On October 26, 1937, a Chinese battalion of about 400 men, commanded by Xie Jinyuan, took up position in a six storey concrete warehouse on the north bank of the Suzhou creek in Shanghai, and the defence that made the unit famous began. The army had decided to withdraw from the city after three months of fighting, and the battalion was left behind to cover the retreat and to show that the Chinese side was still fighting. The choice was deliberate. The position stood next to the foreign concessions.
The fighting lasted four days. Japanese infantry attacked with artillery and tanks, and the defenders, who had machine guns and a few automatic weapons and plenty of ammunition, beat off the attacks, and they also held a small barricade outside, and there were casualties on both sides. The defenders were reported as 800, and the number was taken up by the newspapers and by the public, though the real strength was nearer 400. The men were young. The soldiers came from different provinces and several of them were very young.
The warehouse stood across the creek from the international settlement, and crowds gathered on the far bank and on the roofs of the foreign buildings to watch, and foreign officers and journalists came to the area, and the defence became a public event. The unit was ordered to withdraw in the early hours of October 31 and crossed into the settlement, where the men were interned by the foreign authorities under an arrangement with the Japanese, and they were held for years. The stand was over.
Xie Jinyuan was killed in 1941 while a prisoner, and the survivors were scattered by the war, and many of them were sent to labour in the Pacific. The warehouse is preserved as a memorial with a wall of names and a small museum, and the defence is remembered as one of the best known episodes of the fighting in Shanghai in 1937. A film about the unit was made in 2020.