La Villa Rouge towers loftily over its green, sunny, lazy corner of the XujiahuiPark. Created by the EMI Record Company, this was also home to Chinese first record company. EMI arrived in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century, bringing with it its fashionable new gramophone. In 1921, EMI bought a lot at 1434 Xujiahui road(today’s 811 Hengshan road), and established the “Eastern EMI Record Company”, building Shanghai’s first recording studio. For a while, this was also Chinese best recording rules and regulations, inscribed in 1983, are framed on the wall of the building’s first floor. Starting here, the symbol for PatheMarcont, EMI’s French subsidiary, quickly spread throughout China and Southeast Aisa. There is a record cutting machine at the doorway of the building’s first floor. This is Chinese oldest phonograph.

La Villa Rouge, formerly a red building, is now painted grey, and it is both grand and refined. Nowadays, the building houses a French Restaurant with a Malaysian owner and a Japanese chef. The ownership wisely did not ignore the building’s history when they designed the restaurant. If you come for dinner or just want to come in and relax for the evening, the restaurant plays records on its old gramophone, adding new layers to its rich atmosphere. La Villa Rouge serves a buffet and a la carte style entrees, and the chef focuses on innovative cuisine. Here you will sample entrees that cannot be found anywhere else.

7) Ai Lu

Now part of the ShanghaiMusicConservatoryMiddle School, the building at 9 Dongping road was once home to two of the most famous people in the world---Chiang Kaishek and Song Meiling. When the couple was married in 1927, Song Meiling’s older brother, Song Ziwen, bought this building for his sister and Chiang as a wedding present. When the newlyweds returned to Shanghai from their honeymoon in Hangzhou and MoganMountain, they moved into this property, making it their long-term residence. Chiang Kai-shek owned many properties in Shanghai, but this one was his favorite. He carved the characters for the word ailu(“love cottage” in Chinese) in the ornamental hill outside, and you can still see them there today. Chiang was always on the move, rushing from one place to another. Song Meiling often traveled at her husband’s side, but, nevertheless, was able to spend more time at their home.

The ConservatoryMiddle School does not have a large campus, and Ailu is easy to find next to the school’s main gate. The house looks older than ever, and the hanging vines are flourishing. Dark red-colored flat tiles on the roof are extremely well preserved, and the black, white, and yellow cobblestones in the wall are as beautiful as before. Music only adds to the spirit of this little house, and you can hear the sound of string instruments reverberating here all day long. A practice studio now occupies the house’s first floor and the other rooms have been converted into classrooms. The structure still preserves a secret escape route that, in special circumstances, can be used to escape to the outside. But if you ask the guards around the building, they will not be able to tell you where the secret stairwell is.

Before the building was absorbed into the middle school, it was occupied for a while by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing. Old men and women who tend to linger around the building chat tirelessly about the peculiarities of history surrounding the building and its inhabitants.