already the hub of the country’s fish trade. The pilot project was part of a broader initiative undertaken during the relatively stable Nanjing decade (1927–37) to consolidate the authority of the Nationalist government by harnessing technoscientific power. Supporting this initiative, the Greater Shanghai Municipality in 1929 began constructing a new civic center away from the downtown area to increase its ability to operate independently of the foreigner-administered municipal regimes of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The power struggles that unfolded in this populous and lucrative treaty port city shaped its built landscape, and architecture played an active role in the formation of modern governance within the extraterritorial entity. 

Modernist in form and function, the Shanghai Fish Market (1936), designed by Su, Yang & Lei Architects for the Nationalist government, showcased the growing technocratic inclination of architecture as an emerging profession in Republican China. Xu Jingzhi (Su Gin-djih), Yang Runjun (Yang Jen-ken), and Li Huibo (Lei Wei-paak), three alumni of the University of Michigan, founded the firm in 1933. Xu, a fellow of the Cranbrook Foundation who studied under and worked for Eliel Saarinen in 1930–31, was the chief architect. Inspired by a study tour to Japan initiated by leading Chinese fishery professionals, Xu’s architectural vision for the market embodied aspirations toward industrial modernization while responding to the geopolitical imperatives that drove the intricate and contested relationship between the two countries. As fishery management experts increasingly recognized the market’s role in regulating commercial activities, they sought to undermine the dominance of local wholesalers while emphasizing operational efficiency for the greater benefit of society and national strength. Technologically, the building housed the country’s largest and most advanced refrigeration plant at the time.  

The Shanghai Fish Market, though short-lived, facilitated the mandate to reconfigure urban provisioning and mediated tensions at local and international levels. This understudied project deserves recognition alongside the better-known state-sponsored Beaux-Arts-inspired works of the same period, which are often associated with Nationalist China’s self-presentation. Despite obstacles that constantly challenged technocrats’ ambition to revolutionize the fishery industry, the Shanghai Fish Market’s historical and architectural significance lies in its efforts to integrate the built and natural environments into a national system of governance.  

The lecture is followed by a Q&A with the speaker, moderated by Limin Teh, Lecturer at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS). 

The Speaker

Zhengfeng Wang is a historian of the built environment and currently a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies – Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme program. She is working on her book project, Building Freshness: Refrigerated Space for Foodways and Techno-politics in Treaty-Port China. She previously held postdoctoral positions in Environmental Humanities at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies and at University College Dublin, where she earned her doctorate in Art History. She also holds architectural degrees from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and Tongji University in Shanghai. Her research lies at the intersection of science and technology studies, consumption and consumer culture, and environment and society.

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