Jiujiang Former Concession Quarter 九江租界旧址街区

About Jiujiang Former Concession Quarter

Jiujiang was opened to foreign trade after the Second Opium War, and the district government's own account records that foreign interests used the concession as the base from which modern wharves were developed, with foreign steamship companies holding effectively all the Yangtze shipping business in the early years. The port made Jiujiang one of the country's three great tea markets and four great rice markets, and local enterprise followed, including the Nanxun railway of 1915 and Jiangxi's first mechanised textile company in 1921. The trade left the streetscape that the catalogue label points to rather than a single enclosed site.

Dazhong Road is the older of the two streets: its line is traced back to the Yongle reign of the Ming, when it grew out of the avenue outside the west gate of Jiujiang prefecture and the east-west street inside the walls, and it was already the main commercial street under the Ming and Qing before the opening of the port made it busier still. It took its present name in 1928. Former trading-house and consulate buildings stand along it, and the restored streetscape mixes Chinese and Western forms with Shanghai-style and Western decorative detailing; the western section of the quarter runs 630 metres by 14 metres, and restoration work began in May 2023. Within the 25-hectare Penpu community at the quarter's core the district counts 35 registered cultural relics and 55 historic buildings. Yuliang South Road, about 630 metres long and some 12,500 square metres in extent, was named in the second batch of Jiangxi provincial historic and cultural quarters in 2016, the first such listing in Jiujiang, and completed a year-long renovation in September 2018.

What to look for

• The former foreign trading-house and consulate buildings standing along Dazhong Road
• The Chinese-Western streetscape of the restored Dazhong Road quarter, with Shanghai-style and Western decorative detailing over stone-flagged streets
• Yuliang South Road, listed in 2016 among Jiangxi's provincial historic and cultural quarters and renovated by September 2018
• The three relief panels installed on the new square in the Yuliang South Road quarter
• The grey brick and dark tile fabric kept through the micro-renewal work in the Penpu community at the centre of the Dazhong Road quarter

Location & getting there

Getting to Jiujiang Former Concession Quarter

Choose a precise starting address and return transport stop. Access to individual buildings, performances or viewing platforms is separate from access to public streets.

• Search for 九江租界旧址街区 with 九江市 and 浔阳区.