Guest blog: Rachel Meller on Uncovering the story of Shanghai’s Second World War Jewish refugees

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Robert Bickers

In this post, author Rachel Meller introduces her newly published book, and discusses some of the documents and photographs that prompted it. These formed a small collection but, like many that HPC has seen, a complex story was waiting to be  discovered within. Rachel grew up near London, the middle of three daughters of Austrian refugees. After studying Neurobiology at the University of Sussex, followed by research into hormones and behaviour at Cambridge University, she became a writer in a communication consultancy. The Box with the Sunflower Clasp is her first book.

My aunt Lisbeth, who lived in San Francisco for the whole time I knew her, owned an attractive oriental-style cabinet. She knew I’d always admired this piece of furniture (made in the ’50s, she’d told me, no valuable antique), and, on her death in 1996, I discovered that she had bequeathed it to me. What I had not expected was what lay inside it, pushed to the back of one of its shelves.  Wrapped in yellowing newspaper was a heavy wooden box, mysterious-looking people in Chinese-looking robes and hair-dos, and exotic plants, carved into its sides and lid. The box had a metal clasp shaped like a sunflower. It was full of documents, photographs, postcards and other memorabilia that my aunt must have treasured for decades. Most of the items dated from the 1930s through to the mid-1950s, but one sepia postcard showed a man in World War I uniform. I would later find out his significance.

Aunt Lisbeth’s box

I knew very little of my aunt’s or my mother’s history. Lisbeth was always an uncommunicative, and outwardly emotionless, woman, while my mother Ilse died a few months after my birth. The sisters had been born in Vienna, in 1922 and 1918 respectively, to secular Jewish parents. The Epsteins, despite being patriots and barely practising Jews, were forced to flee Nazi-run Austria after the Anschluss in March 1938. My mother came to England via Paris, while my aunt and grandparents found refuge in Shanghai. An unlikely destination, you might think. But in June 1938, when most countries’ doors were being slammed in their faces, the Reich’s Jews heard of a loophole that could let them slip into the Chinese city. Following the bloody Battle of Shanghai in 1937, much of the municipality was in the hands of the Japanese. The ensuing lawlessness and chaos meant that no one checked the papers or visas of those landing at the port. By August 1939, almost 20,000 Europeans had used this escape route from Nazism, greatly helped by Vienna’s compassionate Chinese consul, Ho Feng-Shan.

Lisbeth told me nothing of this intriguing chapter of her life, or of her and my mother’s Viennese youth. (Although I did grow up hearing rumours of a serious accident she had suffered as a teenager, and of a tragedy during her time in China.) So I was amazed to discover that my silent aunt had told much of her story to an American Holocaust historian, Steve Hochstadt, who had interviewed her (along with a dozen other Shanghai refugees) for his book, Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of escape from the Third Reich (2012).

I was given Steve’s book in 2012. This drew me back to the contents of the box, which I’d only glanced at occasionally over the years. I decided that at some point I should try to piece together Lisbeth’s story – using the historian’s interview material and the documents and photographs she had left me. The romantic part of me almost wondered if Lisbeth had wanted me to unearth her story using what she had left me, a story she had been unable to talk of while alive.

I began my research in January 2016. The result is The Box with the Sunflower Clasp, published by Icon Books on May 18 2023. While a number of personal memoirs have been written by refugees describing their childhoods and youth in wartime Shanghai, I know of no other researched by one of these refugee’s descendants. And I soon learned that remarkably few Jews outside the US, Canada or Australia (where many of Shanghai’s refugees settled after the war) know of this aspect of the Jewish diaspora.

The Box with the Sunflower Clasp tells the story of a middle-class European community displaced to an alien environment halfway across the world. Men and women forced to abandon their (pre-Nazi) home comforts for whatever lodgings they could rent in the city in which they now found themselves. Shanghai – although a sanctuary – was riddled with risks of its own. It was a city of contrasts: abject beggars lying in the doorways of grand buildings owned by wealthy entrepreneurs and taipans; bone-chilling winters and insufferably hot humid summers; and metropolitan streets regularly flooded with knee-high dirty Huangpu river water. Many refugees had to get used to Shanghai’s infamous ‘honey buckets’ instead of Western plumbing’s flushing toilets. These doubtless helped spread the city’s prevalent infectious diseases, like cholera and typhoid, previously unknown to the Europeans.

City of contrasts: Shanghai street scene, photographed by Malcolm Rosholt, Rosholt Collection, Ro-n0297 © 2012 Mei-Fei Elrick and Tess Johnston

Despite all these challenges, the enterprising German- and Yiddish-speaking immigrants generally  settled in well. I was amazed to learn how quickly they created their own ‘Little Vienna’ in the poorest, most overcrowded part of the city. Hongkew, north of Soochow Creek, had been heavily damaged by Japanese bombs; it became home to many who had fled Europe empty-handed. The refugees rebuilt Hongkew’s rubble-strewn streets, setting up German-style cafés, bars and restaurants. Using makeshift ingredients, they offered strudels, sausage, and ‘rye’ bread, along with other dishes from home; actors, writers and singers amongst them put on plays and operas to keep spirits up. A group of Polish yeshiva students – still wearing traditional beards, dark hats and sidelocks – recreated their shul to continue their religious studies. And a Jew from Berlin opened the first lending library, offering reading matter in both German and English: he plays a key role in my book, and was the mystery man in uniform.

Amongst the 20,000 refugees who found work in Shanghai was my grandfather, Arnold Epstein. In Vienna he had been a wholesaler and retailer of soaps, perfumes, and pharmacy goods; in Shanghai he worked as a history teacher in the city’s Jewish Youth Association School. A photograph in Lisbeth’s box with the sunflower clasp shows him surrounded by his class of German-speaking pupils. The SJYA School was later called the Kadoorie School, after Horace Kadoorie. This philanthropic Shanghailander (the name Western residents gave themselves) came from a wealthy Sephardi family long-established in the city. His money and drive provided the school for Shanghai’s refugee children.

My grandfather, Arnold Epstein, surrounded by his pupils at the SJYA School in Kinchow Road, Hongkew

The Jewish immigrants lived harmoniously alongside their Chinese neighbours. Friendships – even marriages – occurred between them, and their lives felt relatively free. Until December 1941, when everything changed. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, entering World War II on the side of the Nazis. Shanghai’s European refugees were threatened again, as the Japanese now controlled the whole city. The Jews’ lives were in the hands of Hitler’s allies.

Japanese parade in Shanghai to celebrate the fall of Singapore, February 1942

It was soon rumoured that Europe’s Nazis wanted Shanghai’s Japanese rulers to rid the city of its Jewish population. Instead, in February 1943, the Japanese authorities issued a Proclamation confining all the ‘stateless refugees’ into a ‘designated area’ in Hongkew. Although neither the word ‘Jew’ nor the word ‘ghetto’ was used, everyone soon called the bleak square mile into which the Jews were forced ‘the ghetto’. It was possible to leave the area for reasons of work or medical need, but only if the capriciously violent Japanese official, Kanoh Ghoya, stamped a refugee’s pass. Such a pass is shown below, above a photo of Ghoya.

Jewish refugees confined to the Honkew ghetto queue up to receive special passes to leave the restricted zone from Ghoya, a Japanese official from the Bureau for Stateless Refugees. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ernest G. Heppner

I was fascinated to learn of how the Jewish refugees survived in the ghetto alongside 100,000 of the city’s poorest Chinese. My research has taken me far, both emotionally and geographically. I’ve been moved by exhibits in the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, and seen the transformation of the city’s streets since my aunt’s time there. I’ve visited a nonagenarian German-born Jew living in Australia, hearing first-hand of his years as a teenager in Shanghai. And I’ve gained more empathy with my aunt’s silent nature. Her life in wartime China, and before, was threaded with tragedy, but ultimately her resilience shines through. Her story, and the wider one of refugee survival, is set out in The Box with the Sunflower Clasp.

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Andrew Hillier on Bessie Pirkis: A Renaissance Woman in Peking

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Andrew Hillier

A recent approach to HPC revealed a treasure trove of material relating to life in the British Legation, Peking, in the 1870s and early 1880s, but, as Dr Andrew Hillier explains, making sense of the photographs can be a challenge. 

We keep up our music here …. Every Saturday I have a musical dinner party, Mrs Pirkis, Scherzer, Lyall (violin), Van Aalst (flute), + self … The first three are fine performers … [1]

So wrote the Inspector-General of Customs, Robert Hart, to his subordinate, Harry Hillier, but, until recently, little seemed to be known about ‘Mrs Pirkis’ or her husband, Albert, save that she was, as Hart said, ‘a fine performer’ and that he had served as the Accountant to the British Legation in Peking from 1870  to 1885.[2] However,  just over a year ago, a family descendant approached HPC with a treasure trove of material relating to the Pirkis’s years in Peking – photographs, letters and, perhaps most fascinating of all, paintings, both oil and water-colours. From this, it soon became clear that Elizabeth (Bessie) Levesque Pirkis was truly a Renaissance woman in this intensely masculine world.[3]  But if the letters and paintings are to some extent self-explanatory, the photographs present more of a challenge, given that there are several hundred of them and many are without captions.  This is not unusual with this sort of ‘shoebox-collection’, a large number of which have been generously deposited with Historical Photographs of China for digitising over the years.[4]  Whilst placing a single photograph on-line can trigger unexpected responses and leads, it can be more difficult to make sense of a large Collection of such images.[5]  However, although we must avoid  ‘wrenching them out of their frames and context’, in  this two-part blog, I want to explore not only how the images ‘once lived as objects’ but also what, taken together and filling in the gaps where I can, they may tell us about legation life at this time. [6]

None of the photographs, it seems, were taken by Bessie or Albert. This is not surprising given that the hand-held Kodak was yet to arrive and there was no possibility of taking quick snaps.[7] However, there were already professional and semi-professional photographers in Peking and the Pirkis’s compiled an album containing a large number of pictures of the city and its surroundings. Whilst these are of interest, it is the loose photographs, collected piecemeal during their time in Peking, on which I want to focus. The collection must have started on Bessie’s side of the family because a number predate her arrival. We can begin with one which was taken before her wedding but which she may well have given or sent to Albert before or at the time of their engagement – see figure 1.

Figure 1: Bessie L’Evesque. It is captioned ‘Heartease’ on its reverse, the common name for a wild pansy and the name by which she was usually called by her family and, perhaps, also by Albert, and the flower which she is wearing. HPC PF-s0037.

Originally Huguenots, Bessie’s family, the Levesques, or, as she liked to style herself, L’Evesque, had established themselves as ‘piano-forte makers’ and dealers in musical scores in East London. It is not clear when or how Bessie and Albert met – she was thirty-three and, unusually for the time, he was four years younger – but they may have been related through Bessie’s step-father, William, whose surname was also Edmeades. A piano-maker himself, for some time, he seems to have been in business with Bessie’s brother, Josiah. The engagement must have been sealed by an exchange of letters since the wedding took place in Shoreditch, London on 29 June 1869, soon after Albert’s return from Hong Kong, where he was serving in the Auditor-General’s Department. [8]  Setting off back to China ten months later, he and Bessie travelled through France and stayed in Paris, where they had their portrait, or ‘likeness’, as it was called, done before continuing on by train to Marseilles – see figure 2.

Figure 2: Albert and Bessie Pirkis. Photograph taken in a Paris studio in 1870 when they were on their way to Hong Kong. HPC PF-s0046.

From there, they caught the Messageries Maritimes steamer. The youngest of four sons, Albert had first arrived in Hong Kong in 1862, following in the wake of his eldest brother, George Ignatius Pirkis, who had joined the Army Commissariat in 1850 and had been posted to the colony two years later. After taking charge of the arsenal during the Second Opium War and later serving with the Ever Victorious Army, he returned to Hong Kong and would remain stationed there until 1875.[9] In 1866, the second eldest brother, Daniel, had followed George and Albert to take up an appointment as Consular Chaplain in the treaty port of Kiukiang (Jiujiang) [10]  – see the photograph at figure 3. Formally posed with George wearing the civilian uniform issued to Commissar staff, Daniel sporting a magnificent beard, which had recently become fashionable, and Albert looking self-important with cane and top hat, copies must surely have been sent home to the family in England for distribution to friends and relations.

Figure 3: Albert, Daniel and George Ignatius Pirkis. Undated but captioned in Albert’s writing, ‘The three China brothers…Dad, Dan & Al and my faithful dog, Hep’. HPC PF-s0007.

Soon after their arrival in Hong Kong, Albert was informed that the Audit Office had been transferred to Peking and in the autumn he and Bessie set off again, making their way by steamer to Shanghai and then on to Tientsin (Tianjin) from where they went by river-boat and then mule-cart to the capital.  Comprising a vast and picturesque palace with extensive grounds, the compound provided ample space for them to have their own separate accommodation.[11]  It was there that Albert, as Legation Accountant, and Bessie would spend the next fifteen years.

Their arrival coincided with Thomas Wade succeeding Sir Rutherford Alcock as Minister.[12] A very different character to his predecessor, Wade was a highly accomplished Sinologue and a somewhat unworldly figure. Recently married, during his twelve years in office, although prone to irascibility, he would be reasonably easy-going in managing the legation staff, which comprised two career diplomats and a small number of consular officials. Alongside them would be a cohort of young Student Interpreters, who would spend a rigorous two years learning Chinese with a ‘native’ teacher, culminating in an examination by the Chinese Secretary – at that time, the brilliant but unforgiving W.S. Frederick Mayers.

As is clear from the photograph at figure 4, the Interpreters could enjoy a much more relaxed relationship with Albert Pirkis, since they were not accountable to him.[13] We see him with his close friend, Dr Stephen Bushell, the Legation’s medical adviser, surrounded by students.  As usual, dogs are in evidence and the tone is informal, if self-conscious, with the students’ poses ranging from languid to earnest.

Figure 4: Student Interpreters with Albert Pirkis and Dr Stephen Bushell. Back row (standing, left to right): J.D. Crawford and W.S. Ayrton. Middle row (sitting, left to right): Walter C. Hillier, later to be Chinese Secretary, W.D. Spence, Albert Edmeades Pirkis, with his hat on his lap, Dr Stephen Wootton Bushell, (with a Pekingese on his lap), T. L. Bullock (also with a blurry dog on his lap), W. H. Young. Front row: a large dog called Jack; R. W. Mansfield, with his hat on his feet, W. R. Carles, with another Pekinese dog. Ayrton, Bullock, Carles, Hillier and Mansfield would all become Consuls. Albert’s beard has grown considerably since his arrival. 1870/1871. HPC, Hi-s022.[14]

If this, along with other similar images, conjures up an intensely masculine and somewhat laddish world, the collection brings out a very different aspect, one in which women and children helped to generate a familial atmosphere, which, although alluded to in some accounts, has not been reflected in photographs of this period.[15]

This atmosphere owed much to Wade’s wife, Amelia. The eighth of twelve children born to the famous astronomer, Sir John Herschel and his wife, Margaret, Amelia was said to be ‘everything that the wife of an official in the East should be, thoroughly and fundamentally British, cheery, kind, intelligent, a woman who never made a mistake’.[16]  In just over three years of marriage, she had borne Wade three children and would bear him three more over the next three years. [17]

Figure 5: Amelia Wade. Undated, HPC PF-s0721.

To add to this familial setting, Frederick Mayers, the Chinese Secretary, and his wife, Jeannie (née McKenna) – see figure 6 – had two young boys under the age of five.

Figure 6: Jeannie Mayers. Undated. HPC PF-s0209.

Following Bessie’s arrival, there will most probably have been an early exchange of the cartes de visite which we have seen at figures 1,2, 5 and 6. Although this sometimes occurred as a matter of formality, they were mainly used as ‘tokens of affection’ and a way of sharing images not dissimilar to today’s Facebook or Instagram. Although the above were all taken in England, a stock will have been retained for the purposes of later circulation. [18]  There is a large number of such cartes in the collection and, if many of the sitters cannot be identified, we can be reasonably sure that many relate to this time.[19]  Settling into this world, Bessie and Albert had two children, the first, Amy, arriving on 1 January 1872, and Albert George (always known as Georgie), three years later.

Given that portraits were generally executed in a studio, there are very few photographs of children at a young age and so the one we have at figure 7 is particularly unusual, being taken within the Legation.

Figure 7: Amy and Georgie Pirkis with an unidentified child on the left-hand side and a Chinese man, probably a servant, and three dogs. 1878? HPC PF-s0624.

Although the children appear to be dressed for the occasion, the setting is reasonably informal and can be contrasted with the carte which the Revd Burdon must have presented to Bessie showing himself and his family in a much less relaxed pose.

Figure 8: Revd John Burdon with his wife, Phoebe (née Esther) and their two children. HPC PF-s0179.

A fervent Sinophile, Burdon had spent ten years as a missionary teacher at the Tongwen guan, originally established as a Qing government language school in Beijing in 1862, before leaving in 1873 to take up his appointment as the Bishop of Hong Kong. A close friend of Bessie and Albert, strong religious beliefs will have been an important bond between them.

The picture of Amy and Georgie will almost certainly have been sent to friends and relations at home. That there are no surviving photographs of Albert and Bessie with the two children at this time may well have been because of the difficulty of obtaining formal studio pictures in Peking. However, the photograph at figure 9, taken a little later at one of Hart’s parties, conveys an atmosphere in which children could be both seen and heard, with their being given cart-rides under the careful attention of a Chinese servant:

Figure 9: Group of forty men, women and children, taken in the grounds of Robert Hart’s house. Amy is standing on the left of the four girls wearing a pale dress and hat, Georgie is on the far right, beside the cart. The other children have not been identified. Hart (on the right-hand-side in bowler hat) had a particular affection for Amy, to whom he wrote after the family left Peking, and Georgie, to whom he gave a valuable violin. Undated but probably c. 1880. Taken just before the arrival of the hand-held Kodak, all such photographs had to be formally posed. HPC PF-s0641. Compare with Ca02-100, possibly a more formal occasion, in which there is only one child.

Pidgin English was not spoken in Peking and, spending much time in the care of their amahs, the Legation children all learned some Chinese and, save when with their parents, ‘never spoke any other language among themselves or with anyone else till they were much bigger’. Visiting the Legation, Li Hongzhang (one of the Qing’s most powerful and intimidating officials) delighted to watch them and ‘listen to their fluent Chinese talk’. [20] However, this congenial atmosphere was shattered when, in March 1875, news arrived of the murder of Augustus Margary, a young consular official, whom Bessie and Albert will have known when they first arrived in Peking. Threatening Li with war if his demands were not met, Wade packed his wife and six children off to England in late April 1875, and, whilst Amelia would return, the children would not do so. However, he failed to persuade the other Legation wives to leave for Chefoo (Yantai).[21]

Although Sino-British relations would be extremely tense over the next eighteen months, this does not seem to have unduly affected the pace of legation life. Recently married and appointed First Secretary, Hugh Fraser had arrived in 1874 with his attractive and sophisticated wife, Lady Mary Crawford Fraser. The first of their two children were born the following year, a time when, as she recalled, Peking ‘was enduring the hottest summer on record’. [22]

Figure 10: Lady Mary Crawford Fraser. Taken in Rome, probably shortly before her marriage to Hugh Fraser, where he was Diplomatic Secretary in the British Embassy, before taking up his appointment in Peking. HPC PF-s0254.

With Amy aged four and Georgie just one, it will have been a worrying time for Bessie. The only saving was the complex of Buddhist Temples in the Western Hills, known as Badachu, where Legation wives and children could get away from the heat, smell and noise of the city. Accompanied by the Student Interpreters, for whom studying in such conditions was unthinkable, they would be joined at week-ends by their husbands. [23]

With so many babies arriving and no trained mid-wife on hand, Stephen Bushell will have been responsible for superintending the births. Having then taken long leave, he had returned with his recently-married wife, Florence (née Mathews),‘a typical English girl’, who, according to Mary Fraser,  was in the process of ‘making her new home an exact copy of the Sydenham villa she had left behind her’. [24] Mary’s snobbishness probably did not worry Bessie, whose taste may have been no better than Florence’s. She is not mentioned in Mary’s memoir and, on this occasion, the exchange of cartes may have been more for form’s sake – see figure 10. However, with Pirkis forming a close friendship with Bushell – they were both keen collectors of porcelain – no, doubt, Bessie and Florence had plenty of time to spend together and their cartes will certainly have been exchanged as tokens of affection – see figure 11.[25]

Figure 11: Florence Jane Bushell. Undated. HPC PF-s0091.

Some, but by no means all, of the above images have appeared elsewhere but it is their presence within a single collection, along with all the other photographs, which gives them a particular significance, showing the importance of intimate relations within the formal legation world. After seven years, Bessie had become a leading figure in that world, and, with the children growing up, she was now able to make more of her talents, as we shall see in Part 2.

Andrew Hillier’s The Alcock Album: Scenes of China Consular Life, 1843-1853, will be published by City University Press, Hong Kong, later this year. Click here for more details and updates.

 

[1]  Letter, Hart, Inspector-General, Imperial Maritime Customs to Harry Hillier, 26 October 1883 (Private Collection).

[2] Cf. https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/specialcollections/music-making-in-the-customs-service/

[3]  I am extremely grateful to Nicola Pirkis for allowing me to draw on the Pirkis Collection, which has now been digitised by HPC, and for giving me the benefit of her research on the Pirkis and Levesque families. It was a particular pleasure working with Nicola as she is a great-great-granddaughter of Bessie and Albert, and Harry Hillier, who knew Bessie well and was the recipient of the letter from Hart, was my great-grandfather.

[4] Cf. https://www.flickr.com/photos/whatsthatpicture/galleries/72157628628085879/  https://www.kulturacollective.com/exhibitions_proper/the-shoebox-collection/

[5]   See, for example, It was wonderful: Lully Goon, aviatrix  https://robertbickers.net/

[6] Robert Bickers, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’ in Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh (eds), Visualising China, 1845 -1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp.3-38, quotes at p. 3.

[7] Cf. https://visualisingchina.net/blog/2017/01/26/the-kodak-comes-to-peking/

[8] TNA FO 17/537, letter, Alcock to Auditor-General’s Department, 14 October 1868, 55, referring to Pirkis being granted one year’s leave. He did not leave Hong Kong until 9 March 1869, suggesting that Bessie took longer to accept the proposal than he anticipated or that the wedding had to be delayed for some reason. The journey will have taken about five weeks.

[9] Richmond & Twickenham Times, 12 July 1890.

[10] TNA FO  17/460, letter, Hammond to Daniel Pirkis, 28 February 1866, f.223 and following.

[11] J.E. Hoare, Embassies in the East, The Story of the British and their Embassies in China, Japan and Korea from 1859 to the Present (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), pp. 21-23, HPC BL-n023.

[12]  Previously, Chargé d’ Affaires, Wade formally took up his position in July 1871.

[13]  For life as a Student Interpreter, see ‘Where Chineses Drive.’ English Student-Life at Peking (London: W.H. Allen, 1885), initially published anonymously, but later attributed to W.H. Wilkinson, who joined the Service in 1880 and will have known the Pirkis’s well; for a description of their house, see pp. 26-27; see also Cf. Andrew Hillier, ‘Bridging Cultures: The Forging of the China Consular Mind’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, (2019) 47, pp. 742-772 at pp. 748- 753.

[14] The same photograph is also in the Pirkis Collection, HPC PF-s1016; for legation staff, see PF-s0632 and PF-s0633.

[15] See Nick Pearce, ‘A Life in Peking: The Peabody Albums’, History of Photography, 31 (2007), pp. 276-293 and Terry Bennett, History of Photography in China: Western Photographs, 1861-1879 (London: Quaritch, 2010), p. 31-79.

[16]  Mrs Hugh Fraser, A Diplomatists’ Wife in Many Lands (London: Hutchinson, 1913), II, p.153.

[17] Letters, Hart to Campbell, 1 September 1871 (25), 21 November 1872 (45), 10 February 1875 (119), John K. Fairbank, Katherine Frost Bruner, Elizabeth Macleod Matheson (eds), The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868-1907 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975).

[18] Cf. Bickers, Robert, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’ , pp.21-25, quote at p.24; see also  https://visualisingchina.net/blog/2017/07/07/regimental-cartes-de-visite/

[19] See, especially those at HPC, PF-s0678 and PF-s0818.

[20] Fraser, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands, II, p.191.

[21] For Margary’s murder, see Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), pp. 258-261 and for reaction in the Legation, Fraser, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands, II, pp. 144-149.

[22] Fraser, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands, p.153; for the Frasers, see also Pearce, ‘A Life in Peking’, History of Photography, 31 (2007), pp. 276-293.

[23] Hoare, Embassies in the East, pp. 30-31; ‘Where Chineses Drive’, pp. 197-234; see, for example, Facade of Da xiong bao dian at Fa hai si, HPC, Hv13-13.

[24] Fraser, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands, II, p.148; cf. Helen McCarthy, Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 26-7.

[25] Nick Pearce, “Collecting, Connoisseurship and Commerce: An Examination of the Life and Career of Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844–1908)”, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society. 70: 17–25.

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Need and opportunity: the new HPC website

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Mike Jones

Mike Jones, Research Software Engineer (RSE) in Research IT at the University of Bristol, describes some of the choices underpinning the development of the new ‘Historical Photos of China’ web application.

Moving the project’s digital assets into the custody of Special Collections – as discussed in the post ‘HPC: A Change of Pace’ – provided a need and opportunity to re-engineer the ‘Historical Photographs of China’ platform. Several considerations underpinned this development work:

  • The new application should have similar functionality to the old one. Even though regular site users will notice some minor visual differences, there shouldn’t be any nasty surprises.
  • Existing URLs to the collections and photographs should continue to work. Changes to software or rebrands to websites have a nasty habit of disregarding old URLs, resulting in stale and broken links. However, we wanted to be good ‘net citizens’, ensuring that publications and teaching material referencing the site weren’t now full of stale links.
  • The Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) will be the canonical source for metadata and images. The new system should automatically synchronise with the DAMS for changes to the images and their metadata.
  • The software should follow good engineering practices. For example, the code is underpinned by a suite of tests allowing for automated deployment to the servers. We can be confident that when we need to make changes, such as upgrading third-party software dependencies, the application will not break when deployed to the servers.

We decided to write a new application using the Python/Django web framework since this aligned with other projects and expertise in the team. We used Docker to create a discrete containerised environment that can be replicated on either the development machine of a software engineer or on a production server answering requests across the globe. The application is deployed to a Kubernetes cluster provided by a popular Cloud-provider, so we can scale resources if the site peaks in popularity.

From a personal perspective, this was a fun project to work on. I learned a lot about different technologies, particularly around the DAMS and deployment of containerised applications on Cloud platforms. It was also great to see the University acknowledge the importance of the project and allow us to develop the application in a manner that will allow for better support and maintenance into the future.

Robert Bickers adds: I am very grateful to Mike and colleagues for their work on this project, and to Mike for this discussion of what’s under the HPC bonnet. We now have a long-term sustainable platform, that is linked to the tens of thousands of digital images that we have made over the last sixteen years which are now housed in the University of Bristol’s Digital Assets Management System. Some 21,000 of these are online at present (with a big new collection of c.1,300 more being finalised for publication in the next month or so). This is the fifth different web application through which we have shared the fruits of that work …

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Everything’s changed, but everything’s still the same: HPC update

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Robert Bickers

You might, from today, spot that Historical Photographs of China looks a little different in places. That’s because it is. Over the last two years our friends in the University of Bristol’s Research IT team have been rebuilding our platform in a new environment. 

And not only is the underlying environment a new one, a change driven by the fact that our last iteration (launched in January 2016) was built on software that is nearing the end of its life, it also works in a fundamentally different way. This will not be at all visible to users, but it makes the life of those working with the platform a great deal easier, and it completes our long-term objective to put our entire collection on a much more secure and sustainable footing. 

Extending this revision to the mirror site hosted by our friends at Shanghai Jiaotong University’s School of Humanities will take us a little longer, but this will also be relaunched on this new platform. 

All your old favourites are still here, not least the Lucky Dip, and c.21,300 images in total. We have streamlined some bits and pieces, and will shortly move our Links page permanently to the blog (at this page). Otherwise, what you saw, is what you will continue to get. And if you’re new here: Welcome! 欢迎！歡迎！Enjoy! 

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Location/Dislocation – Admiral Keppel, the Chinese Buddha at Sandringham and three key photographs

Posted on November 16, 2022 by Jamie Carstairs

Jamie Carstairs (Special Collections, University of Bristol Library) is researching the work of Charles Frederick Moore (1838-1916). In this post, Photodetective Carstairs reinvestigates a photographic cold case…

Fig. 1. A gilded bronze Buddha, with two unidentified men, British Legation, Beijing, c. 1869. A rare, hand-coloured print of a photograph by Charles Frederick Moore. Image courtesy of the Terry Bennett Collection (ref: BPEK-3).

Fig. 1. A gilded bronze Buddha, with two unidentified men, British Legation, Beijing, c. 1869. A rare, hand-coloured print of a photograph by Charles Frederick Moore. Image courtesy of the Terry Bennett Collection (ref: BPEK-3).

In my mind, three golden Buddhas lined up in a row, as if in a one-armed bandit of yore; there was a laden, brain defogging pause, then “Aha! I think I have it”, a cascade of thoughts, followed by a flurry of checking and googling to confirm the hunch.

In 2013, this image (fig. 1) of a gilded bronze Buddha was shared with the Historical Photographs of China team, along with analysis which compellingly indicated that the location was the British Legation, Beijing.

Curiously, it was observed by one investigator that the pedestal was made of wood.[1] The unusual photograph raised additional questions for me – why was the ‘Laughing Buddha’ outdoors, apparently in a garden? And why were the European men posed, in seemingly proprietorial stances, beside a Chinese devotional object? All very odd. The perplexing picture was mentally added to my ‘unresolved puzzles’ pile.

Fig. 2. This faded print of a photograph by Charles Frederick Moore, is pasted into his album at the Irish Jesuit Archive and captioned ‘Big Bell’ed God, Pekin’. Other known prints are labelled ‘The Bronze Joss Ta tu tza, Peking’ (i.e. The bronze, big-bellied god, Beijing) and ‘Bronze Idol’. Reference image courtesy of the Irish Jesuit Archive, Dublin.

Fig. 2. This faded print of a photograph by Charles Frederick Moore, is pasted into his album at the Irish Jesuit Archive and captioned ‘Big Bell’ed God, Pekin’. Other known prints are labelled ‘The Bronze Joss Ta tu tza, Peking’ (i.e. The bronze, big-bellied god, Beijing) and ‘Bronze Idol’. Reference image courtesy of the Irish Jesuit Archive, Dublin.

Years later, the same photograph (fig. 2) was spotted in Charles Frederick Moore’s album at the Irish Jesuit Archive, Dublin, piquing further my interest in it.[2] This summer, prompted by my ‘one-armed bandit’ whim, I looked closely at an old post card (fig. 3) I’d bought on ebay, of the Buddha at Sandringham House, Norfolk, England – the country retreat belonging to King Charles – and was astonished to realise that the Sandringham Buddha was the same one as the Peking Buddha in Moore’s photograph.

The revelation led to more discoveries and is quite a story in itself. Admiral Sir Henry Keppel, Commander-in-Chief, China Station, is said to have ‘found’ or ‘purchased’ the Buddha in Peking. He had the ‘Joss’ (as Britons routinely referred to such icons at the time) spirited out of China and shipped to England aboard HMS Rodney. Keppel gave it to his friend, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), as a housewarming gift for his new house at Sandringham in Norfolk.

Fig. 3. The ‘Chinese Idol,’ at Sandringham House, Norfolk, England, c.1925. The Chinoiserie wooden ‘pagoda’ over the sculpture was put up by estate carpenters, for Edward, Prince of Wales, in the 1870s. The canopy was demolished in 1960, as the woodwork had become rotten. The Buddha was (and still is) flanked by two granite Japanese lions, also presented by Admiral Keppel.

Fig. 3. The ‘Chinese Idol,’ at Sandringham House, Norfolk, England, c.1925. The Chinoiserie wooden ‘pagoda’ over the sculpture was put up by estate carpenters, for Edward, Prince of Wales, in the 1870s. The canopy was demolished in 1960, as the woodwork had become rotten. The Buddha was (and still is) flanked by two granite Japanese lions, also presented by Admiral Keppel.

While staying at the British Legation, Beijing, in 1869 Keppel, noted in his journal that ‘The Joss went off on Saturday’ – i.e. 22 May 1869.[3] The Rodney finally left Chinese waters on 23 September 1869, departing from Hong Kong, along with two granite Japanese lions (also to be given to the Prince), two bears, a pair of cassowaries and some pigs, and arrived at Portsmouth on 12 April 1870. The Buddha was delivered via King’s Lynn, to Sandringham House shortly afterwards.

These dates might help the identification of the men in Moore’s photograph. They have long been thought to be the great Scottish photographer John Thomson on the left, with Legation surgeon, Dr John Dudgeon, also a noteworthy figure in the history of photography in China, on the right. But, as far we know, John Thomson didn’t get to Beijing until 1871. Dr Dudgeon was resident in the city in 1869, but the man in the photograph does not look like him. Known, reliably captioned pictures of Dudgeon do not resemble the bushily bearded man on the right, whose workaday clothes do not look like those of a Victorian doctor, a member of the professional, upper middle class. So, who are the men?

Keppel recorded that whilst he was at the British Legation, he ‘went to see the Joss that the Sergeant of Minister’s Bodyguard has brought for me’, on 20 May 1869.[4] A man called Franklin was the Sergeant of the British Minister’s Bodyguard in 1869, that is, the senior Legation escort and guard.[5] It is feasible that the men with the Buddha in Moore’s photograph include Franklin and another of the guard, but I have no evidence to support this speculation. How the sculpture came to be at the British Legation also remains a mystery. If it was purchased from impoverished Buddhist priests or monks, in which temple or monastery had it been?

Fig. 4. The ‘Laughing Buddha’ (Budai) at Sandringham House, August 1934, when still housed under a ‘pagoda’ canopy. Note the good condition of the gilt. Photograph by George Plunkett (Source: http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/).

Fig. 4. The ‘Laughing Buddha’ (Budai) at Sandringham House, August 1934, when still housed under a ‘pagoda’ canopy. Note the good condition of the gilt. Photograph by George Plunkett (Source: http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/).

Keppel further recorded that ‘Sir Rutherford [Alcock, British Minister, Beijing] directed that it should be carefully covered with matting for fear any dévote Chinaman should take umbrage at a god being removed from the Celestial Empire.’[6] Perhaps coincidentally, a roll of matting can be seen in the background of Moore’s photograph. One can speculate that the matting had just been taken off the sculpture for the photographer. The Buddha and Keppel travelled by waterways from Beijng to Tianjin, accompanied by a Chinese Official. Keppel noted: ‘The mandarin who accompanied us was anxious to know if I should burn incense before it when I got home. I have no doubt he thought I was a convert to Buddhism.’[7]

Fig. 5. Sir Henry Keppel, known as ‘The Little Admiral’, with his friend, Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), in 1894. The Prince was instrumental in Keppel procuring the command of the Royal Navy fleet in China in 1866. Photograph as reproduced in ‘Memoir of Sir Henry Keppel. C.G.B., Admiral of the Fleet’ by Sir Algernon West (1905).

Fig. 5. Sir Henry Keppel, known as ‘The Little Admiral’, with his friend, Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), in 1894. The Prince was instrumental in Keppel procuring the command of the Royal Navy fleet in China in 1866. Photograph as reproduced in ‘Memoir of Sir Henry Keppel. C.G.B., Admiral of the Fleet’ by Sir Algernon West (1905).

Keppel added that he ‘sent a photograph of it [the Buddha] to General Knollys’, who was Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household of the Prince of Wales.[8] This was most likely the photograph by Moore. It is reasonable to deduce that Keppel had commissioned Moore to take the photograph, as a record, and in order to send to Sir Francis Knollys, as Knollys was involved in planning the gardens at Sandringham House. Unfortunately Keppel’s covering correspondence with Knollys and this particular print of Moore’s photograph are unlikely to have survived, as Knollys destroyed many of his papers relating to the Prince of Wales, for fear of scandal.

The ‘Laughing Buddha’ (Budai) is an incarnation of the Maitreya in a specific guise. The big belly of the Bodhisattva represents ‘a number of Chinese life-ideals’ – a genial, prosperous, well-fed, spiritually contented being, happy in his own body and surrounded by his gamboling children.[9] For the Royals, the ‘Chinese Joss’ is said to have been referred to by the affectionate nickname ‘John Chinaman’ or ‘Mr Chinaman’.[10] James Pope-Hennessy wrote that the Princesses Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and Margaret, when children, called him ‘Laughy’ or ‘Goddy’.[11] Their mother wrote in a letter to King George V in 1924 that she hoped that ‘the little yellow Chinaman is bringing the luck he is supposed to’.[12]

Fig. 6. The Sandringham Buddha’s big toe, the gilt rubbed off for luck, or in veneration, by visitors, who also nowadays leave coins in his lap. Photograph by Jamie Carstairs. A memory of taking photographs of the Buddha in 1994 surfaced this summer, along with figs. 1 and 3, to connect the Sandringham Buddha with the Beijing Buddha photographed by Charles Frederick Moore.

Fig. 6. The Sandringham Buddha’s big toe, the gilt rubbed off for luck, or in veneration, by visitors, who also nowadays leave coins in his lap. Photograph by Jamie Carstairs. A memory of taking photographs of the Buddha in 1994 surfaced this summer, along with figs. 1 and 3, to connect the Sandringham Buddha with the Beijing Buddha photographed by Charles Frederick Moore.

As for visitors to Sandringham House, the Buddha is something of a dislocated, gaudy curiosity. Helen Cathcart described the divinity as ‘blandly-smiling’; James Pope-Hennessy likened his ‘lascivious smirk’ to the face of the Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev; Mike Biles found its ‘unpleasant little smirk’ ‘slightly creepy’; to Elle Seymour, the sculpture is a ‘happy chappy’.[13]

The gilded bronze Maitreya Bodhisattva, now bereft of its ‘pagoda’ shelter, still graces the gardens of Sandringham House, fully exposed to the elements, stained, scratched, and gently corroding. The artwork is recorded as having been made in 1690 by Yen-Ling-Yin and Ling-Sun, Buddhist priests/foundry workers.[14] The representation of the deity was found to have many Chinese coins inside it, presumed to be the offerings of the faithful at some long-forgotten place of worship.[15] Whether one considers the seventeenth century Laughing Buddha as an ‘extraordinarily fine’ historical work of art, or as a holy object, is it fitting that it is today a sad and neglected garden ornament?[16]

[1] Li Weiwen, in correspondence with the photohistorian Terry Bennett, had noted that the bronze statue of the Buddha with its Tibetan style coronet, was on a wooden pedestal (see the carpentry joins at the corners), i.e., not made of either stone or bronze. This suggested that the Buddha was outdoors temporarily. The building behind it was not a temple/monastery, nor an ordinary house, rather it was built in a high-status style. Li Weiwen further observed variations in the brickwork, indicating new construction added to old. As the British Legation in Beijing was previously a prince’s palace and was much augmented by the British, Li proposed that the Legation could well be the exact location. Many thanks to Terry Bennett for sharing images from his collection with me.

[2] As well as the print in Moore’s album at the Irish Jesuit Archive (fig. 2), there’s another one in ‘Bibianne’s album’ (the album Moore’s wife, Bibianne Yii Moore, gave to Hester Hart) and also, in addition to the hand-coloured print (fig.1), there’s an uncoloured print in Terry Bennet’s Collection in amongst a set of known Moore photographs.

[3] Admiral Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life Under Four Sovereigns (London: Macmillan, 1899), vol. III, p. 261.

[4] Keppel, A Sailor’s Life, vol. III, p. 260.

[5] The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan & The Philippines, for the Year 1869 (Hong Kong: Daily Press, 1869).

[6] Keppel, A Sailor’s Life, vol. III, p. 261. Perhaps sensitivities about the looting of 1860 remained acute.

[7] Keppel, A Sailor’s Life, vol. III, p. 259.

[8] Keppel, A Sailor’s Life, vol. III, p. 260.

[9] Kenneth K.S. Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 405-408. Many thanks to Professor Rupert Gethin for this reference.

[10] Mentioned in William Shawcross, Counting One’s Blessings: Duchess of York: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (London: Macmillan, 2013).

[11] James Pope-Hennessy (ed. Hugo Vickers), The Quest for Queen Mary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018), p. 89.

[12] Letter from Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother to George V, 14 January 1924, quoted in William Shawcross, Counting One’s Blessings: Duchess of York: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

[13] Helen Cathcart, Sandringham: The Story of a Royal Home (London: W.H. Allen, 1964), p. 95; James Pope-Hennessy (ed. Hugo Vickers), The Quest for Queen Mary, p. 89; Mike Biles, ‘A Bit about Britain’; Elle Seymour, The Royal’s Smuggled House Warming Gift at Sandringham (2022).

[14] The Chinese Joss (‘John Chinaman’). Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk (RACNS).

[15] Helen Cathcart, Sandringham, p. 96.

[16] The Chinese Joss (‘John Chinaman’). Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk (RACNS).

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The Forbidden City at War: Images of the Wartime Evacuation of the Imperial Art Collections

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Guest

Adam Brookes is the author of Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City, published in September 2022 by Chatto & Windus, London. He was for many years a journalist for BBC News, serving as Jakarta Correspondent, Beijing Correspondent, and Washington Correspondent.

China’s hapless last emperor, Pu Yi, vacated the Forbidden City at gunpoint in November, 1924. Less than a year later, the Forbidden City became the Palace Museum and opened its doors to Peking’s public. Rapturous crowds came to wander the halls and courtyards that had been home to the emperors of the Ming and Qing empires, and to gaze upon the magnificent imperial art collections for the first time.

For a few short years, the Palace Museum conserved and exhibited the million art objects and texts in its care, and came as close as it could to flourishing. Its finances were permanently shaky and its leadership faced criticism, envy and accusations of corruption, but it grew into one of the principal cultural institutions of the young Republic of China. The objects on display underwent a transfiguration: where once they had constituted the private, hidden treasure of emperors, now they stood as ‘national’ treasures, property of the young nation state and evidence of a ‘national’ history and patrimony.

By the early 1930s, however, the Palace Museum’s leadership fretted at the threat posed by Japan’s military incursions into China’s territory. Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931 followed by the bombing of Shanghai by Japanese naval aircraft in 1932 gave rise to the terrifying notion that Peking, too, could be bombed from the air, that Japanese troops might occupy and loot the city of its treasures. The museum’s board of directors came to a drastic realisation: the imperial collections would have to be evacuated from Peking. The museum’s curators began to pack..

Fig. 1. Packing artefacts for evacuation from the Forbidden City, 1932. Photographer unknown.

The rarest, most irreplaceable pieces were packed by the curators in wooden cases, wrapped in cotton wadding and hemp cord to keep them separated and immobile.  The photograph above is one of a very few known images of the packing process. The wooden case was one of nearly twenty thousand that would be packed, inventoried and labelled in 1932 and 1933, and evacuated from Peking. The curators, wearing long robes against the cold and the fedoras fashionable at the time, along with a uniformed soldier, are preparing to pack bronze wine jars that date from the Han period. Those same jars are today on display at the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. ‘Zhong’ wine vessel, Western Han period, c. 1st-3rd century BCE, National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The curators packed 28,000 pieces of porcelain, more than 8,000 paintings and a similar number of objects worked in jade. They packed ivories and jewellery, swords, libraries, archives, clocks and tapestries. In February 1933, the first of 19,557 wooden cases containing perhaps a quarter of a million objects and texts from the Forbidden City and other Peking institutions, awaited transport. Hundreds of porters hefted the cases out of the Forbidden City at night and took them by truck and cart to Ch’ienmen railway station to be loaded aboard freight cars.

Fig. 3. Packed cases awaiting transport out of Peking, February 1933.

The evacuated cases went first by train to Shanghai for storage in the French Concession, a strange choice, perhaps, given the fighting in Shanghai in 1932. The museum seems to have felt that the extraterritoriality of the foreign concessions might guarantee the collections’ safety, at least until a more permanent solution could be found. As the 1930s wore on and war engulfed China, the imperial collections, bundled and immobilised in their packing cases, traveled thousands of miles across China in search of safety. Their voyage lasted sixteen years.

At the heart of this extraordinary enterprise was Ma Heng (Fig. 4), who became acting director of the Palace Museum in 1933, and was confirmed in the post in 1934. It was a politically dangerous job; Ma’s  predecessor, Yi P’ei-chi, was hounded out of the museum amid accusations of corruption and theft, and  died in penury.  Ma Heng was a wealthy businessman and antiquarian scholar who became a professor at Peking University. He played a significant role in the introduction of modern methods to Chinese archeology. He was a retiring, cautious figure, but enjoyed a measure of loyalty and respect among the museum’s curators.

Fig. 4. Ma Heng (1881-1955)

Ma Heng administered the imperial collections’ years-long, hair-raising journey to the far west of China by steamship, train and truck, raft (Fig. 5) and porter. He found storage for them in a cave in Guizhou province, and in village temples and ancestral halls in Sichuan. In these remote locations, far from the front line but still within range of Japanese bombers, the collections passed the Second World War under the care of a small band of loyal curators. Their move to the far west, into areas still controlled by the battered Republic of China, mirrored the wider migration of people, bureaucracy, industries, universities and schools from east to west in the face the Japanese advance. While the curators were preoccupied with the cases’ safety and the collections’ integrity, their effort perhaps was part of a larger effort on the part of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime to ensure that the idea of an independent, sovereign China did not die.

Fig. 5 Trucks loaded with cases containing the imperial collections cross a river on a bamboo raft, c. 1939.

In the late 1940s, as China fell back into civil war, the imperial collections remained packed in their wooden cases and were stored in Nanjing. In 1948, Chiang Kai-shek decreed that the very finest pieces of the collections would accompany him and his shattered republic on their retreat to Taiwan. Nearly three thousand cases containing imperial porcelain, masterpieces on hanging scroll and handscroll, ancient bronzes, luminescent jades, archives and encyclopaedias made the journey by ship to Keelung, and then into storage in warehouses in Taiwan’s central highlands. The imperial collections, which had resided in the Forbidden City for centuries, were now split, and have never been reunited.

Fig. 6. Cases containing the imperial collections in storage in Taiwan, circa 1950

Figure 6 shows the cases neatly stacked in storage after arrival in Taiwan, each one’s label facing outwards for easy identification. On these particular cases, the character 院 yuan indicates that the contents originated in the Palace Museum as opposed to any other Peking institution, and the character 沪 hu indicates that the case was packed by, and contains objects from, the museum’s Antiquities Department rather than the Library or Archives. The numbers denote the cases’ place in the catalogues, and from them the curators would have been able to deduce the exact contents.

Today, the imperial collections remain divided between museums in Taiwan and in the People’s Republic of China. They continue to carry with them a certain political charge. For some, they are evidence of the greatness of ‘Chinese civilization’; others view them as symbolic of a ‘divided China’ yearning for wholeness once more. Some in Taiwan see them as part of an outdated attempt to impose an alien culture, and wish them gone. Have the imperial collections of China finally reached their resting places? It may be too soon to say.

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A name, a photograph, and a history of global connections

Posted on September 30, 2022 by Helena F. S. Lopes

Dr Helena F. S. Lopes is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Department of History, University of Bristol

The Portuguese were one of the largest communities in Shanghai from the 1840s until the early 1950s. Although many had a Macanese family background, not all did. An important connection, virtually ignored in the existing literature, links some Portuguese families in China not to Macau or Hong Kong, but to India. This blog post is about one of them.

While working on the edition of a 1937 report written by the Portuguese consul in the city during the battle of Shanghai, a name caught my attention: ‘Joaquim Bernardino de S. Lazaro’, ‘owner of the Sam Lazaro Brothers Firm’ in Shanghai. In the report, Bernardino de Sam Lazaro is mentioned as one of the prominent members of a relief commission set up to assist Portuguese nationals in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese hostilities. Among other tasks, this volunteer commission played a decisive role in helping evacuate members of the community out of Shanghai. Bernardino de Sam Lazaro’s actions are singled out for praise for having lent a company truck and one of his personal cars to the consulate, used to carry people and their luggage in their flight to safer locations.

Intrigued, I searched for more information and one of the pieces of the puzzle was found right here on the Historical Photographs of China Project website! A photograph by Malcolm Rosholt showing Chinese refugees passing in front of the Sam Lazaro Bros shop window on Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s foremost commercial avenue. Taken by the American journalist, the photograph was contemporaneous to the consul’s report: both are sources by foreign observers of China’s War of Resistance. And in the middle of both, hidden amongst other information, is Sam Lazaro.

Refugees outside Sam Lazaro Bros shop, Shanghai, 1937. Photograph by Malcolm Rosholt. HPC ref: Ro-n0186

A bit more digging helped shed additional light on this company and the family who found it and ran it. Sam Lazaro Bros (賚瑞羅音樂所 Lai Ruiluo yinyuesuo [Lazaro music house]) was set up by three Sam Lazaro Brothers, one of whom was Bernardino, in 1916 or 1924.[1] It imported pianos and other musical instruments and records from North America and Europe. An entry for Sam Lazaro Bros in the 1925 volume of Seaports of the Far East lists the company as ‘Importers of Musical Merchandise, Piano Tuners and Repairers’ at 125 Szechuan (Sichuan) Road. The 1938 Directory and Chronicle for China, Japan, Korea, etc. listed it on 130 Nanjing Road. Other sources locate the company at 232 Nanjing Road (for example, this entry on the website ‘The Pipe Organ in China Project’). I was excited to find that the firm was also connected to cinema.  Seemingly, it was a ticket agent for major film theatres in Shanghai like the Cathay or the Nanking. Indeed, two film posters can be seen outside the shop in Rosholt’s photograph.

An advertisement for the screening of George Cukor’s film Holiday (1938) at the Nanking Theatre, with the information (at the bottom) ‘Downtown Booking at Sam Lazaro Bros’, published in The China Press, 15 October 1938. Several film listings published in the Shanghai press in the 1920s and 1930s had similar references to the firm.

According to information in Chinese cited in the entry about the company in MADSpace, Sam Lazaro Bros also had branches in Panaji (Pangim), Goa’s capital (then under Portuguese rule) and Yangon (Rangoon, then under British rule), which illustrates how the company’s owners – like other families in Asia – straddled the British and the Portuguese imperial worlds, not simply in East Asia but also in South and Southeast Asia. I later came across archival files from 1949 and 1951 on some members of the Sam Lazaro family, confirming their registration at the Shanghai consulate as Portuguese, possibly from when they were preparing to leave the city. Bernardino is listed as having been born in ‘Margão, Portuguese India’ in 1888.

A genealogy website lists Joaquim Bernardino de Sam Lazaro as having died in Shanghai in 1972, an intriguing information as the great majority of Portuguese nationals had left Shanghai by the early 1950s. Could he have been one of the few foreigners to remain in the People’s Republic of China? Possibly not, as another ancestry website states that he passed away in Bangalore, India. A brief mention in this article also notes that the family left Shanghai for Bangalore in 1951 and that, later, some members went to the United States (one of Bernardino’s sons, Fred de Sam Lazaro, is a distinguished journalist). The same article mentions Bernardino’s wife was a physician and there’s a brief February 1941 report in the North China Herald on Bernardino’s marriage to ‘Dr. Alda da Silva’ at the (Catholic) Church of Christ the King. Did Dr Silva practice medicine in Shanghai? I haven’t yet found an answer to this.

In sum, a name in a report and a photograph on HPC opened a window into a history of global migration involving China, India, Burma, Britain (through the British Empire), Portugal, and the US. They are also linked to a history of global circulation of commodities such as musical instruments and of the distribution of Hollywood films in China, mediated by companies like Sam Lazaro Bros, that were both local and transnational.

*

[1] The entry about the company in Dr Cécile Armand’s MADSpace platform gives a founding date of 1916 whilst Dr Szu-Wei Chen’s ‘The Music Industry and Popular Song in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai: A Historical and Stylistic Analysis’ (PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 2007) states it was set up in 1924 (p. 137).

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‘Normal’ Lives Led in Abnormal Conditions

Posted on July 21, 2022 by Andrew Hillier

Dr Andrew Hillier shows how a recently- discovered collection of photographs shines a spotlight on the importance of family in treaty port China in the early twentieth century.

On 12 April 1899, Edith Sarah Sharples and Walter James Clennell were married in Shanghai’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.  Clennell had joined the China Consular Service as a Student Interpreter at the age of twenty in 1888, and, having quickly made his mark, had already risen to the position of Acting Consul.[1] Six years his junior, Edie had also been living in China for some years. The fourth child and eldest daughter of John Sharples and his wife, Sarah (née Mercer), her father had left the family home in Birkenhead in the late 1870s and, arriving in Shanghai, had established his reputation as a skilled engineer. Edie’s mother and at least four of the five children had joined him some ten years later and were all still living in China at the time of the wedding. Walter and Edie would spend the next twenty-five years in the country, a time that is reflected in a rich collection of family photographs. [2]

Unlike the wives of so many consular officials, whose lives have been overshadowed by their husbands’ careers, in this collection, Edie occupies centre stage, along with her siblings and the growing brood of children within the Sharples family circle.[3]

1. Edie’s brother, Herbert and (from left) Hetty (née Heukendorff), wife of Edie’s brother, Ernest, who may have taken the snapshot, Amy (Herbert’s wife), Edie, and ‘progeny’: Jiujiang, c. 1904.

1. Edie’s brother, Herbert and (from left) Hetty (née Heukendorff), wife of Edie’s brother, Ernest, who may have taken the snapshot, Amy (Herbert’s wife), Edie, and ‘progeny’: Jiujiang, c. 1904.[4] CF01-075

As Edie and Walter approached their wedding, the Boxer movement was spreading through the north of China and would leave a bitter legacy and continuing resentment at the Western presence, although some would look back to this time as the golden age of the Consular Service.[5]  Against that background, family and its practices provided a key mechanism for restoring ‘normality’ to treaty life. In addition to the formal pictures taken by photographic studios- mainly Chinese -, the everyday could be snapped with a hand-held Kodak. Little different to today’s selfies, circulated amongst friends, enclosed in letters home and, as here, pasted into albums, these images, in Robert Bickers’ words, played ‘a vital role within networks of family communications, forming a private economy of exchange and understanding’.[6]  However, despite appearances, these lives were far from normal, spent as they were in ‘alien surroundings far from home … in most abnormal conditions’. [7]

2. ‘Abnormal conditions’: Walter and Edie and child, setting off on a round of social calls. Given that their little son, Lindsey, died in 1903, either the date is incorrect or, if correct, the child must be May, who will have been aged one at the time. Formally posed, the photograph may have been taken by a member of the consular staff. CF02-05 and 07.

And, for Walter and Edie, as with so many treaty port families, it was a life punctuated by frequent illness, the death of two of their children, extensive travelling and lengthy separations.

By the time of the wedding, the Sharples family had become well-known in Shanghai, not least because of its participation in Shanghai’s amateur theatricals which were enthusiastically covered in the pages of the North China Herald.

3 ‘The Gondoliers’, Shanghai, January, 1896. Edie is on the far right. The photograph was most probably taken by a commercial agency. CF03-004

Although Coates suggests that the introduction first came from Edie’s brother, Herbert, when he was working in Shanshi (Shasi) and Walter had been serving there as Acting Consul, she and Walter probably met in Shanghai, when he was serving as Clerk to the Supreme Court.[8]

4. An English way of life: lawn tennis in Shanghai – possibly 1898. Edie is first left. CF03-014

These early days are recorded in a number of photographs which then lead up to the wedding. Attended by her younger sister, Connie, and one other bridesmaid, Edie was, according to The North China Herald, ‘attired in white corded silk rimmed with chiffon’, and was given away by her father in the presence of ‘a numerous gathering of relatives and friends’.[9]

5. Edie on her wedding day, 12 April 1899, with, inset, bridesmaid, Miss Jeffrey. CF03-024.

Five days later, the happy couple set off up the Yangzi for the consulate at Wuhu, where Walter had been recently appointed Acting Consul but it would not be for long, as, soon afterwards, he was off again, this time to Jiujiang (Kiukiang). Edie was already pregnant and it was there that [Ernest] Frank was safely delivered on 2 February 1900.  But the Boxers were closing in and, the following month, together with a number of British women and children residing in Yangzi treaty ports, Edie was collected by a warship and taken to safety in Shanghai. There, little Frank was formally photographed by the well-known studio, Ying Cheong. [10]

6. Frank’s first studio portrait, March 1900 aged one month. CF01-061.

Meanwhile, Walter stayed on to face the music, but, although threatened, the consulate was not attacked and, following the relief of the legations in August, 1900, he and Edie were able to resume their life in Jiujiang. Over the next ten years, he would serve, initially as Acting Consul and, from 1902, Consul, in four treaty ports and during this time, they would have four more children.

The second, [Walter] Lindsey, was born in the summer resort of Kuling (Lushan) in July 1901 and, two years later, Walter and Edie set off for England for their first spell of home leave – furlough as it was called – since they got married. She was pregnant again and May was born in the Sharples family home in Birkenhead in March 1903. However, just a month later, Lindsey contracted meningitis and died, weakened so the doctor said, by an illness contracted soon after birth.  Against this melancholy backdrop, Edie was introduced to Walter’s family. Returning to Jiujiang, the photographs were a poignant reminder of their time in England and Lindsey’s short life.

7. Lindsey and Frank, Birkenhead, January 1903. Two months later, Lindsey contracted meningitis and died. CF01-078

Further tragedy was to follow. In June 1905, Edie gave birth to Beryl, once again in Kuling, but the child died within two months. Writing to the British Minister in Peking, Sir Ernest Satow, on the day she died (2 August), Walter said that the child had been ‘apparently healthy and was ailing only since July 28th so that her death is as much a surprise as a shock to us’. Attributing it in part to the unhealthy climate, he asked if he could be transferred to a port out of the Yangzi region.[11] In response, two months later, Satow instructed Walter to open a consulate at Jinan (Tsinan), the provincial capital of Shandong. The purpose, he said, was not so much to perform consular duties as to keep an eye on Germany, which, from its base on the coast at Qingdao (Tsingtao), was rapidly extending its influence in the region. [12]

A further private letter from Walter to Satow gives a good idea of the arduous journey the family made from Jiujiang. Having taken the steamer down the Yangzi, they spent a few nights in Shanghai before boarding the Taksang on 24th November for Qingdao.  Both Frank and May were ill with bronchitis, Edie had severe sciatica and everyone was seasick. By the time they arrived four days later, May was seriously ill and, so the German doctor advised them, they needed to complete the journey as soon as possible. However, as Walter told Satow, it was bitterly cold and it ‘would have been madness to expose either of the children to the biting northerly wind’ that night and so they left for Jinan by train the following day.

Fortunately, that was a beautifully fine and mild day and the 12½ hours railway journey in a well warmed carriage did them good rather than harm. But there was a chair ride of 4 miles or so from the railway station to this house – and this, in the cold of the evening, brought on a rather serious relapse in the case of Frank. [13]

Terrified that they were about to lose another child, they kept both children in bed and Frank and May slowly began to recover. Although long-term accommodation was difficult to find, by the end of the year, they had settled in.

8. King’s Birthday picnic, 9 November 1906. Thousand Buddha Cliff Xino Temple, Jinan (Tsinan). Frank, May and Edie in front. Those named on the back include the German consul, Dr J. Merklinghaus (seated at front on left-hand-side), and other members of the German community, Daotai Chwang and a number of Chinese figures- ‘our number 3 chair coolie’, Monsieur and Madame Li, the amah, and ‘Boy’. Inscribed ‘for Connie’, the photograph seems to have been taken by a commercial agency and to have been sent to Edie’s younger sister.[14] CF01-083

There, in the consulate, on 18 February 1908, Walter John was born. In his engaging memoir, Jack, as he was always known, recalled that the birth had taken place ‘in the shadow of China’s great Holy Mountain, Tai Shan’, which could be seen 35 miles away and this gave him, so his mother thought, ‘an auspicious start in life’. [15] The following year, tired of having too little to do, Walter was pleased to be appointed as Consul to Hangzhou, a port on the Grand Canal, and, once again they were on the move.

9. The Consulate at Hangzhou, 1909, with children seated on the lawn. CF01-001

However, although they were in a fine consular building, the surroundings were unhealthy and Edie and May soon contracted typhoid. While they both made a good recovery, it was decided that Edie should take all three children to England to recuperate. Travelling by the recently- opened Trans-Siberian Railway, the journey was reduced to fifteen days but was still a major undertaking for Edie without Walter on hand to help.

They re-joined him the following year and this somewhat peripatetic life ended in 1911 with his appointment to Yingkou, Newchwang (Yingzi). A remote port in Manchuria, it had a splendid, if bracing climate, with the River Liao being closed by ice from mid-November to mid- March.[16]  He and Edie would remain there for the next ten years, save for spending a year’s furlough in England in 1913. Their sixth child, James Geoffrey (Jim), had been born the previous year and, when they returned to China in the Spring of 1914, they brought Jack and Jim with them but left Frank and May to be educated at schools in England, unsuspecting that, with the outbreak of war, they would not be able to re-join them. Boarding with relatives, Frank and May remained separated from their parents for the next five years. Meanwhile, able to run free, and surrounded by friends, Jack and Jim enjoyed what Jack’s memoir depicts as an idyllic childhood.

10. Empire Day at the British Consulate, Yingzi, 25 May 1914. The names are captioned on the reverse side. Edie is seated on the far right with Walter standing behind her. Jack and Jim must be there somewhere. CF01-143 and 144.

Although they were largely unaffected by the war, they had to sever their ties with their many German friends and, as a number of photographs show, the concession was draped with banners reading, ‘God bless our native land’. Busying herself with war work, Edie formed a local branch of the Women’s Needlework Guild, which sent back large consignments of knitted garments for the troops at the Western Front. [17]

11. British women’s war work, Yingzi, 12 January to 17 March 1917. CF 01- 178

With China entering the war on the side of the allies in 1917, Clennell took charge of recruiting volunteers from the local area for the Chinese Labour Corps

12. Chinese Labour Corps assembled at the Qingdao Camp under the command of Mr Sandbach. The photo was taken by a Mr van Ess and sent to Clennell, whom he knew well, accompanied by a letter praising ‘the smartness of the work done in moulding raw material’. CF01-190 and 191

Walter had become deeply interested in Chinese religion and the family accompanied him as he travelled around the region, visiting temples and chatting to sages. Although remote, the port was frequently visited by warships in the summer and Edie much enjoyed playing hostess to their officers.

In 1919, she and Walter were at last able to take a period of home leave and be re-united with Frank and May. They returned to China the following year, bringing May and Geoff with them, but leaving the two older boys, Frank and Jack, in England. They would only meet again when Walter retired six years later after serving in two considerably less remote treaty ports Zhenjiang (Chinkiang) and Fuzhou (Foochow).

13. May and Edie, Fuzhou Consulate,1922, possibly taken by Walter. CF01-231

Schooled as a Student Interpreter in the late 1880s, Walter had no doubts about the validity of Britain’s imperial cause. However, from his earliest days in China, he had been fascinated by its culture. Having published a history of its religions in 1917, he devoted his retirement to writing a wider study of the country and its people. [18]  Having become a recognised authority, in 1928, he was invited to visit Cambridge University and discuss the possibility of his accepting the Chair of Chinese Studies. Tragically, as he made his way from the railway station, he was knocked down by a milk cart and killed.  His unfinished history of China now resides in the library of his old school, Felsted.

Sharing Walter’s values, Edie had also developed a love of the country and become a considerable collector. She lived on for another twenty-six years in their home in Hitchin. Visiting her in December 1950, the Hitchin News described her, surrounded by Chinese objects and memorabilia, her sitting-room providing ‘a vivid nostalgic glimpse of China, its walls hung with gleaming Chinese tapestries and pictures’.[19]  As the article concluded,

her unflagging interest in others enables her to live to the full the spirit of the inscription on the scarlet Chinese visiting card used by her husband on his official duties: ‘Lo Miss Lo’ – ‘he delights in other people’s happiness.[20]

A number of different narratives can be spun out of this collection of photographs. Even though exchanged within only a limited circle, they can be seen as part of what has been called a ‘colonizer’s handbook’ and ‘a documentation exercise that symbolised possession’.[21] Certainly, they served to normalise and reinforce the apparent legitimacy of the British presence. But, they also include images of Chinese people and, while these are formally posed, with our knowledge of Walter Clennell, we can infer that there was an easier relationship with Chinese officialdom. There again, it is clear that none of these people played any part in the family’s day-to-day life and remained very ‘foreign’ to them.  When viewing them on that intimate level, we must distinguish between the volumes which were put together many years later and the album which was compiled closer to the time of the events being recorded. It seems to have been Jack Clennell who used three ring-binders to set out the family story by way of photographs and typed captions, and this may well have been done to accompany the account which he was writing at a time when memories of the treaty port world were fast fading.[22]  Viewed alongside its early chapters, the images are designed to conjure up the family’s life in China and scenes of a happy childhood but, possibly also to record the less happy years he had spent as a teenager, separated from his parents in the early 1920s.

14. A page from the Clennell album compiled contemporaneously, depicting various members of the Sharples family, the ‘Hook and Ladder Truck’ of the Shanghai Fire Brigade in which Ernest Sharples served, the interior of the Wuhu Consulate where the Clennells began married life, the Upper Wushan Gorge on the Yangzi, and Butterfield and Swire’s premises at Ningpo, where Ernest Sharples was working at some stage; HPC CF03-p.30

However, it is the album in which photographs were pasted when the family was in China that best conveys the significance of this sort of artefact. Scuffed and a little untidy, it is greater than the sum of its parts, showing as it does the importance of family in this type of overseas setting and the way such images could knit together the various strands of life threading through the treaty ports and back home to England.  Preserved by good fortune, it must be typical of so many albums compiled by similar consular families, which reflected and reinforced the networks underpinning the British World, but few of which seem to have survived.

—-

My Dearest Martha: The Life and Letters of Eliza Hillier (edited with an Introduction by Andrew Hillier) was published by the City University of Hong Kong Press in July 2021. Andrew is currently researching for a book on the wives of China consular officials.

https://www.andrewhillier.org/

 

[1]  For Walter’s life as a Student Interpreter, see Andrew Hillier, ‘The Kodak Comes to Peking’.  Following an overland journey from Xiamen (Amoy) to Fuzhou (Foochow) and back in December 1892, the Minister, Sir John Walsham, forwarded Clennell’s report to the Foreign Secretary, the Marquis of Salisbury, commenting that he had ‘evinced great interest in the country and possesses many of the qualities requisite to render him a successful traveller and a careful observer of the customs and habits of the people’; Report by Mr Clennell of an Overland Journey From Amoy to Foochow and Back, presented to both Houses of Parliament, August 1892, including letter, Walsham to Salisbury, 14 March, 1892, C-6814.,

[2] All images are from the Walter Clennell Collection. The Collection has now been digitised by Historical Photographs of China and will in due course form part of the web-site’s Collections. HPC is extremely grateful to Richard Clennell (one of Jack Clennell’s sons) for allowing the albums to be copied and made accessible. I am grateful to Richard and his wife, Joan, for allowing me to pore over the photographs in their home and to Jonathan Clennell (son of Jim Clennell) for first alerting me to Walter’s diary and the fascinating family story.

[3] Cf. P.D. Coates, The China Consuls: British Consular Officers, 1843-1943 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 99-100.

[4] Herbert Sharples had joined the Maritime Customs Service and, by the time of his retirement in 1924, was a Customs Commissioner. Ernest Sharples had joined Butterfield and Swire and would become a well-known figure in the treaty port world, serving in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps and as ‘an ardent fireman’ in the city’s fire brigade, but die at the age of forty-seven; see his short obituary in North China Herald, 22 September 1917, 664.

[5] Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), pp.339 -354, Coates, The China Consuls, pp.372-5.

[6] Robert Bickers, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’ in Christian Henriot and Weh– hsiu Yeh (eds), Visualising China, 1845 -1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2012), quote at p.18 and pp. 25-29; for the interpretation of family photographs, see Julia Hirsch, Family Photographs: content, meaning and effects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 11-13.

[7] Coates, China Consuls, p. vii; cf. Andrew Hillier, Mediating Empire: An English Family in China, 1817-1927 (Folkestone: Renaissance Books, 2020), pp. xxi-xxix.

[8] Coates, China Consuls, pp.279-280.

[9] North China Herald, 17 April 1899, p. 65.

[10] Although Edie and Frank were rescued in this way, the detail in the caption is not borne out by the reference to Gregory Haines, Gunboats on the Great River (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1976).

[11] Clennell to Satow,2 August 1905, TNA PRO 30/33 8/13, Ian Ruxton (ed.), Correspondence of Sir Ernest Satow, British Envoy in China (1900-1906), vol. 2, p. 459

[12] Coates, China Consuls, pp. 391-2, Bickers, The Scramble for China, p.339.

[13] Clennell to Satow, 2 December 1905, TNA PRO 30/33 8/6, Ruxton (ed.) Correspondence of Sir Ernest Satow, (2), p.217. The Qingdao-Jinan line was financed by German capital but was not yet completed.

[14] Connie was married to Captain Lewis Tobias Loftus Jones, R.N.

[15] Walter John Clennell, Eastern Odyssey (Douglas: Jacla Press, c.1989), p.11. Walter and Edie had climbed the mountain the previous year and Walter had written an account of their holiday exploring Lu, the Holy Land of Confucianism, North China Herald, 13 September, 1907, p.638.

[16] Coates, China Consuls, p.292.

[17] North China Herald, 25 September 1915, p. 829, 22 April 1916, pp.144-5, 14 April 1917, 76.

[18] Walter James Clennell, The Historical Development of Religion in China (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1917).

[19] Memories of China, Herts Mercury, 1 December 1950, CF01-34.

[20] Jenny Huangfu Day suggests that this may be a rendering of Walter’s surname as 乐念乐 (le-nian-le), with the middle character meaning “thinking of” or “missing.”

[21] Cf. Bickers, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’, p.18.

[22] The ring-binders are referenced as HPC, CFO1, CFO2 and CFO4 and the original album as CF03. There is also a small album of postcards, CF-05.

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Charles Frederick Moore’s photographs of the ruins of the European-style palaces (西洋楼) at the Yuanmingyuan (圆明园)

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Jamie Carstairs

Jamie Carstairs (Senior Digitisation Officer, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library) is researching the work of Charles Frederick Moore (1838-1916), and here discusses Moore’s photographs of the ruins of the European-style, baroque palaces at the Yuanmingyuan.

When the vast and magnificent Yuanmingyuan (The Garden of Perfect Brightness; or ‘Old Summer Palace’) garden-palace, eight kilometres (five miles) northwest of the Forbidden City, Beijing, was plundered and burnt down by vengeful Anglo-French forces in October 1860, hundreds of wooden Chinese buildings were destroyed. Still standing however, were the burnt-out ruins of the Emperor’s European-style brick and stone palaces (Xiyanglou), built in the latter half of the Eighteenth century. The Xiyanglou occupied about two per cent of the Yuanmingyuan site. These palaces reportedly presented an extraordinary feast for the eye – a fairyland of rococo architectural flourishes, glazed ceramic decorations in sublime colours, elaborate splashy fountains, reflective pools, roof tiles in rainbow tints, and theatrical perspective vistas, along with horticultural special effects and birdsong (1).

Fig. 1: The Fangwaiguan (the ‘Look Abroad Hall’ or ‘Belvedere’), showing flamboyant marble balustrades and bridges, and its Chinese-style roof. A man waits for the photographer to take the picture, with his hands on his hips. The Fangwaiguan was the only large building at the Xiyanglou which survived the burning with its roof intact. Photograph by C.F. Moore. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00443.

Fig. 1: The Fangwaiguan (the ‘Look Abroad Hall’ or ‘Belvedere’), showing flamboyant marble balustrades and bridges, and its Chinese-style roof. A man waits for the photographer to take the picture, with his hands on his hips. The Fangwaiguan was the only large building at the Xiyanglou which survived the burning with its roof intact. Photograph by C.F. Moore. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00443.

Fig. 2: West meets east. The Xiyanglou was planned and designed by the Italian Guiseppe Castiglione S.J. and can be seen as a triumph of Sino-European interaction. In this detail/extract of C.F. Moore’s photograph of the ‘Clock Gate’, near the Xieqiqu, one side of the structure is rococo, while the other side facing into another imperial garden at the Yuanmingyuan, is in a traditional Chinese architectural style. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00463.

Fig. 2: West meets east. The Xiyanglou was planned and designed by the Italian Guiseppe Castiglione S.J. and can be seen as a triumph of Sino-European interaction. In this detail/extract of C.F. Moore’s photograph of the ‘Clock Gate’, near the Xieqiqu, one side of the structure is rococo, while the other side facing into another imperial garden at the Yuanmingyuan, is in a traditional Chinese architectural style. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00463.

After the 1860 disaster (2), and some repair work, the ruins of the Xiyanglou were generally abandoned to the elements and to thieves, who repurposed the building materials, stealing also timber and valuable metals – lead, iron and copper. Pilfering and further destruction set in after repair work ceased and plans for the restoration of the Yuanmingyuan were shelved, in 1874. Eventually the ruins of the Xiyanglou were reduced to the pitiful (and politically manipulated) piles of rubble we see today.

Until the 1911 revolution, the garden-palace site officially remained an imperial preserve and access was not allowed, becoming fully out of bounds to visitors in about 1886 (3). Nevertheless, at least four foreign photographers entered the landscaped grounds during the 1870s and 1880s, and on several occasions. Charles Frederick Moore, among others, was deeply impressed, writing: ‘Here amid an expanse covering twelve square miles of ground, all the ingenious diversities and embellishments of Chinese architectural and horticultural art had been exhausted to produce a terrestrial paradise … This beautiful monument of Eastern art, the garden of perpetual brightness, is now a desolate ruin – in retaliation for the imprisonment and murder of many British prisoners’ (4).

The photographs of the European-style baroque palaces (Xiyanglou) by Ernst Ohlmer (5) and Thomas Child (6) are well documented; those by Moore have become known about in more recent times thanks to digitisation by Royal BC Museum archives (7).

Fig. 3: The Yangquelong Dongmian (the Gate to the Aviary or the Fountain Gate) viewed from the east. This is a wider view than Thomas Child's photograph (No. 204), and taken at a later date (a large section of balustrade is gone in Moore’s photograph), perhaps 1880. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00423.

Fig. 3: The Yangquelong Dongmian (the Gate to the Aviary or the Fountain Gate) viewed from the east. This is a wider view than Thomas Child’s photograph (No. 204), and taken at a later date (a large section of balustrade is gone in Moore’s photograph), perhaps 1880. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00423.

The Royal BC Museum holds 99 glass plate negatives (MS-3171), and an album (MS3171-1), which were gifted to the museum by descendants of C.F. Moore, with related papers etc, in 2014. The provenance of this material previously owned by C.F. Moore’s family, is compelling, if not conclusive. Some of the images were reproduced in a pamphlet published twice in c.1905, entitled on the cover: A Quarter of a Century in China / Experiences of a Victorian in the Flowery Kingdom with ‘Chinese’ Gordon / CHINA ILLUSTRATED / By C.F. Moore, Paymaster in Green Turbans of Anglo Chinese Contingent / ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (8) – fig. 4. Several of the images in A Quarter of a Century in China were also reproduced in an eponymous article by Moore, published in the Victoria Daily Times, 8 April 1905 – fig. 5.

Fig. 4: The cover of <em>A Quarter of a Century in China</em> by C.F. Moore. The photograph shows part of the Music Pavilion in the west, the central three-storied part of the Xieqiqu (Palace of the Delights of Harmony), and the gallery curving around to the Music Pavilion at the east. Viewed from the south, across the weed choked pool/basin, reflecting the ruins of the palace. Two men are posed by the balustrade around the pool/basin. Ernst Ohlmer's photograph of the south side of the Xieqiqu was taken before Moore's; Thomas Child's after. See footnote 1 for Ohlmer's description of this palace.

Fig. 4: The cover of A Quarter of a Century in China by C.F. Moore. The photograph shows part of the Music Pavilion in the west, the central three-storied part of the Xieqiqu (Palace of the Delights of Harmony), and the gallery curving around to the Music Pavilion at the east. Viewed from the south, across the weed choked pool/basin, reflecting the ruins of the palace. Two men are posed by the balustrade around the pool/basin. Ernst Ohlmer’s photograph of the south side of the Xieqiqu was taken before Moore’s; Thomas Child’s after. See footnote 1 for Ohlmer’s description of this palace.

Fig. 5: ‘Victoria Daily Times’, 8 April 1905, page 9.

Fig. 5: ‘Victoria Daily Times’, 8 April 1905, page 9.

High-resolution scans of Moore’s negatives (available from Royal BC Museum archives) reward close study and constitute a significant visual resource. Of Moore’s 99 glass plate negatives which survive to this day, thirteen were taken at the Yuanmingyuan (twelve different views, refs: J-00464, J-00463, J-00423, J-00465, J-00443, J-00413, J-00508, J-00466, J-00479, J-00442, J-00426, J-00459, J-00444), complementing Ohlmer’s twelve extant glass plate negatives and the ten, or so, known photographs by Child.

Several photographic prints made from Moore’s negatives exist. In addition, there are currently eleven known photographs, as prints, depicting different views of the Yuanmingyuan by Moore (for which no negatives have survived it seems). A further six images by Moore exist only as reproductions, as far as is known just now, making a total of twenty-nine currently known different images of the Yuanmingyaun by Moore (9).

Fig. 6: A detail/extract of Moore’s photograph of Xianshan Dongmen (Gate east of the Hill of Perspective). This is an evocative photograph, which relates to the ‘pleasure of ruins’ – the luxuriant plants growing wild echoing the rococo vine carving on the gate. Xianshan Dongmen was not photographed by Child or Ohlmer. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00426.

Fig. 6: A detail/extract of Moore’s photograph of Xianshan Dongmen (Gate east of the Hill of Perspective). This is an evocative photograph, which relates to the ‘pleasure of ruins’ – the luxuriant plants growing wild echoing the rococo vine carving on the gate. Xianshan Dongmen was not photographed by Child or Ohlmer. Royal BC Museum, ref J-00426.

Moore’s Yuanmingyuan work has previously been mistakenly attributed to Théophile Piry, or to Thomas Child, or to Ernst Ohlmer, or to anon – or not attributed at all. Régine Thiriez, in her excellent book Barbarian Lens (2017), tentatively attributed several Yuanmingyuan pictures to Piry. But in 1994, Thiriez had located some prints with indented round top corners, made with a mask placed on the photographic paper (rather than the photographic paper being cut to shape with scissors), which could, she wrote, be the work of ‘a new photographer’ (i.e. not by Piry, nor Ohlmer, nor Child) (10).

Fig. 7: An example of a print made with an indented round top corner printing mask. This print is in Moore’s album at the Royal BC Museum (ref MS-3171-1 page 68 of the pdf), an album page photographed at an angle. Compare this photograph with similar views of Xieqiqu (Palace of the Delights of Harmony) by Ernst Ohlmer and Thomas Child.

Fig. 7: An example of a print made with an indented round top corner printing mask. This print is in Moore’s album at the Royal BC Museum (ref MS-3171-1 page 68 of the pdf), an album page photographed at an angle. Compare this photograph with similar views of the Xieqiqu (Palace of the Delights of Harmony) by Ernst Ohlmer and Thomas Child.

It has turned out that a photograph made with an indented round top corner printing mask, indicates a photograph by Moore – he is thought to be the only Nineteenth century photographer in China who used such a mask, described by Thiriez as a ‘signature’ (see figs 7 and 8). Like other photographers, Moore also occasionally made prints with an oval/cameo shaped mask, as well as rectangular prints, and, much less often, cut prints to an oval shape. A further ‘signature’ or ‘tell’ noted in some of Moore’s photographs is his deliberate posing of strategically placed seated or standing men around the scene/composition (e.g. Bo01-044).

Fig 8. The 'Palace of the Delights of Harmony' (Xieqiqu), Yuanmingyuan, viewed from the south, across the weed choked pool, reflecting the ruins of the palace. Two men are posed by the balustrade around the pool. This print was made with an indented rounded corner mask (i.e. a 'signature' of Moore's) and captioned: ‘Bâtiment principal construit par […] a Yuen Ming Yuen / Etat 1879 d'après Moore / 26 / 19’. This is a key photographic print/captioning, connecting Moore's name with the rounded corner mask, strategically placed people, as well as showing more from his (lost) negative than other prints. A well composed and frequently reproduced photograph, its punctum, for many, being the reflection of the ruin in the water. Source: Part of Lot 2, in an auction by Tessier &amp; Sarrou et Associés, Paris, on 17 December 2018.

Fig 8. The ‘Palace of the Delights of Harmony’ (Xieqiqu), Yuanmingyuan, viewed from the south, across the weed choked pool, reflecting the ruins of the palace. Two men are posed by the balustrade around the pool. This print was made with an indented rounded corner mask (i.e. a ‘signature’ of Moore’s) and captioned: ‘Bâtiment principal construit par […] a Yuen Ming Yuen / Etat 1879 d’après Moore / 26 / 19’. This is a key photographic print/captioning, connecting Moore’s name with the rounded corner mask, strategically placed people, as well as showing more from his (lost) negative than other prints. A well composed and frequently reproduced photograph, its punctum, for many, being the reflection of the ruin in the water. Source: Part of Lot 2, in an auction by Tessier & Sarrou et Associés, Paris, on 17 December 2018.

Thomas Child appears to have taken his first photographs at the garden-palace in January 1873 (11). Child dated some of his Yuanmingyuan negatives ‘1877’, although he is known to have sometimes signed and dated his negatives years after he made them (12). Yuanmingyuan photographs by Child’s customs service colleague Ernst Ohlmer, who arrived in Beijing in August 1872, have been reliably dated to 1873 (13). Some of Moore’s Yuanmingyuan photographs seem to have been taken at similar dates to some of Child’s and Ohlmer’s, or not long afterwards, perhaps c.1875, while others (e.g. J-00466) look like they were taken a few years later, perhaps the early 1880s.

Along with the twenty copperplate engravings made by the Manchu court artist Yi Lantai (Yilantai) in 1783 – 1786, some surviving plans, other engravings and drawings, the historical photographs by Ohlmer, Child and Moore provide the key visual record of the European-style palace complex before its destruction and degradation. The uses of these historical photographs are manifold, for example, the Xiyanglou Digital Restoration Project matched archaeological fragments to their original locations on buildings and provided insights into original colours despite the old photographs being monochrome (14).

Fig. 9: Part of the copperplate engraving #10, of Haiyantang (Palace of the Calm Seas) by Yi Lantai, 1783-86. The largest of the foreign buildings, with the most elaborate fountains, including the masterpiece of the French Jesuit, Michel Benoist S.J. – a water clock which featured twelve bronze, seated, zodiacal figures. The figure of the horse is spouting a stream of water. The hours of the horse are from 11am to 1pm. Other fountains playing on both sides of the pair of stairs.

Fig. 9: Part of the copperplate engraving #10, of the Haiyantang (Palace of the Calm Seas) by Yi Lantai, 1783-86. The largest of the foreign buildings, with the most elaborate fountains, including the masterpiece of the French Jesuit, Michel Benoist S.J. – a water clock which featured twelve bronze, seated, zodiacal figures. The figure of the horse is spouting a stream of water. The hours of the horse are from 11am to 1pm. Other fountains playing on both sides of the pair of stairs.

Fig. 10: A detail/extract of Moore’s photograph of Haiyantang (Palace of the Calm Seas). Royal BC Museum, ref J-00413. The photographs of Haiyantang by Moore and Ohlmer were both taken from a similar viewpoint – although Moore's is a wider view. The foreground (clock fountain) is captured better in Moore's photograph; the background (building) in Ohlmer's is better.

Fig. 10: A detail/extract of Moore’s photograph of the Haiyantang (Palace of the Calm Seas). Royal BC Museum, ref J-00413. The photographs of the Haiyantang by Moore and Ohlmer were both taken from a similar viewpoint – although Moore’s is a wider view. The foreground (clock fountain) is captured better in Moore’s photograph; the background (building) in Ohlmer’s is better.

I have started a detailed analysis of twenty-nine Yuanmingyuan photographs by Moore, locating the buildings, with thumbnail images, and noting previous attributions, etc. Taking a cue from Carroll Brown Malone and his ‘sketch plan of the foreign buildings’ (fig. 11 below), I have organised this analysis in fourteen coloured sections, with each section headed by one of Yi Lantai’s copperplate engravings. It is expected for sure, that in due course, more Moore’s will be discovered and that this list can be augmented. The spreadsheet analysis is available here [revised and augmented , 18 May 2023].

Fig. 11: A plan of Xiyanglou (European-style palaces) from ‘History of the Peking Summer Palaces under the Ch’ing Dynasty’ by Carroll Brown Malone (1934), as reproduced in 'La Chine entre le Collodion Humide et le Gelatinobromure' by Bernard Marbot and René Viénet (1978).

Fig. 11: A plan of the Xiyanglou (European-style palaces) from History of the Peking Summer Palaces under the Ch’ing Dynasty by Carroll Brown Malone (1934), as reproduced in La Chine entre le Collodion Humide et le Gelatinobromure by Bernard Marbot and René Viénet (1978).

Footnotes

  1. Ernst Ohlmer, who admired glazed ceramics and collected Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain, photographed the ruins of the European-style palaces in 1873, and described Xieqiqu (the Palace of the Delights of Harmony) in the following vivid and evocative and word picture: ‘The decoration […] had been given all the colours and nuances of the rainbow […] You see the rich and lively colours of the ornamentation, saturated by the deep blue Peking sky, kaleidoscopically changing according to the position of the viewer and of the sun, standing out boldly against the white marble background of the building, and at the same time being like a ghostly mirage reflected in the lake facing it […] The observer cannot help feeling like in a fairy-tale from A Thousand and One Nights.’ (Ernst Ohlmer, Führer Durch Die Ohlmer’sche Sammlung Chinesischer Porzellane: Z.Z. Aufgestellt Im Roemer-Museum Hildesheim. Mit 10 Tafeln und 3 Zinkographien Von E, Ohlmer (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1898), p.32, cited in Régine Thiriez, Barbarian Lens, p. 92. Translated by A.W. Mixius).
  2. For an account about how the invaders came to the awful decision to burn the emperor’s extensive palace complex, see, for example, Young-Tsu Wong A Paradise Lost, The Imperial Garden at Yuanming Yuan and Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 (2011), pp. 149-50.
  3. Thiriez, Barbarian Lens, footnote 2 (for chapter 4), p. 164.
  4. Quotation from Charles Frederick Moore, A Quarter of a Century in China, Experiences of a Victorian in the Flowery Kingdom with ‘Chinese’ Gordon, p. 10. The description is also in C.F. Moore’s mss notebook (Royal BC Museum archive ref: MS-3171/5), being his magic lantern (‘stereoptican view’) slide show note for slide 50. Moore presented the slide show (entitled ‘Lecture on China in the Time of General Gordon’) more than once, including on 15 January 1907 at St Barnabas’ School Room, Victoria BC, Canada. A similar (draft?) description is on page 50 of the pdf of the Moore album (Royal BC Museum archive ref: MS-3171/1).
  5. Note the well reproduced images from Ohlmer’s negatives in: Beijing World Art Museum. Can Yuan Qin Meng: Aoermo Yu Yuanmingyuan Lishi Yingxiang. Disturbed Dreams in the Ruins of the Garden, Ernest Ohlmer and Historical Images of Yuanmingyuan. See Maureen Warren, Romanticizing the Uncanny: Ernst Ohlmer’s 1873 photographs of the European-style palaces in the Yuanmingyuan (2017). For thorough analysis of photographs of the Xiyanglou (taken between the 1870s and 1920s), see Régine Thiriez, Barbarian Lens.
  6. For example: Stacy Lambrow and Jacob Loewentheil, Thomas Child’s Photographs of Yuanmingyuan. See also Thiriez, Barbarian Lens.
  7. A brief biography of Charles Frederick Moore can be found here. For initial research into his life as a photographer in China, see my earlier post on this blog site: ‘Charles Frederick Moore (1837-1916), a photographer in China‘. A further eleven photographs taken at Yuanmingyuan in the 1870s by an (as yet) unidentified photographer, are reproduced in Terry Bennett’s History of Photography in China, Western Photographers 1861-1879, pp.300-302. More nineteenth century Yuanmingyuan photographs exist, here and there, including views by the French nobleman and diplomat, Robert de Semallé (1839-1946), taken in c.1882.
  8. ‘Victorian’ here means a resident of Victoria BC, Canada. The Toyo Bunko has a copy of this rare pamphlet, published in two editions, as ‘First Series’ and ‘Second Series’ (Toyo Bunko ref: P-III-a-53).
  9. A handful of Moore’s Yuanmingyuan photographs are particularly important, as they are the only Nineteenth Century photographic record of certain parts of the site.
  10. Thiriez, Barbarian Lens, footnotes 7 and 8 (for chapter 9), p. 167.
  11. Lambrow and Loewentheil, p. 156.
  12. Lambrow and Loewentheil, p. 156, footnote 16.
  13. Thiriez, p. 89.
  14. See Digital Restoration Research and Three-Dimensional Model Construction on Xieqiqu by Gao Ming, Piao Wenzi and Guo Jing.

Bibliography

Becker, Jasper. City of Heavenly Tranquility, Beijing in the History of China (2008).

Beijing World Art Museum. Can Yuan Qin Meng: Aoermo Yu Yuanmingyuan Lishi Yingxiang. Disturbed Dreams in the Ruins of the Garden, Ernest Ohlmer and Historical Images of Yuanmingyuan (2010).

Bennett, Terry. History of Photography in China, Western Photographers 1861-1879 (2010).

Bickers, Robert. The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1911 (2011).

Gao Ming, Piao Wenzi and Guo Jing Digital Restoration Research and Three-Dimensional Model Construction on Xieqiqu (2015).

Lambrow, Stacy and Jacob Loewentheil. Thomas Child’s Photographs of Yuanmingyuan (Collectors World, 2018).

Lee, Haiyan. The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan: Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound (2009).

Malone, Carroll Brown. History of the Peking Summer Palaces under the Ch’ing Dynasty     (1934).

Marbot, Bernard and René Viénet. La Chine entre le Collodion Humide et le Gelatinobromure (1978).

Moore, Charles Frederick. A Quarter of a Century in China, Experiences of a Victorian in the Flowery Kingdom with ‘Chinese’ Gordon (c.1905).

Thiriez, Régine. Barbarian Lens, Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor’s European Palaces (2017).

Wong, Young-Tsu. A Paradise Lost, the Imperial Garden at Yuanming Yuan (2021).

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Pieces of China in Bristol – cataloguing Historical Photographs of China material

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Jamie Carstairs

Jamie Carstairs has recently catalogued the ‘Historical Photographs of China’ material held in Special Collections, University of Bristol Library. In this post, he describes the material in outline and mentions some highlights.

During the fifteen years of the Historical Photographs of China Project, a surprisingly large amount of archival material was accumulated. This was never the plan, but came about incidentally. As well as photographs, the project acquired negatives, 35mm colour transparencies, post cards, books, vintage cameras, newspaper cuttings, scrap books, maps, silver shooting trophies, shipping labels, cine film, memoirs, ephemera – as well as a Shanghai Municipal Policeman’s whistle, penknife, bus pass, freemason regalia, slippers and other objects (John Montgomery Collection, DM2836). Most of this material was donated, while a few photographs were purchased with a view to filling gaps in the collection.

A print of a caricature by Miguel Covarrubias, of the successful businessman Sir Victor Sassoon with a Leica camera and lighting kit, in Bali, dated 1934. Sir Victor loved photography, horse racing, travel, international friendship and the party life of 1930s Shanghai. This print is in a scrapbook in the George Hutton Potts Collection (DM2831/21).

A print of a caricature by Miguel Covarrubias, of the successful businessman Sir Victor Sassoon with a Leica camera and lighting kit, in Bali, dated 1934. Sir Victor loved photography, horse racing, travel, international friendship and the party life of 1930s Shanghai. This print is in a scrapbook in the George Hutton Potts Collection (DM2831/21).

The first few frames of a roll of 16mm cine film, in the Robert Peck Collection (DM2838/4/1). This part of the footage seems to show a Christian proselytising in a street in China, c.1937. The two reels of cine film in this collection have not yet been viewed or digitised.

The first few frames of a roll of 16mm cine film, in the Robert Peck Collection (DM2838/4/1). This part of the footage seems to show a Christian proselytising in a street in China, c.1937. The two reels of cine film in this collection have not yet been viewed or digitised.

A barograph trace, made on the luxury liner ‘Empress of Asia’, showing an off-the-chart drop in atmospheric pressure during a typhoon in October 1921. The barogram is in a scrapbook in the George Hutton Potts Collection (DM2831/19).

A barograph trace, made on the luxury liner ‘Empress of Asia’, showing an off-the-chart drop in atmospheric pressure during a typhoon in October 1921. The barogram is in a scrapbook in the George Hutton Potts Collection (DM2831/19).

A portrait of a boy reading ‘Amateur Photographer’ magazine, 1940s/1950s (HPC ref: Ha-s056), from the extensive Tita and Gerry Hayward Collection (DM2830), which includes Basil Edward (Dick) Foster Hall (1894-1975) material. A few images in this collection have been published on the HPC web site.

A portrait of a boy reading ‘Amateur Photographer’ magazine, 1940s/1950s (HPC ref: Ha-s056), from the extensive Tita and Gerry Hayward Collection (DM2830), which includes Basil Edward (Dick) Foster Hall (1894-1975) material. A few images in this collection have been published on the HPC web site.

This archival material is now held in Special Collections. It has recently been catalogued and these records can be consulted on the Online Archive Catalogue. To see all the catalogue records for the HPC material, select ‘China (Historical Photographs of China)’ in the ‘Major collections’ drop-down menu in Advanced Search. Or search for a particular archival DM reference in ‘Reference number’ in Advanced Search, or a keyword lucky dip in ‘Any text’ in Advanced Search.

A screenshot showing some results of a search for ‘China (Historical Photographs of China)’, in the ‘Major collections’ drop-down menu in Advanced Search, in Special Collections’ Online Archive Catalogue.

A screenshot showing some results of a search for ‘China (Historical Photographs of China)’, in the ‘Major collections’ drop-down menu in Advanced Search, in Special Collections’ Online Archive Catalogue.

The oldest photographs we hold date from the late 1860s/early 1870s, in an album thought to have been compiled by John Gurney Fry, of the famous chocolate family (DM2887). Many of these beautiful and well-preserved albumin prints are photographs by the great photographers Lai Fong and John Thomson. The John Gurney Fry Collection has been digitised and the images can be viewed on the HPC web site.

Four musicians (singers), with instruments, Fuzhou, c.1868-1874 (HPC ref: Fr01-044). Photograph by Lai Fong (Afong Studio). A page from the John Gurney Fry album (DM2887).

Four musicians (singers), with instruments, Fuzhou, c.1868-1874 (HPC ref: Fr01-044). Photograph by Lai Fong (Afong Studio). A page from the John Gurney Fry album (DM2887).

Most of the HPC material dates from the 1870s to the 1950s, but we have also collected slides and photographs taken during the early stages of China’s Cultural Revolution (Colin Andrew Collection, DM2818), and slides taken during a bicycle trip from Nanjing to Shanghai in 1983 (John Lyle Collection, DM2993) as well as photographs taken in the 1980s for two historical architectural books by Professor Ronald Knapp (DM2992).

Unidentified event, Jingshan Park, Beijing, c.1966 (HPC ref: Aw-t415). One of 553 slides (35mm transparencies) taken by Colin Andrew during the Cultural Revolution (Colin Andrew Collection, DM2818/4).

Unidentified event, Jingshan Park, Beijing, c.1966 (HPC ref: Aw-t415). One of 553 slides (35mm transparencies) taken by Colin Andrew during the Cultural Revolution (Colin Andrew Collection, DM2818/4).

The collection includes fascinating self-published memoirs, such as I Remember One Time by Paul Kaye (DM2990/6), and Out of China by Ronald Kliene (DM2990/10). Both Kaye and Kliene were in the Shanghai boy scouts, 1930s.  Also of great interest is an ‘extra-illustrated’ mss entitled ‘The Diaries and Letters of Rev. Robert Walker Debenham Peck’ (DM2838/1). Peck was a Methodist missionary in Wuhan during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Other donated books include Five Months of War (North-China Daily News, 1938), illustrated with drawings by the Shanghai’s premier cartoonist ‘Sapajou’ (Georgii Avksent’ievich Sapojnikoff) (DM2836/7).

The cover of ‘Five Months of War’, published in 1938. This book about the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) contains many photographs by North-China Daily News photographers and others, cartoons by Sapajou, and maps. (John Montgomery Collection, DM2836/7).

The cover of ‘Five Months of War’, published in 1938. This book about the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) contains many photographs by North-China Daily News photographers and others, cartoons by Sapajou, and maps. (John Montgomery Collection, DM2836/7).

Some of the material in Special Collections has been digitised, but many historical photographs remain uncopied and their content undescribed, samples below.

A page from the album in the Pearl Bercht Collection (DM2820). Pearl Bercht was an American missionary, in Guangzhou (Canton) 1919-1922.

A page from the album in the Pearl Bercht Collection (DM2820). Pearl Bercht was an American missionary, in Guangzhou (Canton) 1919-1922.

An uncaptioned photograph in a large album entitled 'Coronation Day / 12th May 1937 / British Embassy / Peking' (Berkeley Gage Collection, DM2827/2). The photographs in this album are by the Russian friend of Hedda Morrison, Serge Vargassoff (1906-1965). Research is required to identify the guests at the Legation event, which included Qin Dechun (秦徳純) (1893-1963) and Zhang Guangjian (張廣建) (1864-1938).

An uncaptioned photograph in a large album entitled ‘Coronation Day / 12th May 1937 / British Embassy / Peking’ (Berkeley Gage Collection, DM2827/2). The photographs in this album are by the Russian friend of Hedda Morrison, Serge Vargassoff (1906-1965). Research is required to identify the guests at the Legation event, which included Qin Dechun (秦徳純) (1893-1963) and Zhang Guangjian (張廣建) (1864-1938).

A trade fair in a mat shed, either in Hong Kong or Singapore, early 1930s. The women are in sailor rig, emblazoned with the words ‘BOVRIL – PREVENT THAT SINKING FEELING’. The John Arber Collection (DM2985) includes many Hong Kong photographs relating to advertising and marketing.

A trade fair in a mat shed, either in Hong Kong or Singapore, early 1930s. The women are in sailor rig, emblazoned with the words ‘BOVRIL – PREVENT THAT SINKING FEELING’. The John Arber Collection (DM2985) includes many Hong Kong photographs relating to advertising and marketing.

Material in Special Collections that has been digitised, but is not yet published on the HPC site, include rich collections such the James Helbling Collection (DM2829) and the Cyril Whitaker Collection (DM2845), samples below.

A Cartier-Bressonesque photograph by Cyril Whitaker, captioned in the album: ‘Calibrating a [petroleum] tank by pumping out and weighing water on alternate scales. Jan. 1938’ (HPC ref: CW08-80). Whitaker was a talented ‘semi-pro’ photographer who documented the Asiatic Petroleum Company (APC) installation near Chongqing. Cyril Whitaker Collection, DM2845/8.

A Cartier-Bressonesque photograph by Cyril Whitaker, captioned in the album: ‘Calibrating a [petroleum] tank by pumping out and weighing water on alternate scales. Jan. 1938’ (HPC ref: CW08-80). Whitaker was a talented ‘semi-pro’ photographer who documented the Asiatic Petroleum Company (APC) installation near Chongqing. Cyril Whitaker Collection, DM2845/8.

This photograph of an impressive matriarchal family group is captioned on the back ‘Lau Ahchiang & family / Tai Ping Compradore 1906 / Foochow’ (HPC ref: Od-s017). James Helbling Collection, DM2829/1.

This photograph of an impressive matriarchal family group is captioned on the back ‘Lau Ahchiang & family / Tai Ping Compradore 1906 / Foochow’ (HPC ref: Od-s017). James Helbling Collection, DM2829/1.

A recent donation is the fruit of a lockdown clear-out, the Yangtse Corporation Collection (DM2998). The images of salt mining in this collection are on the HPC site, referenced as YC-s.

Special Collections also hold a large born-digital collection of images – the Nicholas Kitto Treaty Port Image Collection (DM3051) – over 4000 colour images of surviving/restored pre-1950 architecture in the former treaty ports, photographed by Nick Kitto in 2008-2016. Kitto drew from these in his book  Trading Places, A Photographic Journey Through China’s Former Treaty Ports (Blacksmith Books, 2020).

The Custom House, Guangzhou, one of the oldest Custom Houses in China, photographed here by Nick Kitto in 2008. This image is on the cover of 'Trading Places, A Photographic Journey Through China's Former Treaty Ports' by Nicholas Kitto (Blacksmith Books, 2020).

The Custom House, Guangzhou, one of the oldest Custom Houses in China, photographed here by Nick Kitto in 2008. This image is on the cover of ‘Trading Places, A Photographic Journey Through China’s Former Treaty Ports’ by Nicholas Kitto (Blacksmith Books, 2020).

DM2956 is a record of the c.62,000 HPC digital images (i.e. the output of fifteen years digitisation by the HPC project), now stored in a DAMS (Digital Asset Management System). All 168 HPC collections are listed, as well as their archival DM references and whether the images in a collection have been added to the HPC web site, or not. DM2956 includes an outline history of the HPC project, which ended in 2021 – details here.

For the future – a new HPC web site is due to be launched later in 2022. The redesigned site, on a new platform, will draw images and metadata direct from the DAMS. There’s plenty more work to do inputting metadata into the DAMS. This metadata includes descriptive information about the image, names, dates, locations, keywords, etc, which makes images findable on the HPC site. All being well, some of the many thousands of already digitised China photographs that we hold in Special Collections, which are not yet on the HPC site, will gradually be added to it.

If you have any queries, do please contact us.

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