General Post Office Building

The General Post Office Building (上海邮政总局, Shànghǎi Yóuzhèng Zǒngjú) stands at the north end of the Sichuan Road Bridge, beside Suzhou Creek. It was built in 1922–24 as the head post office of Shanghai. A post office counter still works in the building, and since 2006 the second floor has held the free Shanghai Postal Museum.

After 1911 Shanghai was the centre of China’s postal business, and traffic kept growing. Work on a new head office began in December 1922. The plot was close to the city centre, with the Huangpu River to the east, the North Railway Station to the north and the Shiliupu docks to the south. The building was finished in November 1924 and opened for business that December.

The designers were the British architects 思九生 (Sījiǔshēng) and 史滨生 (Shǐbīnshēng), whose firm English Wikipedia calls Stewardson & Spence. The contractor was the Chinese firm Yu Hong Kee (余洪记营造厂, Yú Hóngjì Yíngzàochǎng).

The frame is reinforced concrete, four storeys above ground and one below, on a plot of 6,500 square metres with 25,300 square metres of floor space. The south-east corner is rounded and forms the centre of the design. Along both street fronts, a simplified Corinthian colonnade rises through three storeys. Above the corner stands a Baroque-style clock tower. At its base are two sculpture groups. On the south side, a figure of the god of communication is flanked by two love deities. On the north side, three figures hold a locomotive, a ship and a telecom cable. The originals were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and the groups now in place were copied in 1999. The characters 人民邮电 on the tower wall are said to be in Mao Zedong’s own hand.

Inside, the main trading hall on the second floor covers 1,200 square metres and was called the “First Hall of the Far East”. According to English Wikipedia, a retail counter still operates there, in a space much smaller than the original.

The Shanghai Posts and Telecommunications Bureau, set up in 1957, moved in the following year, and the Shanghai Post Bureau followed on 1 January 1991. The postal museum opened to the public in 2006, according to the district tourism bureau, though English Wikipedia says 2003. It closed for renovation in April 2024 and reopened on 1 December 2024. Shanghai Post says a bullet hole about one centimetre across in conference room 322 dates from the fighting for the city in spring 1949.

The building was listed as a Shanghai municipal protected site on 25 September 1989 and as a national-level site on 20 November 1996. Published sources disagree on the street number: 250 North Suzhou Road, 276 North Suzhou Road, or 395 Tiantong Road, which is the address the museum gives.

The museum is free, needs no reservation, and opens on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:00. Public holidays are announced separately. A December 2024 notice from the Hongkou District culture and tourism bureau says visitors enter by No. 258 North Suzhou Road on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and by 395 Tiantong Road on Sunday. The nearest metro it names is Tiantong Road station, exit 3, about 400 metres away.