A stone tiger crouches at No. 196 Zhongshan Road. Completed in 1932, this French Renaissance mansion spans 2,780 square meters. Its convex footprint earned it the nickname the Tiger Building. Four massive cement columns support the entrance porch, leading up a sweeping ten-step curved staircase. Inside, smooth mahogany doors and jade-like spherical stair finials project the quiet authority of its original owner, Fengtian clique general Yu Zhen.

Yu was an anomaly in a chaotic era. Known as the "Five No General," he strictly avoided opium, alcohol, concubines, gambling, and embezzling soldiers' pay. After the 1931 Manchurian Incident, Japanese commanders repeatedly visited this parlor, demanding his service. He politely declined, citing poor health.

Behind the elegant bottle-shaped stone balustrades of the semi-circular balconies, Yu orchestrated a dangerous resistance. In 1932, he used this three-story residence to shelter anti-Japanese activists. He arranged for them to be smuggled past Japanese surveillance in disguised cars, delivering them safely to the nearby Yamato Hotel to expose war crimes to the League of Nations. The thick brick and stone masonry absorbed the tension of those clandestine meetings.

The building weathered decades of change. Its rooms later housed military clinics, the Red Cross, and municipal finance bureaus. Today, the mansion remains a strictly protected provincial cultural relic. The heavy mahogany windows remain shut to the public, preserving the silence of a general who turned his luxurious sanctuary into a shield.