The house in front of you was built in 1920 as an ordinary residence1, one unit in a row of shikumen lane houses. The address at the time was number 106 Wangzhi Road. The road was renamed in 1943, so today it is number 76 Xingye Road. Nothing about the outside was meant to attract attention, and that was exactly the point.
你们面前这幢房子建于 1920 年，本是一处普通住宅，一排石库门里弄中的一个单元。当时的地址是望志路 106 号。1943 年路名改了，今天叫兴业路 76 号。它的外观没有一处是为了引人注意，而这正是当初看中它的地方。
In July 1921, thirteen delegates2 met in the ground floor room on your left. They represented about fifty members from several cities, and the meeting they held was the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The room is small. There is a table, a set of chairs, and a tea set laid out as it was described by people who were there. When you go in, you will see that the whole founding3 meeting of what became the governing party of this country took place in a space about the size of a family dining room.
1921 年七月，十三位代表在你左手边的底层那间屋子里开会。他们代表来自几个城市的约五十名党员，这次会议就是中国共产党第一次全国代表大会。屋子不大。里面一张桌子、一套椅子和一副茶具，按当事人的回忆摆放。进去以后你会看到，后来成为这个国家执政党的组织，它的成立会议是在一间大小相当于普通人家饭厅的屋子里开完的。
The congress did not finish here. On the evening of the final session a stranger walked into the room and left again, and the delegates judged that the meeting had been discovered. They dispersed within minutes. The remaining business was completed a few days later on a hired boat on South Lake in Jiaxing, about a hundred kilometres from here, in Zhejiang Province. That is why the boat appears in so many paintings of this event.
会议不是在这里结束的。最后一次会议的晚上，一个陌生人走进屋子又出去了，代表们判断会议已经暴露，几分钟内就散了。剩下的议程几天后在浙江嘉兴南湖一条租来的船上完成，那里距这里约一百公里。这就是为什么那条船会出现在这么多与此事有关的画里。
The site became a museum in the 1950s and the house itself was carefully restored4 to its 1921 appearance. A much larger exhibition5 hall opened next door in 2021, the hundredth anniversary, and it holds the documents and objects. Photography is not allowed in the meeting room itself. Please keep your voice low, take your hat off inside, and stay with the group; the rooms are small and it is easy to lose each other. We will need about an hour.
这里在五十年代辟为纪念馆，房子本身按 1921 年的样子作了细致修复。旁边一座大得多的展览馆 2021 年建党一百周年时开放，文献和实物都在那边。会议室内不许拍照。请压低声音，进门脱帽，跟紧队伍，屋子小，容易走散。这里大约需要一小时。