Shanghai Bunkers | Locating the city's remaining fortifications
While doing research for one of our day trips, we came by a list with 80+ locations of remaining bunkers in Shanghai. Thousands of these fortified positions had been built in and around the city from the early 1930s until the early 1970s, by either the armed forces of the Kuomintang, Imperial Japan or the Communist Party of China.
While most of these fortifications have been demolished in recent decades, quite a few can still be seen in Shanghai today. Their conditions vary greatly: some are left to be forgotten, some have been repurposed or integrated into their surroundings while others play a role in China’s official historical narrative. Supplemented by various sources, our list now includes 200+ locations of remaining bunkers with new locations added regularly.
The full list, with bunkers all over the city's districts, is available in the Shanghai Bunkers WeChat group. It is up to you to help pinpoint the bunkers and share their exact location in the group. A picture of each found bunker, along with credits and a location QR is then added to this article for those who prefer to have all the hard work done by someone else.
What is the purpose of this 'bunker hunt'? No purpose, completely pointless. Just for fun and to explore parts of Shanghai one normally wouldn’t go to. However, we will give away a little something to the person who finds the most bunkers and to the person whose picture is voted everyone’s favourite.
How to participate? Easy. Just scan one of the QR codes below to be added to the Shanghai Bunkers WeChat group, which gives you access to hidden bunker locations, allows you to interact with others and enables you to win one of our two giveaways, which will be awarded at the end of October.
** Please behave upon entering residential areas when looking for bunkers, as not to offend anyone and so others after you are still welcome.
** Note on abbreviations
While the armed forces of the factions involved were known under various names during the time of events, we have chosen to use their more commonly known designations for the sake of simplicity.
National Revolutionary Army (NRA), Kuomintang's armed forces,
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), Imperial Japan's armed forced,
People's Liberation Army (PLA), Communist Party of China's armed forces.
HAPPY HUNTING!
In this article we attempt to piece together the history of Shanghai's bunkers, summarize our most recent findings, and explain our conclusions. Let’s start with the basics: a bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from ground or aerial attacks. Bunkers are partly or completely underground, in contrast to blockhouses, which are mostly above ground. In many regards, an air-raid shelter is similar to a bunker but is not designed to defend against ground attacks. We determined there were five distinct occassions on which these defensive military fortifications were built:
In 1937 by the ruling Kuomintang party to defend the city from Japanese occupation.
Between 1932-1945 by the invading Imperial Japanese to protect their interests in occupied Shanghai.
In 1949 by the ruling Kuomintang party to defend the city from communist takeover.
Between 1956-1960 by the ruling Communist Party of China to protect Shanghai from Kuomintang air raids and potential invasions, backed by American naval power.
In 1969-1970 by the ruling Communist Party of China to protect Shanghai from potential Soviet Russian air-raids after the Sino-Soviet border conflict.
In the aftermath of the ‘Shanghai Incident’ in 1932, the Imperial Japanese Army would construct over 100 fortified positions to consolidate their economic interests and defend Japanese citizens from anti-Japanese protests in ‘their part’ (Hongkou and Yangpu districts) of the International Settlement. In 1937 the ‘Second Sino-Japanese War’ erupts, which would later become part of the wider Pacific Theatre of World War II. Initially victorious, the Japanese war machine starts to stall and by 1943, Japan finds itself on the defensive. Fearful of an overland attack by the Chinese and of amphibious landings by the Americans, the armed forces of Imperial Japan would construct an unknown number of fortified positions in and around Shanghai between 1943-1945. However, Japan surrendered unconditionally before the anticipated battle, leaving thousands of Japanese soldiers as prisoners of war. While awaiting repatriation, many of them were made to demolish the bunkers they had built in the streets and suburbs of Shanghai.
During Imperial Japan's 13-year military involvement in Shanghai, we see a change in bunker design and use of materials. Between 1932 and 1943, most Japanese bunkers and pillboxes were made of sandbags or brick built. The Chinese army during time had shown to lack serious fire power so the Japanese felt confident enough not to use reinforced concrete and preferred less costly alternatives instead. That outlook changed by the end of 1943 when the Americans had helped build up the Chinese Air Force and allied bombers based in western and central China were able to target Japanese positions in the Yangtze River Delta. The number of remaining Japanese bunkers is the lowest among all factions. This can be explained by the fact they were destroyed in large numbers by Japanese POWs immediately after the war, required no specialist tools to demolish, and by the Chinese desire to eliminate any reminders of Imperial Japan's brutal occupation.
The National Revolutionary Army would construct many fortifications on two separate occasions: first in 1937 and again in 1949, but against two different opponents. Chiang Kai-shek’s good friend and military advisor, the German general Alexander von Falkenhausen, predicted the Japanese would invade the lower Yangtze River Delta (China’s richest and most industrialized region) from Shanghai and advised constructing a series of defence works. The so-called 'Chinese Hindenburg Line' was made up of three heavily fortified lines between Shanghai and the then capital Nanjing, comprising thousands of pillboxes, barbed wire, and trenches, with a forward line of defence located in the suburbs of Shanghai. According to a German military report, the bunkers along the Shanghai fortified line were about 500m apart and were disguised to look like local thatched roof dwellings. The plan was put into action early 1937 and was almost 90% completed when the Japanese invasion started. The 'Chinese Hindenburg Line' wasn't really meant to be impregnable, but rather to stall the enemy and to cause maximum casualties with a minimum number of troops. Nevertheless, many of its Kuomintang defenders, seeing their fellow soldiers on the retreat after the ‘Battle of Shanghai’, fled before the approaching Japanese who quickly overran the defensive lines.
After Japan’s surrender, and so with the common enemy gone, it didn’t take long before the uneasy alliance of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China collapsed and the fight for control of China resumed in 1946. While the Kuomintang had the upper hand before World War II, the tide had turned and now the Communist Party of China had the Kuomintang cornered in Shanghai. To protect the city from an overland attack by the People’s Liberation Army, the National Revolutionary Army would create the ‘Greater Shanghai’s Line of Defence’ in preparation for what would become known as the ‘Shanghai Campaign’. An estimated 4,255 fortified positions were built on an industrial scale in all of Shanghai’s districts between January and May 1949. To speed up construction, Kuomintang troops would often coerce civilians into building the bunkers and have anything, such as trees, crops, and people’s homes, within a radius of 500m cleared or demolished.
The most common bunker type in the ‘Greater Shanghai’s Line of Defence’ was the 子堡 (zi bao or ‘subsidiary fort’), a partly dug-in machine gun fortification of which 3,048 were build. These pillboxes were often positioned in series and may have been connected by trenches where digging was possible, or by sandbags otherwise.
A much larger version existed as well: the 母堡 (mu bao or 'mother fort') was a command and observation bunker with a superstructure for surveillance (watchtower) and a ‘basement’ for garrisoning or storing supplies. 78 of these 2 or 3-story bunkers were constructed. Other types of fortified positions included bomb shelters, ammunition or supply depots and artillery bunkers.
The ‘Shanghai Campaign’ lasted just 3 weeks and resulted in the loss of most of the Kuomintang’s military resources. In the months after, Chiang Kai-shek, along with two million of his soldiers and supporters, fled to the island of Taiwan from where he vowed to reconquer the mainland. Many plans were made and though no large-scale invasion ever happened, the ruling Communist Party of China took the threat seriously against the background of the Cold War.
To protect from air-raids and fearing an American backed invasion by Kuomintang troops based on Taiwan Island, and in response to the Taiwan Strait Crises, the People’s Liberation Army would construct bunkers and fortified artillery platforms along Shanghai’s coastlines and islands located at the mouth of the Yangtze River between 1954 and 1960.
While already being built at the time of the Korean War, the city’s underground network of air-raid shelters and tunnels would be expanded dramatically in 1969-1970, when deteriorating relations between China and Soviet Russia reached its peak during the Sino-Soviet border conflict. Most of these underground positions were meant for protection of people and material, rather than for defensive combat. After tensions with the Soviet Union subsided and after the implementation of China's 'Reform and Opening Up' in the late 1970s, some of these underground shelters would be rented out by the district governments for commercial use. Many were destroyed as Shanghai built and expanded its subway network in the late 1990s and 2000s.
The challenge of documenting Shanghai’s remaining bunkers lies in the fact that very few of them come with any information. We suspect this is because of an overall lack of public interest and the secrecy that still surrounds anything modern military in China. Occasionally a sign or QR code is available, but this information is often vague or even incorrect. For example, while most bunkers are correctly attributed to the armed forces of the Kuomintang, some of the earlier bunkers from 1937 are bundled together with the ones from 1949 as part of the ‘Shanghai Campaign’. This is particularly true for bunkers in the outer districts. Only by examining their design and the direction of its loopholes (facing towards the city, protect from Japanese invasion; facing away from the city, protect from communist attack), one can make a calculated guess who built them when. Another reoccurring inaccuracy is that a bunker has been attributed to the wrong military, but rather by indifference or inadequate research than with intention. Bunkers that were built by the National Revolutionary Army in 1937 or 1949, are sometimes wrongly indicated as being built by either Japanese or communist armed forces. Though actual evidence is not widely available, it is credible that undamaged captured bunkers would be reused by their captors to fill their needs, which could explain the inaccuracy as people would often only remember the army that last used a bunker.
As of 12 August 2022, this will be the last major update on the history of Shanghai's bunkers. Because of the format limitations of a WeChat article, the author will instead publish a PDF with extended history, pictures, case studies and locations on www.explorebeyondchina.com (scheduled November 2022). Located bunkers will still be added to this article.
Please note this is a work in progress and content might be altered in accordance with continuous research. Feel free to reach out if you spot any inaccuracies or you can help us find more information.
References:
文汇网 | "解放上海时惨烈的碉堡战" by 薄小波 | 2019-05-22
新民周刊 | "上海战时碉堡今何在?" by 姜浩峰 | 2019-10-30
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