Moutrie & Co. – Musical Instruments for the Legation Quarter

Old Peking’s Legation Quarter was a hive of western shops and businesses alongside what can still be seen today, the old churches, hospitals, legations and banks mostly. The stores are all gone – the best known such as Kerluff’s department store and Senet Freres jewellers are remembered in some books but smaller businesses, like S Moutrie & Co’s musical instrument shop have rather slipped form history.

Not sure how many ex-pats in Peking these days play the ukelele or the mandolin. I have walked in to a few bars, by mistake, to see washed up foreigners abusing the guitar on more than one occasion.

PS: Rue Marco Polo is now Taijichang Street