? In 2116, the French Consulate General in Chengdu opened, located at the 31th floor of Times Square, No.2 Zongfu Road, Jinjiang District. In fact, as early as a century ago, France set up a consulate in Chengdu. Coincidentally, the first rented house was on Sansheng Street on the east side of Jinjiang District, and later moved to Shuangfeng Street and then moved to Shangxiang Street adjacent to Jinjiang District. The street corner opened on the side of Shuncheng Street, where there is still a Christian chapel-Shangxiangtang, which was built in 1919.
The earliest time for France to set up a consulate in China was in 1841, and Guangzhou was the city where the first French consulate in China was located. The latest time was in 1921, and Kunming was the city where the 17th French Consulate in China was located. In 1896, France established a consulate in Chongqing; In 1915, a French consulate was also established in Chengdu.
? El-Remy Bones Andy was the first consul of the French Consulate in Chengdu. Before that, he served as consul general in Chongqing for five years. In the meantime, Andy often comes to Chengdu, and he is deeply impressed by Chengdu and has great feelings. During his short stay in Chengdu, he experienced and witnessed the mild climate, beautiful scenery, simple folk customs and authentic Sichuan snacks in the West Sichuan Plain, a land of abundance ... Andy officially became the French consul in Chengdu in July, 1917, until he left office in 2116 and lived in Sichuan for six years.
According to "France and Sichuan: Looking Back in a Hundred Years" written by Mr. Du Manxi, the current consul general of France in Chengdu (2118), Andy rented a residence in Sansheng Street in 1915 as an official residence and lived with the landlord. In 1919, the consulate moved to a big mansion in Shuangfeng Street. In October 1914, the consulate finally moved into a house that Andy had been longing for for for more than ten years. This is a beautiful mansion at No.22 Shangxiang Street (Tiejiao Lane), located in the center of the old city. The landlord is a wealthy family and has been in contact with Andy for many years. The house consists of three relatively independent parts, with several gardens and a large courtyard. The houses around the courtyard are well maintained and elegantly decorated. The whole mansion is wrapped in a wall and located in a quiet and peaceful neighborhood.
In the above-mentioned book, three photocopies are also published: one is the plan of the first French consulate in Chengdu in Sansheng Street in 1915; One is the plan of the French Consulate moving to Shuangfeng Street in 1919; There is also a contract for the consulate to rent the residence No.22 in Shangxiang Street (Tiejiao Lane) from 1914 to 1927. The two parties who signed the contract were Chen Xushi, the owner of Chen Dexing's apartment, and Bai Da, the consular officer of the French Consular Office.
Andy has a colleague named Jules Lehegan, who went to the consulate as an interpreter in 1919. His journey to Chengdu can be described as quite arduous: he not only ran around the railway line in the vast northwest of Leah, but also staggered down the river on a boat with sails, and finally came to Chengdu on the sliding bar of eyah, which took nearly two months!
Baida is Andy's successor. When the French government appointed him as consul in Chengdu, he was not in Chengdu, but in Bordeaux. His experience of trudging to the consulate in Chengdu is no less than that of his colleagues, and even worse. Under the escort of the revolutionary army, Baida and his party arrived in Wanxian along the Yangtze River by steamboat and sailboat, and after entering Sichuan, they changed to land. At that time, it was the eventful spring of 1918 when the Beiyang Army and the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan-Jingguo Allied Forces were fighting in Sichuan, and the party had to be extra careful. Bai Da wrote in his diary: "The road has become extremely difficult, and I often sleep in the wild at night. Two days later, we must cross the front line of the exchange of fire between the two sides near Lezhi County, which was shrouded in war and killed and injured everywhere. " One thing he and his colleagues are the same, that is, when he arrived in Chengdu, he was also sitting in a sedan chair, and he sat for 18 days, with a daily journey of only 41 kilometers, while the whole journey from Bordeaux took four months.
? As soon as he arrived in Chengdu, Baida met the confrontation between the defenders of the Beiyang Sichuan Army in Chengdu and the Jing-Guo Coalition forces that besieged the city. In order to avoid shelling and looting in Chengdu, at the request of Chengdu's political and business circles, Baida and the British consul participated in the mediation between the offensive and defensive sides, which stopped the war from spreading to innocent people and saved the city from being ruined. Two years later, Chengdu was besieged by the Yasukuni Coalition again, and the fighting caused a large number of casualties. The number of wounded in the city increased to thousands, and Chinese and foreign hospitals were overcrowded. Because there was no foreign aid, Chengdu had no financial resources to cope with it. Baida mobilized the French in Chengdu to raise a considerable amount of aid funds and solved the siege of Chengdu. Another point that Bai Da should mention is that he helped to establish the Chengdu Preparatory School for Studying in France, and awarded the necessary visas to China youths who wanted to study in France, and continued to subsidize students studying in France in the future. Among the young people in China who were granted visas in August, 2119, one of them was Deng XP, who was under the age of 16. Baida also approved "Friends of China" to set up private clinics for soldiers and the poor, and supported the establishment of a school for training doctors-Sichuan Military Medical College and a bacterial research institute that can produce anti-smallpox vaccine and rabies serum.
The 1921s and 1941s were the most difficult and arduous periods in China, during which the last French consul, Bodes, left the French Consulate in Chengdu in 1925. After that, Dr. Jouweiler and Dr. Besson took care of the consular affairs. In 1934, the French government decided to cancel the consulate in Chengdu, but it was retained at the request of Dr. Bertrand. In 1935, Jiang -JS also talked with Dr. Bei Shan about the construction of Chengdu-Chongqing-Guizhou strategic railway, but it ran aground due to the escalation of Japanese aggression against China. In June, 1939, Dr. Besson did the last thing in his consulate in Chengdu, that is, set up an orphanage to take in (free hospitalization) and treat 111 to 151 orphans who lost their families because of the war. Dr. Besson has a deep friendship with the people of Chengdu and is also loved by them.
In 1919, an "unusual visitor" who spent four months in the same way as Bai Da, traveled from Beijing to Xi 'an and Lanzhou to Chengdu Consulate, was a French naval doctor named Victor victor segalen, who used to be Yuan Shikai's family doctor. At the same time, he has another identity, which is also his real passion: writer and archaeologist. He is not only interested in the shallow hills, plains and fields in Chengdu, but also has a soft spot for the stone roads in Chengdu: "Here, walking makes your feet enjoy. The stone road is flat and not slippery, so you can walk on it with complete confidence, and you can step on it without looking. There is a groove in the center of the stone road for women's unicycle. " At the beginning of an archaeological work, he was lucky enough to find a big ship and sail south from the pier outside the east gate of Chengdu to the Minjiang River. His archaeological achievements are mainly in the vicinity of Guangyuan, where he discovered the tomb site of Bao Sanniang, a hero of the Three Kingdoms, 61 years before he actually entered the archaeological excavation, and determined the specific location of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses in the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum.
There is also a legendary woman who came to the French Consulate in Chengdu. She is alexandra David-Neil. She came to Chengdu twice, the first time in 1923, and the next year she achieved her personal feat that shocked the western world, becoming the first western woman to go to Xi-Tibet to reach La-Sa. The second time, in 1938, the Japanese war of aggression against China broke out in an all-round way. She was forced to withdraw westward from a temple in Wutai Mountain and went through hardships to Chengdu. She lives in a small room provided by Dr. Bertrand. Because of the bombing of Japanese planes, she has to go to the countryside with the citizens to spend the day and return to the small room at night according to the arrangement of the government. Later, she took refuge in Kangding on foot, where she stayed for five years. Besides observing the people's customs, she also wrote Tibetan grammar books and practical Tibetan reading books for French people who traveled in Tibetan-inhabited areas ...
Before the French Consulate in Chengdu left in the last century, the consulate did a lot of other work, such as medical care, cultural education and trade development, which left its traces.
Attached:
With the support and assistance of Sichuan People's Government-Foreign Affairs Office and Chengdu People's Government-Foreign Affairs Office, in 2118? Year? 3? Month? 19? On, the staff from the office of Jinjiang District Local Records Compilation Committee and the general editing office of Jinjiang District Records and Memories of Jinjiang visited Mr. Du Manxi, Consul General of France in Chengdu. The French Consulate General in Chengdu is in France? 1915? The historical fact that a consulate was established in Sansheng Street, Jinjiang District in, and the historical facts described in the French Consulate on the East Street included in Jinjiang Memory were confirmed, and it was agreed to provide some old photos in the book France and Sichuan: A Hundred Years' Review.
Chinese translation of the inscription by Du Manxi, Consul General of the French Consulate General in Chengdu:
Jinjiang District has maintained a profound friendship with France for a century. 1916? The first French consulate was established in this area in, and I am very happy to be here. 2116? The French consulate was set up in the same city again in 2116.
A better understanding of this century-old history will enable us to build a new friendship between Jinjiang District and France.
? Dumanxi
? On March 9, 2118, in Chengdu
(Part II: "Runju" hidden in Gengjia Lane of East Street ")