Amid cranes on top of new skyscrapers and the blinding sunlight reflecting off the glass windows of those already standing tall, Shanghai has one of the most remarkable buildings you may ever experience – and it was built in 1933 by the British architectural firm Balfours to steer cattle to their deaths.
I won't lie, I was a little anxious about visiting 1933 Old Millfun, in Shanghai's historic Hongkou District. I can handle emptied, rundown asylums and prisons, but abattoirs are in another league for this vegan. Now, before you judge, my family in New Zealand lived a block from a "meat-packing facility," and you sure knew it if the wind was blowing a certain direction on any given day. So no judgment about diets here – today it's all about this fascinating building.
Old Millfun, with its Escher-like maze of staircases and circular pre-Brutalist Art Deco solid concrete core, is no longer filled with cattle being led in a disorienting spiral to their final moments but with a handful of shops, tattoo studios, and even a Starbucks and a DJI store.
But as an earlier article so succinctly described it, this place doesn't just offer a passive view of history and a window into gentrification; it sucks you in and holds you there.
While 1933 predates Brutalism and Chinese communism, it certainly feels like a more fluid, gothic version of that architectural movement. At the time, the slaughterhouse was one of the largest in the region and reportedly revolutionized abattoir design. Essentially, the complex network of stairs and ramps around a central tower – the killing floor – formed a structural conveyor belt.
Now, people take wedding photos on the stairs and locals film dances for Chinese social media.
Nonetheless, it's hard to explain just how oddly affecting Old Millfun is. Even on National Day of the People's Republic of China, with C-pop blasting from a live stage amid a free festival outside the building, within its space it was eerily quiet. And that's saying something, for one of the most cacophonous and chaotic cities I've been to yet.
The design is reflective of an important part of Chinese culture, 天圆地方 – or "Round Heaven, Square Earth". I didn't know this when I visited 1933, nor when I wrote of it feeling somehow fluid and Brutalist-like. "Round Heaven" symbolizes motion, "Square Earth" the immovable and solid structure. Essentially, a yin-yang relationship that feels, at the old slaughterhouse, bizarrely harmonious.
There are 26 inclining "air bridges" that vary in width and connect to the central part of the building. Depending on the time of day and the weather, visitors will see these spaces under different light and cast with varying shadows.
A plaque along the journey reads in English that the site is a "delight to traverse," which it both is and isn't – and this is hard to explain.
It's ultimately a strange experience of physical and historical contrasts; where, if you dare, you can picture the bloody hell that took place along the spiraling levels for decades, but also take in the beauty of the building. And this is how you will lose hours there without even going into one of the few shops currently in the updated space.
"The completed building consists of an outer rectangular structure for the animal stalls and carcass chilling rooms, and an inner ring-shaped structure for the slaughter halls, with a central core," researchers wrote in this 2017 paper. "The two structures consequently formed two internal courts, with a series of bridges at different levels connecting the animal stalls to the slaughter halls and with further bridges to transport carcasses, connect the slaughter halls to the central core, the inspector’s room and finally the chilling rooms in the west wing of the rectangular building.
"Thus, the mechanized process of the animal disassembling line was explicitly expressed in the spatial configuration of the abattoir design and each element of the building carefully designed for maximum efficiency," they continued. "For example, the bridges were given various sizes in response to the different types and sizes of animals, with widths narrow enough to prevent animals turning around and side walls high enough to avoid them looking outwards. The abattoir passed from the British to Japanese occupying forces in 1937 and then to the new Chinese authorities in 1946, retaining its original function until the late 1950s. Subsequently, it was occupied by meat processing companies, food manufacturers, and research institutes, and later a pharmaceutical company."
(Side note: I wondered why the stairs were so narrow and the concrete walls so high, but naively thought it was for humans.)
The slaughterhouse had been winding down for decades, but it finally shut in 2002. Six years later, architect Chongxin Zhao was entrusted with restoring the space – in a way that celebrated its incredible architecture without erasing its history.
In a strange twist, Old Millfun again feels like it's in commercial decline. Combatting online shopping and post-pandemic in-person shopping, China's malls have evolved into destinations in their own right. Shanghai is one of the country's best at it, too. Many have parks, green spaces and, in some cases, 1,000 trees. There are also massive kids' playgrounds, game zones, VR centers, winter ice-skating rinks and more.
It's no real surprise that people want to spend their free time somewhere a little more fun than an eerie concrete maze – even if it has a Starbucks.
This is a shame, though, as Hongkou in northeast Shanghai isn't at all what you'd call the "outer 'burbs", but it's not new and shiny, and the only nightlife you'll find besides some small no-frills food joints is a 24-hour Family Mart. So foot traffic at the made-over slaughterhouse is not the shopping and spending crowd. Which is great for photo shoots and escaping the absurdly loud, bright, and densely populated city, but it's not so good for business.
Nonetheless, the building is a culturally historical site, so it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
"Visiting 1933 Shanghai today, it is difficult to sense the blood and guts that would have once slopped about the building," wrote the researchers rather viscerally in their 2017 paper. "The colonnaded walkway under the Art-Deco façade, where previously workers loaded carcasses, is now lined with a series of shop windows. The holding pens are divided into smaller units, used as offices, studios, cafes, clubs and restaurants.
"These commercial units are often given a distinct theme to show their affiliation to creative industries, and there are some culturally ‘creative’ shops that sell products of traditional workshops, albeit observing the selling of Buddha statues and Buddhist prayer beads in a former slaughterhouse is somewhat bizarre," they added.
On one of the upper levels, a tattoo studio was offering cow tattoos. On the ground floor, outside the main building, a humanoid was flat on its back after draining its battery during a demo. Down the street, I was reminded again that apparently observing red lights at traffic stops is entirely optional for people driving cars in Shanghai.
1933 Old Millfun is indeed an odd "tourist attraction", but it somehow captures the beauty of design and the horror it was made for. And without even looking at the photos I took, the feelings of those narrow staircases and pebbled ramps – I assume to stop animals from losing their footing when the ramps became wet – have stuck around.
If you're in Shanghai, go see it. After all, you'll have space for photos without anyone else in them – and be able to buy a DJI drone or a venti iced coffee at a rare Starbucks with empty tables.
You can check out more images from the site in our gallery.
Source: GZW
