A new edition of Hedda Morrison’s photographs of Hong Kong from 1946-47 has been published by Hong Kong University Press. The new edition contains over three quarters of the photographs from the original Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong published in 2005 and is slightly more affordable. Morrison’s photos are a pretty unique record of a now largely vanished Hong Kong and arguably the most complete pictorial account of how the colony looked during the decades from the early 1930s to the 1950s.
Hedda Morrison was born Hedda Hammer in Stuttgart, in 1908, and studied at the State Institute for Photography in Munich. In 1933 she took up a position at the famous Hartung’s, a German-owned commercial photographic studio in Peking’s Legation Quarter. During her time in Peking she took a lot of photographs of the old city mostly using a Rolleiflex medium-format camera. In 1940 she met Alastair Morrison, the son of the famous Times China bloviator GE Morrison and they married.That’s when Hedda moved to Hong Kong and then on to Sarawak, where Alastair was a government district officer. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991.
For anyone who visits Dalian and enjoys hunting around for odds and ends you might want to know that the Dalian Antique City on Gangwan Jie has been bulldozed for redevelopment. To be fair it was never much good – mostly tatand ridiculous prices. However, the last time I was there with a friend we did see some very nice mugs, plates etc with old shipping line logos and train line operator logos on them. Not much else though – indeed the vendors had little idea of realistic pricing. I looked at several old postcards of Dalian – nothing special, poor condition and would have been 99p if that on eBay – but the shop owner wanted over RMB100, basically a tenner, and wouldn’t budge. As this was at least nine times the price of Portobello Road 5,000miles away my money stayed firmly in my pocket. Odd that they used to try and gauge visitors so relentlessly as the place was always deserted when I went there of either Chinese or tourists. I’ll be charitable and assume they just didn’t know that this sort of thing was far cheaper in Europe or on the internet. So no great loss I suppose – the building itself had no architectural merit- but always a more interesting half hour stroll than a shopping mall.
Being on holiday in Taiwan at the moment one of the pleasant things about staying here for a month has been the quality of the milk which is drinkable. Mainland Chinese milk, if it doesn’t kill you, invariably tastes dreadful being all UHT and usually a mixture of liquid milk and powder combined. But perhaps it wasn’t always so – in the 1930s you could pop along to Clover Milk on the Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing West Road) for Grade A pasteurised or chocolate milk – sounds good to me. Long gone though so soon it’s back to rotten old Yili or Guangming for me.
I’ve always loved Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 film Shanghai Express. Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong in the same movie is always a good night’s entertainment. The story of the passengers on the Shanghai Express travelling through a warlord wracked China outraged at the presence of the notorious Shanghai Lil (Dietrich of course). The film keeps coming up in work I do – the story was loosely based on the 1928 Lincheng Outrage when passengers on a train were kidnapped by a warlord. Carl Crow, who I wrote a biography of, was dispatched by the American Red Cross to take aid to the kidnapped. Then I came up against the story again when I wrote my history of foreign correspondents in China as several rushed to report the story and a couple, including the great JB Powell, were among the kidnapped. I’ve also long been fascinated by the high class courtesans of Shanghai and Dietrich’s character is based on them – Shanghai Lil is euphemistically described as “a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast.”
So interested to come across this montage of various posters for Shanghai Express on YouTube which has the added bonus of Dietrich singingBaubles, Bangles and Beads:
Anyway, there’s an excellent appreciation of Ambler in the Guardian this weekend by Thomas Jones which is well worth a read if you are familiar with Ambler or want further reasons for reading him.
Sir Chaloner Alabaster (1838-83) was originally an interpreter with the British Consulate who established Shanghai’s First Joint Magistrate Mixed Court with Chinese and foreign judges jointly presiding. Alabaster was also closely involved with General Charles “Chinese†Gordon’s multiracial rag-tag, but ultimately successful, fighting force, the Ever Victorious Army, which finally defeated the Taiping Rebels in 1864 after he took over from the dead Frederick Townsend Ward. Alabaster later became Acting British Consul-General in Shanghai between 1884 and 1887, then British Consul-General for Canton in 1894. Known as “the Buster,†Sir Chaloner had joined the Consular Service at just 16 and died in Bournemouth after a distinguished career. In Shanghai he was also known as the founder of the Beefsteak Club. His brother Henry Alabaster also worked for the British Consular Service though in Bangkok where after 15 years he resigned to become an adviser to the King of Siam. The Buster also got a road named after him in the International Settlement – Alabaster Road, now Qufu Road.
Anyway, came across his obituary from the North China Herald the other day – it’s a great obit so worth reproducing in full. Despite Alabaster’s obvious language and diplomatic skills I rather like the idea of having it recorded in my obit that I ‘smoked two cheroots at once’ (oh, if only they’d had camera-phones in in the 1800s) and disliked organised sports (which woiuld have marked you out as very strange indeed in early treaty port Shanghai.
Newspaper obits these days are invariably bland, boring and not what they used to be – most decent obit specialists have been axed by the papers and PC language and the fear of dreary libel lawyers reigns so the most you can expect usually are recitations of achievements and then the inevitable ‘did a lot for charity and liked cats’ type of nonsense. In America apparently criticising anyone or making fun of them after they’ve popped their clogs is strictly verboten in a land that fears death and venerates youth. Alabaster’s obit is a worthy tribute to a great character and the art of decent obit writing.
From the North China Herald – July 11, 1898
“The older members of the British communities all over China will feel a sense of personal loss and really deep regret at the news of the death of Sir Chaloner Alabaster. For some years he has passed out of our immediate sight; but so marked a personality as his once known could never be forgotten; and he was so good and true a friend to those he liked, while he was as good an enemy of those he did not like, that the impression he made on all those with whom he came in contact was ineffaceable. It is only the colourless people that we forget when they have passed out of our circle.
Chaloner Alabaster was educated at King’s College, London, and matriculated at London University in 1852, so that he has passed away at the comparatively early age of but little over sixty. He was appointed a student interpreter in China in 1855, being attached to the Superintendency of Trade at Hongkong. He was present at the first bombardment of Canton, and was attached to Admiral Sir M Seymour until the capture of Canton, for which service he received the China medal with Canton clasp. When it was determined to send the bloodthirsty Commissioner Yeh in exile to Calcutta, Alabaster was chosen to accompany him, and remained with the prisoner until the latter’s death. Much of Alabaster’s peculiar and recondite knowledge of Chinese philosophy was gained from his conversations with Yeh during his captivity. On his return to China he was first attached to Sir Frederick Bruce’s mission, and was successively interpreter at Canton, Amoy, and Swatow, having plenty of experience of fighting against piratical villages while he was attached to the Swatow Consulate. He was appointed interpreter at Shanghai in 1861, and accompanied the EverVictorious Army under Gordon and his predecessors in several of its engagements with the rebels. In August 1862 he was lent to the Chinese Government to assist in the reorganisation of the Sungkiangforce. He was one of the organisers of the Mixed Court here, and is called in the Foreign Office List “Joint Magistrate”, this being obviously the position that the so-called ”Assessor” should always take. He was successively in charge of the Consulates at Chefoo, Swatow, Shanghai, Ningpo, Amoy, Ichang, and Hankow. In 1885 he was acting Consul-General at Shanghai, and was then transferred to Canton, where he was made ConsulÂGeneral. In the distribution of Birthday Honours in 1892 he was made a K.C.M.G., and in November 1892 he retired on a pension after more than thirty-seven years’ invaluable service. His wife was a very well-known and very amiable and popular Shanghai lady, Miss Laura Macgowan, and she survives him. The last years of his life, which has ended too prematurely, were passed at Bournemouth.
St. Paul, referring to himself, in his second letter to the Corinthians, says: “His letters are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” Alabaster’s friends often had this text in mind when they were with him, for his bodily presence was weak, and his letters were very mighty. He was one of the cleverest and ablest men in the Consular service; with strong opinions of his own, and absolutely ignorant of fear. He was much too original, too decided, too anti-Chinese, to please Sir Thomas Wade, and he would have got on better if he had been more ready to fall in with his chief`s views; but his experience generally, and especially his long and intimate companionship with Yeh, had shown him what the Chinese mandarin is in his heart; and he could not be imposed upon by them as his simpler and more soft-hearted chief was. As we have said before, Alabaster was a man of intensely strong likes and dislikes; those whom he liked he loved, and these whom he disliked he hated; and as he had a bitter tongue and an ever-ready wit behind it, those whom he disliked called him Thersites; but his friends knew that with all his occasional bitterness he had a heart of pure gold, and would take any amount of trouble to help people who were really in trouble. He had no patience with shams and pretensions; he saw through them directly, and the man had to get up early who proposed to get round “the Buster, ” as he was affectionately termed It was worth a great deal to spend an evening with “the Buster, ” who would be smoking two cheroots at once, and the Dean, and hear them discuss men and things, with an incessant flow of wit and humour. It was Alabaster who turned Trinity Church here into a Cathedral and his friend the Chaplain, Mr. Butcher, into a Dean. He had no authority to do it beyond the public approval, but he did it.
Socially, Alabaster was very popular, and this popularity was enhanced by the respect that even those who were not his personal friends had for his spirited performance of his Consular duties. He was one of the founders and leading spirits of the Beefsteak Club and the original Debating Society, and one of the founders and warmest supporters of the Amateur Dramatic Club. Old stagers will long remember the assistance given the Club by Mr., or when the occasion demanded Miss, Chrysolite Gypsum. His mind was an ususually active one and he was a constant contributor to the local Press, and even Sir Thomas Wade, who did not love him, has confessed to the writer that, as regards Chinese philosophy, which no-one ever really succeeded in fathoming, Alabaster “had the root of the matter” in him. “The Buster” was not intended by nature to shine infield sports or athletic exercises of any kind, but his sympathies knew no limits, and he could enjoy hearing of a good run with Antrobus’s beagles or after the volatile paper, as much as of a contest of wits on the Bund, in the days when the Bund was the rendezvous after the day’s work was over. The “mysterious Colonel,” John George Dunn, was one of his intimates, and when Alabaster, Dunn, and the Dean foregathered, the ears of those they disliked – if the Dean ever really disliked any body – tingled, however far away they were in the flesh.
If Alabaster has been blessed with a physical constitution to match his mental endowments he would have risen very high in the world; as it is, there are very few who know what he might have become, and they will deeply lament his death; while all who knew him and his wife must most deeply sympathise with Lady Alabaster and the two sons and the daughters he has left behind him. Many a time when we have had a less energetic Consul here have old residents sighed, “Oh for an hour of Alabaster!”
The previous post on Lily Flohr’s cabaret in Shanghai in 1941 and how she had been a theatre and silent movie star in Germany before apparently coming to Shanghai interested me. IMDB has a complete list of her movies but not many details on any of them. Even if you can read German (and I can’t much) there doesn’t seem to be a great deal around about her though she pops up on a recording of old Jewish songs from the 1920s to 1950s (here). Seems she was born in 1903 and after her film career suffered from the Nazis and got out of Europe in 1935 to Shanghai. I can’t find any record of her after 1941 when she was singing at the Elite Bar in Shanghai.
If anyone knows anything else do please let me know.
A few more photos of her popped up after a casual Google image search – a couple of official studio portraits that were signed collectors cars (above and immediately below) and a still featuring Lilly in the German film Das Mädchen aus der Ackerstraße from 1921 where Lilly played the Mädchen
A new edition of Hedda Morrison’s photographs of Hong Kong from 1946-47 has been published by Hong Kong University Press. The new edition contains over three quarters of the photographs from the original Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong published in 2005 and is slightly more affordable. Morrison’s photos are a pretty unique record of a now largely vanished Hong Kong and arguably the most complete pictorial account of how the colony looked during the decades from the early 1930s to the 1950s.
Hedda Morrison was born Hedda Hammer in Stuttgart, in 1908, and studied at the State Institute for Photography in Munich. In 1933 she took up a position at the famous Hartung’s, a German-owned commercial photographic studio in Peking’s Legation Quarter. During her time in Peking she took a lot of photographs of the old city mostly using a Rolleiflex medium-format camera. In 1940 she met Alastair Morrison, the son of the famous Times China bloviator GE Morrison and they married.That’s when Hedda moved to Hong Kong and then on to Sarawak, where Alastair was a government district officer. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991.
Movingcities.org
For anyone who visits Dalian and enjoys hunting around for odds and ends you might want to know that the Dalian Antique City on Gangwan Jie has been bulldozed for redevelopment. To be fair it was never much good – mostly tatand ridiculous prices. However, the last time I was there with a friend we did see some very nice mugs, plates etc with old shipping line logos and train line operator logos on them. Not much else though – indeed the vendors had little idea of realistic pricing. I looked at several old postcards of Dalian – nothing special, poor condition and would have been 99p if that on eBay – but the shop owner wanted over RMB100, basically a tenner, and wouldn’t budge. As this was at least nine times the price of Portobello Road 5,000miles away my money stayed firmly in my pocket. Odd that they used to try and gauge visitors so relentlessly as the place was always deserted when I went there of either Chinese or tourists. I’ll be charitable and assume they just didn’t know that this sort of thing was far cheaper in Europe or on the internet. So no great loss I suppose – the building itself had no architectural merit- but always a more interesting half hour stroll than a shopping mall.
I’ve always loved Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 film Shanghai Express. Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong in the same movie is always a good night’s entertainment. The story of the passengers on the Shanghai Express travelling through a warlord wracked China outraged at the presence of the notorious Shanghai Lil (Dietrich of course). The film keeps coming up in work I do – the story was loosely based on the 1928 Lincheng Outrage when passengers on a train were kidnapped by a warlord. Carl Crow, who I wrote a biography of, was dispatched by the American Red Cross to take aid to the kidnapped. Then I came up against the story again when I wrote my history of foreign correspondents in China as several rushed to report the story and a couple, including the great JB Powell, were among the kidnapped. I’ve also long been fascinated by the high class courtesans of Shanghai and Dietrich’s character is based on them – Shanghai Lil is euphemistically described as “a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast.”
I’m a fan of crime and spy books but usually only those that are heavy on atmosphere rather than lots of technology and fighting. I’ve posted before about the excellent novels of Alan Furst (
A favourite of mine, who’s great on atmosphere, has recently been reprinted by 
Anyway, there’s an excellent appreciation of Ambler in the 
The previous 
