Author Archives: Robert Bickers

Amahs

Omnipresent in many of the portraits of foreign families, especially children, is the amah. Often unnamed, or simply captioned ‘Amah’ , these were the Chinese nannies and wet-nurses, servants who suckled or looked after children. They were indispensable additions to … Continue reading

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Colonel Robert Ruxton, MBE OBE

Robert Minturn Clarges Ruxton 1876-1946, son of a Admiral William FitzHerbert Ruxton, joined the Essex Regiment in 1897, and began his association with China in 1900 when he was seconded to the First Chinese, or Weihaiwei, Regiment. This was the … Continue reading

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A hunting we will go

Incidental mention of the Shanghai Paper Hunt suggests a new post. Here are two members of the Hunt in action. The Shanghai Paper Hunt Club dated is foundation to December 1863, but as its history, published in 1930, noted, there … Continue reading

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Catastrophe at the races, Hong Kong 1918

Our last post showed the fairly rudimentary Peking Race Club in 1891. The first of the important foreign race tracks in China was at Happy Valley in Hong Kong. This photographic postcard shows the scene just after 3 p.m. on … Continue reading

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Racing in China, 1891

The Olympic torch is racing through Bristol as I write. We lack images of sports, aside from shots of European tennis parties, and many images of the racetracks of treaty port China. So here is a dramatic photograph from 1891 … Continue reading

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Visualising China visits Nanjing University

As part of the 110th anniversary celebrations of Nanjing University, historians there led by Professor Chen Qianping, head of department, have mounted an exhibiton of 160 photographs selected from the Visualising China collections. The universities of Bristol and Nanjing have … Continue reading

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Visualising China elsewhere on the net 1: the International Missionary Photography Archive

Visualising China’s collections are rich in materials from missionary families, including Bishop William Banister (1855-1928), of the Church Missionary Society, sometime Archdeacon at Hong Kong, and first Bishop of Kwangsi-Hunan; Canadian doctor Charles Coyne Elliott, of the China Inland Mission, … Continue reading

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D is for Dalny, Dairen だいれん, Dalian, 大連

History made this former Liaodong Peninsular fishing village a transational city, as it was taken from Russian control (1898-1905), to become a Japanese leased territory (1905-45), then a USSR-controlled zone in the People’s Republic of China until the end of … Continue reading

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Another modern, smoking

A self-conscious ‘modern’, not shy of the camera, and breaking several conventions. There is a series of shots of this woman, including the less provocative portrait below. We guess that the period is the 1920s rather than the 1930s, but … Continue reading

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Chongqing 1920 重庆老照片

Chongqing, capital of Sichuan province is in the news at present. This photograph of a crowded narrow street there was taken in 1920 by British businessman Warren Swire. Many of our photographs of the city focus on the stunning, steep … Continue reading

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