‘The Limit’, 600 Hungjao Road
Two houses on the property, 600 Hungjao Road.
The garden residence of Mr and Mrs W. J. Hawkings, known as ‘The Limit’, was at the very end of Hungjao Road, at No. 600. In the 1930s, it was the site of many Shanghailander parties and meetings of the Rotary Club. The 15-room building on the left in the photo served as the residence of the Hawkings’, while the Chinese-roofed mansion on the right housed some of their children and in-laws. The resilience and good humor of the Hawkings' were legendary. In the spring of 1949, anticipating the final battle between the Communists and Nationalists in Hungjao (Hongqiao) area, circa 150 American, British and French families left their suburban houses for good and fled the zone. But these Britishers refused to leave their home of 27 years and braved the warfare that raged all around them; this adventure put the Hawkings’ on the pages of the Life magazine in May 1949.
Both houses of ‘The Limit’ survive, rather incredibly, right next to the Hongqiao airfield, at 迎宾三路298号. They have recently been rebranded as 虹桥源1号 and appeared in a new book.
Chinese-style house to the east of the main building.
Chinese-style house to the east of the main building. Images from the recent book 虹桥源1号：THE LIMIT, by 华霞虹, 宿新宝, 罗超君 (2022)
A certain W. J. K. (Mr. Keswick, is that you?) might have been describing The Limit in 1940: “We saw a very nicely laid out garden on Hungjao Road today. The exterior of the residence is of Chinese style architecture and the building is set back a short distance on the south side of the road. A laurel hedge is planted along the short driveway together with many weeping willow trees. Young branches on these trees are hanging right down to the ground; we measured some 12 feet in length. There is a small corner garden on the east of the entrance gates with a clump of bamboo, a lilac or two and a few beds of zinnias. A Golden Labrador dog came out to see what we were doing; this aristocrat of the doggy world was quite friendly and also were the pigeons who hovered around. Black Labradors made plenty of noise however, and we were breathing a little more easily when we arrived at an artistic bamboo garden wall. As we open this gate we were made by two more members of the canine family; to find black Chow dogs were waiting inside; they decided to give us a friendly welcome however. [...] There is no bamboo fence on the south side of the garden; a wire netting fence marks the boundary, and an uninterrupted view of the countryside is to be seen, which gives one the impression that the garden is a huge place. [...] We left the garden wondering whether a gentleman having initials similar to ours was in any way responsible for the attractive layout.” -- W. J. K. ‘Along the highways’, North-China Herald, 25 Sept 1940.
Image from the feature article in Life, 30 May 1949.
Image from sohu.
All entries about Hungjao Road / Hongqiao Lu / 虹桥路 .