Festival floats in procession, Szemao, Yunnan Province, c.1896-1902

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Jamie Carstairs
Festival floats in procession, Szemao, Yunnan Province

Festival floats in procession, Szemao, Yunnan Province, Carey collection, FC01-23

Frederic William Carey served in the Chinese Maritime Customs, from 1891 to 1928.  When stationed at Szemao in the province of Yunnan around the turn of the century, he studied the area and the multivarious tribes peoples, becoming an authority.  Carey (by then Commissioner of Customs) gave a lantern slide lecture in Ningbo on 9 February 1922, on ‘Native Life on the Burma-Yunnan Frontier’.  Various items, including some of his lantern slides, photos, a pamphlet (‘With a Camera in Yunnan’, London, 1903) and a map are held at the Royal Geographic Society, London  (Search for F W Carey at: http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Collections/Catalogue+Search/CatalogueSearch.htm).

This photo (FC01-23) shows two children precariously held aloft on a float in procession in Szemao, Yunnan – the parasol making a pointed punctum.

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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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Catastrophe at the races, Hong Kong 1918

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Robert Bickers

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 the afternoon of 26 February 1918: the temporary mat-shed stands collapsed, and caught fire. At least 670 people died.

Derby Day fire, Happy Valley race track, Hong Kong, 1918, Bickers collection, bi-s010.

The official inquiry concluded that elementary safety and fire precautions had never been taken, and discovered that mat-sheds were not in fact covered by the building ordinances then in force.

More on the tragedy can be found here (pt1) and here (pt2) on Roy Eric Xavier’s Far East Currents blog, which explores the history of the Macanese. The query on this print — ‘how + when?’ – was scribbled by Shanghai-born Noel Kent, sometime member of the Shanghai Race Club and Shanghai Paper Hunt Club.

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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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Visualising China visits Nanjing University

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Robert Bickers

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 a long-standing good relationship, and we’re very happy to see these images on display in Nanjing.

 

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

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Robert Bickers

Bishop William Banister and his wife Alice, Banister collection, Ba-s016

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, who served in Sichuan, from early in the century until 1922, and Fred and Marjorie Cottrell, who worked for the Methodist Missionary Society in Yunnan Province, c.1925-51.

The International Missionary Photography Archive provides a portal into the holdings of a number of university archival holdings of missionary records across Europe and north America, and contains about ten thousand China photographs. Well worth adding as a bookmark.

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