{"id":66551,"date":"2026-07-06T17:03:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=66551"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:03:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:03:04","slug":"what-was-it-like-to-attend-a-childrens-palace-in-china-a-socialist-institution-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=66551","title":{"rendered":"What was it like to attend a Children\u2019s Palace in China? A socialist institution revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

On June 1, International Children\u2019s Day, an exhibition opened in Shanghai that brought back memories of the time I spent in a Children\u2019s Palace while growing up in mainland China.<\/p>\n

During the 1950s, following the establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China, these state-run institutions were built nationwide as places where recreation, education and socialist ideals converged. I went to one for extracurricular dance, music, painting, science and sports classes.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s Palaces drew on educational theories propounded in the Soviet Union by Vladimir Lenin\u2019s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and Anton Makarenko, an educator and social worker. Called Pioneer Palaces in the USSR, they were rooted in ideas of collectivism and moral cultivation through organised activities.<\/p>\n

In 1953, the first Children\u2019s Palace in China opened in Shanghai, in a grand, marble-clad mansion on Yan\u2019an Road that had previously belonged to the wealthy Hong Kong-based family the Kadoories.<\/p>\n

This was a powerful, symbolic gesture by the new People\u2019s Republic: a colonial-era private mansion repurposed to educate children. Similar institutions spread across the socialist world, from Beijing to Pyongyang and Hanoi, creating a shared landscape of collective aspiration.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"The<\/div>
The Shanghai Changning Children\u2019s Palace is one of many institutions the Chinese government established around the country from the 1950s to promote collectivism and moral cultivation through organised activities for young people.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Growing up in mainland China in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I belonged to the last generation for whom Children\u2019s Palaces still represented a shared cultural experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n


\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 1, International Children\u2019s Day, an exhibition opened in Shanghai that brought back memories of the time I spent in a Children\u2019s Palace while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6564,6569,832,7499,5599,3683,26048],"class_list":["post-66551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-attend","tag-childrens","tag-china","tag-institution","tag-palace","tag-revisited","tag-socialist","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}