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Editor: Kathryne Ogrod & Elsa Zhang
The first asphalt road in Tianjin city, JieFang road, crosses the He Ping district and He Xi district. It is divided into two streets by XuZhou Road; northern Jiefang road and southern Jie Fang road.
The southern JieFang road starts from the cross of Jiefang Road and Xuzhou Road and ends at Zhujiang Road. It was constructed three times through exploration; the part between the cross at Xuzhou Road and Haihe Middle School -the first earth road explored by British- was built up in 1893; the part between Haihe Middle School and Qiongzhou Road -the bus stop of Xiao liu village- which was the longest road in the Germany rent area and named “No.1 road”, “William Road” or “Wilson Street” in 1917- was explored by Germans in 1913; the part between Xiaoliu village and Zujiang Road was extended to the south after the blackout of partial civil buildings, then in order to make improvements in the transport, the part between Xiangiang Road and the southern Dagu Road was made wider and built with the concrete quarrels and an isolation fence in 1982.
The northern Jiefang Road was completed in two parts: the part between Jiefang Bridge and Yingkou Road, which belonged to the French rent area, started to build in 1860. At that time it was named “The Big French Road”, “Middle Street”, and “Asia District No.2 Street No 7”. The part between Yingko road and Xuzhou road, which belonged to the British rent area, was built in 1870 and then extended in 1918. It was named “Victoria Road” or “Middle Street”. After the surrendering of Japanese, the Kuomintang government unified these two roads it became “Zhongzheng Road”. On Jan 25th 1949, in order to celebrate the liberation of Tianjin the name of the road was changed to “Jiefang Road”; the northern part from the Xuzhou Road was re-named “Jiefang Bei Road”. Both of the names are still used to this day.
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