Xia Yan's Former Residence (夏衍旧居): A Film Pioneer's Garden House, Free
Mentioned in 2 local notesFree — reservation needed
"The good-looking places in Shanghai are all free" — that's the exact spirit in which a local field note files this house. It's a 1932 brick-and-timber English country villa on Wulumuqi South Road, restored and opened to the public in 2019 as part of the Hengfu heritage quarter, and it costs nothing to walk through.
The name on the door is Xia Yan (1900–1995) — playwright, screenwriter, and one of the founders of Chinese left-wing cinema — who lived here from 1949 to 1955. A second note threads the house into the Yongjia Road garden-house walk, where it's the one you can actually go inside.
The essentials
| What | A restored 1932 English country garden villa, now a free heritage house museum about Xia Yan and the neighbourhood |
|---|---|
| Where | Building 2, 178 Wulumuqi South Road 乌鲁木齐南路178号2号楼, Xuhui — just off the Yongjia Road walk |
| Metro | Hengshan Road 衡山路 (Line 1) or Zhaojiabang Road 肇嘉浜路 (Lines 7 / 9), about 10 minutes on foot |
| Cost | Free — real-name advance reservation required |
| Hours | Closed Mondays; open days and hours have shifted by season — confirm before you go |
| Booking | Reservation runs through a Chinese WeChat mini-programme — Kora books it for you |
Why locals rate it
The Yongjia Road area is Shanghai's open-air museum of garden houses, but nearly all of them are gates and glimpses. This one opens. You get the lawn, the brickwork, the timbered interiors, and the story of the man who helped invent Chinese cinema — for nothing. That combination (beautiful, historic, free, actually enterable) is exactly what the free-list author was celebrating.
- The catch is the booking, not the price. Entry is free but needs a real-name reservation inside a Chinese WeChat mini-programme — a wall for most visitors. Send Kora your name and date and we handle it from the Chinese side.
- Skip Monday, double-check the rest. Mondays are closed and the weekly schedule has changed more than once — ask Kora to confirm on the day rather than trusting an old listing.
- Do it as a pair. The Caoying Study sits nearby in the same quarter, and the Yongjia Road lane walk connects it to the Ruijin gardens — one reservation anchors a whole free afternoon.
- Navigation: show a driver "乌鲁木齐南路178号" — and use a Kora pin rather than Google Maps, which misplaces lane addresses.
Around it
This is the Yongjia Road cluster: the Ruijin Hotel gardens close the walk to the east, and Siyuan Bookstore hides at the Shaanxi South Road corner along the way. The full ranked list is on the Shanghai local map.
Sources
Compiled from 2 public Xiaohongshu field notes by Shanghai locals — roughly 61,000 likes between them at collection time (14 July 2026; each note covers several places):
Text and photos in the original notes belong to their authors; everything above is rewritten in our own words and we don't republish their photos. Address, history and the reservation requirement verified against public sources, July 2026. Compiled by Kora's team on the ground in China.
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