The Great Wall of China at Badaling

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs

One of the world’s most famous structures, the Great Wall of China has been much photographed.  Surprisingly though for such a massive and extensive landmark, many visitors, including John Thomson in 1871, photographed the same section – around Badaling.  Here are two similar views, by Thomas Child in 1877 (Na01-88) and Warren Swire in 1911 (Sw16-027):

The Great Wall of China at Badaling, 1877

The Great Wall of China at Badaling, 1877, National Archives (London), NA01-88

 

The Great Wall of China at Badaling, c.1911

The Great Wall of China at Badaling, c.1911, Swire collection, Sw16-027

The author-photographer William Lindesay in his superb book The Great Wall Revisited – From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon’s Head (Frances Lincoln, 2007), most effectively uses old photographs of the wall, as well as his own.  Photography here is in its element, documenting changes and providing evidence for preservation projects.  William Lindesay’s site is The Great Wall Revisited (See also International Friends of the Great Wall).

Recently, the Chinese have opened new sections of the wall to tourists.

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A game of two halves

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs

Football can also bring photograph collections together.  In 2008, an enigmatic album of photos collected by Harold Edwards Peck, a policeman in the Shanghai Municipal Police, was lent to the Historical Photographs of China project and digitised.   Two years later, we happened to be lent a collection of photographs once owned by another policeman in the Shanghai Municipal Police, John Sullivan.

It became apparent that Peck and Sullivan were certainly contemporaneous colleagues, and may even have been friends: some of the prints in both collections were off the same negatives, and some were images of outings – hunting or houseboat trips from Shanghai – seemingly undertaken together.  Satisfyingly, these remarkable coincidents included images of the same game of football (Pe01-065 and Su01-64), now reunited after about a hundred years:

Game of football

Game of football, Peck collection, Pe01-065

Game of football

Game of football, Sullivan collection, Su01-64

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Silk filature or factory, Shanghai, c.1900

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
Silk filature or factory, Shanghai, c.1900

Silk filature or factory, Shanghai, c.1900, Jane Hayward collection, Hy01-45

A filature was an establishment for reeling silk from cocoons.  There were many such factories in Shanghai and they must have employed several hundred children.

Silk was of course a luxury item for the wealthy, and much exported.  This sobering image (Hy01-45), complete with fingerprint, brings to mind the campaigning work of Jacob Riis, in New York (How the Other Half Lives).

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The British Episcopal Church en fête, Foochow

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
The British Episcopal Church en fête, Foochow

The British Episcopal Church en fête, Foochow, Oswald collection, Os-s087

Here is the interior of the British Episcopal Church in Foochow (Fuzhou), decorated with Union Jack flags and a banner ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’. Directly above the alter is another banner that reads: ‘From among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee.’ This photo was perhaps taken at the time of the coronation of Edward VII, which was in August 1902?

The congregation glowing in their Sunday best would have been kept from overheating by the open mesh, webbed cane pews and the magnificent billowing fans,  gently rustling the thin paper of their hymn books.  No sign of the Chinese equivalent of the punkah wallahs.  Intertwined in this classic treaty port image (Os-s087) are themes of religion, royalty, patriotism, settler identity and way of life – the whole imperialist, quasi-colonial bag, seemingly permanent, but utterly unpicked by 1943.

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Photos within photos

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
Chiang Ching-kuo and another man, Chinese Embassy, Moscow, 1946

Chiang Ching-kuo and another man, Chinese Embassy, Moscow, 1946, Fu collection, Fu-n548

This photograph (Fu-n548), a study in pairs, was taken by Fu Bingchang on New Year’s Day 1946, in the Chinese Embassy in Moscow.  It depicts an unidentified Chinese official and, on the right, Chiang Ching-kuo.  Jiang Jingguo, was the son of Chiang Kai-shek and a future President of the Republic of China in Taiwan.  Behind the two men are two framed photographs of two more men, Cordell Hull (the American Secretary of State, see Fu-s165) and Chiang Kai-shek himself.  Here below is the same autographed photograph of the Generalissimo (Fu-s155), taken in February 1943:

Chiang Kai-shek, February 1943

Chiang Kai-shek, February 1943, Fu collection, Fu-s155

Fu Bingchang was an effective ambassador, never an easy job, at a crucial time in Chinese and world affairs.  His granddaughter, Yee Wah Foo has recently published an account of Fu’s eventful Moscow days: Chiang Kaishek’s Last Ambassador to Moscow, The Wartime Diaries of Fu Bingchang (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

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A hunting we will go

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Robert Bickers

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 was steeplechasing under way as early as 1855, shortly after the rebellios Small Sword Society had been driven away from the city. Augustus Broom won the first hunt, on his horse Mud. The second recorded, was won by Bogtrotter. Names improved thereafter.

The unspeakable in pursuit of the ... inedible, Paper Hunt, near Shanghai, c.1920: Ruxton Collection, ru-s006.

The riders here are following a paper trail, laid by the Master, and they are riding in the countryside to the north or the west of the city. They rode Mongolian ponies, and the Club rules forbade the use of ponies over 14 hands high. You can see some historic film of the Club in action online. It was an elite activity and, moreover additonally exclusive: Chinese were not members until the late 1920s. In 1929 the City Government of Greater Shanghai moved to prohibit the club from riding in Chinese territory, but was persuaded to rescind the order. This was not the first nor the last controversy, and the Club as late as 1940 began its season with rides faced by demonstrating farmers carrying, and using, sticks to block their way.

Farmers protesting against paper hunting, December 1940, Source: North China Herald.

 

A hefty History of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club 1863-1930, by C. Noel Davis, was published by Kelly & Walsh in Shanghai in 1930.

 

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Racing in China, 1891

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Robert Bickers

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 of the Peking Race Club.

Peking Race Club, 1891, National Archives Collection, Na01-044.

The races were held twice that year, firstly on 17-18 May, ‘on a larger scale than ever’, according to the racing gossip printed down south in Shanghai: ‘There are not sufficient jockeys to ride all the ponies that it is intended to start.’ The event produced ‘one very promising griffin’ (a new pony). This was Belgian diplomat ‘M. Michel’s Le Général’, who ‘won with great ease every race for which he started, carrying off the Maidens, the German Cup, Haikuan Cup and the Champions’. The autumn event was held on 16-17 October, and this is perhaps more likely an autumn rather than a late Spring scene.

There is little yet written on horse racing in China, aside from an affable but informative book by former colonial official, the writer Austen Coates: China Races (1984).

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Examination cells and brain cells

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
The Imperial examination cubicles, Koong Yuin, Canton, c.1875

The Imperial examination cubicles, Koong Yuin, Canton, c.1875, University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, UB01-17

Inexorably the exam season is upon us, a testing time for students, and also for admin staff and markers.  Spare a thought for candidates in the examination system in Imperial China – applicants would think, write, eat and sleep, sometimes for several days on end, in small spartan cells such as in this nineteenth century photo (UB01-17) taken in Canton (Guangzhou).

Chinese students nowadays have national exams in June.  At the Confucius Temple, Shanghai, students tie prayers for success with red ribbons to the camphor trees in front of the temple.

Confucius Temple, Wenmiao Lu, Shanghai, May 2011

Confucius Temple, Wenmiao Lu, Shanghai, May 2011. Photo by Jamie Carstairs

More info from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

and

http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2008/e200802/p54.htm

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A scene from a theatrical performance

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
A scene from a theatrical performance

A scene from a theatrical performance, Armstrong collection, Ar02-070

This enigmatic photograph (Ar02-070) did not have a caption for it in the album owned by the Shanghai policeman William Armstrong (1867-1931, served SMP 1893-1927).  It surely depicts a scene from a theatrical performance?  Whilst the character with the fan discretely pours a drink for the soldier, who sits comfortably in a modern Western-style armchair, the gorgeously costumed performer seems to threaten to cut off his queue.

If this interpretation is about right, the photograph can be tentatively dated to the early Republic era, when queues were suddenly old fashioned.  An amusing and stylish mise en scène of old and new China.

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Juniors at Mr Large's school, c.1908

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
Juniors at Mr Large's school, c.1908

Juniors at Mr Large's school, c.1908, Elliott collection, El01-28

A class of solemn schoolchildren, c.1908, with, it is presumed, their missionary teacher, Mr Large, at the back of the room (El01-28).  Both the foreign teacher and the children have their hair in the Manchu style.  This hairstyle was imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty and not abolished until the coming of the Republic in 1912.  The hair on the front of the head was shaved off above the temples every ten days, and the rest of the hair braided into a long ponytail, or queue.

Albert W. Large had arrived in China in December 1903 with the China Inland Mission. This is presumably the Pao-Ning Boy’s School. There 54 pupils, according to his report in the August 1908 Chinese Recorder: ” (A.) The senior primary with twelve boys, (B.) the junior primary with twenty-four boys, and (C.) the preparatory school with eighteen boys.” By 1921 he and his fellow-missionary wife were based at Sintientze (新店子), near Paoning 保宁, in Sichuan province, a small mission station that had opened in 1892.

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