博文女校, Girls' school in central Shanghai, China.
Bowen Girls' School is a two-storey house at 127 Taicang Road in Shanghai's former French Concession, formerly 389 Baier Road, later Pope Road. It was a private girls' school combining primary and secondary classes, and in July 1921 ten delegates to the Communist Party's First Congress lodged upstairs, sleeping on straw mats on the floor.
Huang Shaolan, the only female disciple of Zhang Taiyan, founded the school in 1916 with Xu Zonghan and Tang Guoli in a lane off Beller Road in the French Concession. It closed in 1920 for lack of funds, then reopened in 1921 at 389 Bai'er Road (today 127 Taicang Road) with support from Zhang Cha, brother of Zhang Jian. The Shanghai Kuomintang branch shut it down in 1933.
The school's name, Bowen, means 'broad learning'. Its founder, Huang Shaolan, was the only female disciple of the scholar Zhang Taiyan. In July 1921, ten delegates to the First Congress of the Communist Party of China stayed here under the cover of a 'Peking University summer travel group', sleeping on straw mats on the floor because of the heat.
The site is at 127 Taicang Road, about 200 metres from the site of the First CPC Congress at the Xintiandi area, in what was the French Concession. The two-storey former school reopened to the public on 24 March 2026 after decades of restricted access, so check opening arrangements before travelling.
The delegates slept on straw mats laid on the upper-floor boards during the hot July of 1921, and the school kept only one cook, who also served as doorkeeper. Zhou Fohai stayed behind there with diarrhoea on the night of 30 July, when Mao came to warn him before both left for Li Da's house.
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