Xu Zhimo Former Residence 徐志摩故居

About Xu Zhimo Former Residence

Xu Zhimo Former Residence (徐志摩故居) is the 1926 house of the poet Xu Zhimo (徐志摩) at 38 Ganhe Street (干河街) in Xiashi Subdistrict (硖石街道), Haining (海宁), now kept as a memorial museum.

Xu Zhimo (1897-1931) was a poet and essayist at the core of the Crescent Moon school (新月派). He went to the United States in 1918 to study banking and to Cambridge in 1921; in 1926 he edited the poetry supplement of the Beijing Morning Post (晨报) and then moved to Shanghai, where he taught at Guanghua University (光华大学) and Daxia University (大夏大学). The Haining house, finished in 1926, was where he and Lu Xiaoman (陆小曼) lived for a short time after their wedding.

Xu's descendants gave the house to the state in the early 1980s. The Haining city government paid for its restoration and opened it as a memorial hall in 1999, and in 2006 later houses on its Ganhe Street side were cleared to make a new entrance. Under the name Xu Zhimo Old Residence (徐志摩旧居) it was added to Zhejiang's sixth batch of provincial protected monuments in January 2011. His birthplace, an older family house of four successive ranges at 17 Xinanhe Street (西南河街), built around the Jiaqing-Daoguang era of the Qing, was pulled down in 2001.

The building is a two-storey brick-and-timber villa in a mixed Chinese and Western style, with a front and a rear range, wing buildings to the east and west at the front, and a roof terrace on the rear block that visitors can climb. The gateway inscription is in the hand of Jin Yong (金庸), Xu's younger cousin. On the ground floor, the central hall, Anya Hall (安雅堂), has a name board by Qi Gong (启功) and a floor of coloured tiles imported from Germany, and displays cover Xu's family, life, thought and literary work. Upstairs are period rooms: the couple's bridal bedroom, the study Meixuan (眉轩), a central hall, his mother's room and a room for Zhang Youyi (张幼仪). A well in the back garden is named the "Spring of Love" (爱之清泉).

What to look for

• The gateway inscription by Jin Yong (金庸), the poet's cousin
• Anya Hall (安雅堂), with a name board by Qi Gong and coloured floor tiles imported from Germany
• Ground-floor exhibitions on Xu Zhimo's family, life and writing
• The restored bridal bedroom of Xu Zhimo and Lu Xiaoman
• Meixuan (眉轩), the upstairs study
• The roof terrace on the rear building
• The "Spring of Love" (爱之清泉) well in the back garden

Location & getting there

Getting to Xu Zhimo Former Residence

• Search for 徐志摩故居 with 嘉兴市 and 海宁市.