1933 Old Millfun

The 1933 Old Millfun is a former slaughterhouse in Hongkou, built by the Shanghai Municipal Council for the International Settlement and now used for shops, studios and events. The name comes from the year its main work was finished.

Construction began in 1931, and sources agree that the main building was complete in 1933. It entered service in January 1934. A Chinese encyclopedia entry credits the British firm Balfours with the design, along with the engineer Wheeler and a designer named Unterburger. The entry’s infobox lists only Balfours, so the exact credits are worth treating with care.

The plan was built around keeping animals and people apart. The complex has 30 covered walkways of different widths, linking four buildings. The main building has four storeys of reinforced concrete. Its walls are 50 centimetres thick and hollow, with ventilation holes to help control temperature, and the floors were laid in terrazzo-style concrete so animals would not slip. The design capacity was about 300 cattle, 500 sheep, 100 calves and 300 pigs a day.

The use changed with the city. In 1937 Japanese forces seized the slaughterhouse and gave it a new name. In 1945 the Shanghai municipal health bureau took it over. In 1958 slaughtering moved to Xujiahui and the site became the Dongfeng meat-processing plant.

In 2007 the buildings reopened as a creative-industry cluster, with exhibitions, events and dining. The complex has three layers of protection. It was listed as a Shanghai Outstanding Historical Building in 2005 and as a Shanghai municipal protected site in 2014. The State Council’s notice adding it to the eighth batch of national protected sites is dated 7 October 2019 and was published on 16 October.

Reference works differ on the date of the national listing, giving either 7 or 16 October. The first is the date of the notice itself and the second is the date it was published.