Wukang Mansion

The red-brick eight-story building, with the windows of its upper residential floors, was built for wealthy tenants; it was then called Normandie Apartments, after the French peninsula. It was designed by László Hudec and constructed by a French company. Nearby film companies gradually brought actors and directors here, and later the city allocated some apartments to cultural figures. It remains a residential building today: the rooms behind this facade have not become museum galleries.

In nineteen forty-eight, the actor Zhao Dan asked Kunlun Film Company to pay his fee in advance. He lived on his earnings from filming, had just married the actress and writer Huang Zongying, and wanted to rent decent housing for the family. The money for future work went toward an apartment on the third floor of this building. Zhao Dan's daughter recalled how delighted he was: after a decade in film, he finally had a real home.

At the time, the building was called Normandie Apartments, after the French peninsula. The eight-story building was designed by László Hudec and constructed in nineteen twenty-four by a French company for wealthy tenants. Xinhua Film Company and Lianhua Film Company worked nearby at different times, so the number of actors and directors among the residents kept growing. In nineteen fifty-three, the building passed into city administration, some apartments were allocated to cultural figures, and the former Normandie Apartments were named Wukang Mansion after neighboring Wukang Road, which had taken its name from the former Wukang County in Zhejiang Province.

On June twenty-fifth, nineteen fifty-seven, Zhou Xuan came here accompanied by staff from a clinic. The singer and film star had not acted for several years because of mental illness and now hoped to return to work. Her young sons were being raised by Zhao Dan and Huang Zongying. The elder son later said that he saw his mother only three times: at Zhao Dan's apartment, then at the clinic, and for the last time, after her death.

Zhou Xuan's former colleagues gathered in the living room. Zhao Dan had been her co-star in Street Angel, which had made them both famous twenty years before this meeting. He suggested that she perform The Wandering Songstress from that film again. Zhou Xuan began to sing, and the camera filmed her on the sofa among friends.

A few weeks later, she developed acute meningitis. Zhou Xuan died in September without ever returning to the set; her sons remained with Zhao Dan and Huang Zongying's family. The home recording became the singer's last known appearance before a camera.

The upper floors of Wukang Mansion are still occupied by private apartments. The living room on the third floor did not become a museum gallery. In the surviving footage, the camera pulls back from Zhou Xuan's face, leaving the sofa and the friends seated beside her in frame—the room behind the red-brick facade of this residential building.