Shanghai – First Impressions No.5 – The Great JB Powell Shows Up, 1917

Posted: August 24th, 2013 | No Comments »

So This Is Shanghai! – JB Powell – 1917

The American Thomas Franklin Fairfax Millard (1868-1942) who had founded the China Press in August 1911 and hired John Benjamin Powell (1886-1947) to work on his own more personal vehicle Millard’s Review in June 1917. Powell (centre with glasses above), known to most people as simply “JB”, became the Chief Editor of Millard’s Review and then bought it outright in 1922 when Millard left. Powell changed the name to The Weekly Review of the Far East and then finally The China Weekly Review, which continued for several more decades before being suppressed by the Japanese. The erudite and soft-spoken Powell was from the start a first stop for many young foreign would-be journalists (mostly Americans) turning up in Shanghai, including a young Edgar Snow (a fellow Missourian) fresh out on the boat from the Kansas City Star.

Answers to A Hundred Questions

The Astor House Hotel, then Shanghai’s leading hostelry, had grown from a boarding house established originally by the skipper of some early American clipper, who left his ship at Shanghai. He christened his establishment in honor of the then most famous hotel in the United States, the Astor House in New York; however, he was compelled to add the designation “hotel,” as the fame of the New York hostelry had not yet reached the China coast. Aside from the name, the two establishments had little in common, as the Astor House in Shanghai consisted of old three- and four-story block and linked together by long corridors. In the center of the compound was a courtyard where an orchestra played in the evenings. Practically everyone dressed for dinner, which never was served before eight o’clock. At one time or another one saw most of the leading residents of the port at dinner parties or in the lobby of the Astor House. An old resident of Shanghai once told me, “If you will sit in the lobby of the Astor House and keep your eyes open you will see all of the crooks who hang out on the China coast.”

At the hotel I asked the clerk where I might find my boss-to-be, Mr Millard, and was relieved to learn that he lived there and would come down to the lobby shortly. What would he be like? Soon a Chinese boy called my attention to a man coming down the stairs. He was a short, slender man weighing perhaps 125 pounds and dressed so perfectly that I wondered how he would be able to sit down without wrinkling his immaculate suit.

I soon learned that my boss, who had served the old New York Herald many years, first as dramatic critic and later as international political correspondent, had taken on many of the eccentricities of his employer, the late James Gordon Bennett (1).

I naturally was anxious to obtain answers to a hundred questions concerning my new job, but Millard appeared in no hurry to enlighten me. In fact we were soon the center of an interesting group of local residents who strolled in for afternoon tea, but the “tea” they consumed consisted chiefly of cocktails and whisky-sodas.

The profusion of drinks aroused my curiosity, because I had grown up in a dry local-option territory in the Middle West (2), and America was within a few years of the “great experiment” (3) of 1920 when I sailed from San Francisco.

The circle about our table expanded and the Chinese boy added a new table to hold the accumulating bottles and glasses. As the newcomers came up and were introduced they usually ordered a new round of drinks, which meant that each finally had several drinks standing on the table. After the boy had brought the drinks he would present the one who placed the order with a little piece of paper called a “chit,” which no one ever looked at before signing.

While waiting in the lobby for Mr Millard, I had seen on a bulletin board a Reuters dispatch from one of the local English newspapers carrying the momentous news that the United States had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany. It was February 3^rd 1917. But the conversation about the table did not concern America’s entrance into the war; on the contrary it was confined to the subject of possible prohibition in the United States and the increasing cost of drinks in Shanghai due to the shortage of shipping from England. Agreement was unanimous that Shanghai would never go dry, and that the British were more intelligent, on the liquor question at least, than were the Americans.

Suddenly the conversation became hushed as a gray-haired man of medium height entered the lobby and approached our table. I was introduced to him, Thomas Sammons, American Consul-General (4), a likable official, who was constantly obsessed by the fear that something would happen in the community which might involve him in complications with the State Department.

America’s entrance into the war latter added tremendously to the Consul-General’s responsibilities and anxieties, due to the character of the government of the International Settlement. Since China was still neutral, German and Austrian consuls and their nationals went about their affairs practically without restraint, although all Britons and most Americans had ceased speaking to them or doing business with them.

When the group finally broke up, Mr Millard suggested that I take a room at the Astor House and introduced me to the manager, Captain Harry Morton. Since most of the managers of the Astor House had been sea captains, the hotel had taken on many of the characteristics of a ship. The corridors were painted to resemble the passageways leading to the staterooms of a passenger liner. I was therefore not surprised when the manager told me that he could give me a room in the “steerage” for $125 a month, including meals and afternoon tea. That figured out at about $60 in United States currency.

John B Powell, My Twenty-Five Years in China (Macmillan, 1945, New York)

1) The publisher of the New York Herald whch had been founded by his father, James Gordon Bennett, Sr. Known for his flamboyant and sometimes erratic behavior, which included not marrying until he was in his seventies.

(2) Powell was from Hannibal, Missouri. ‘Dry local-option territory’ meant that the voters themselves had voted against granting any liquor licenses.

(3) i.e. prohibition

(4) Thomas Sammons was US Consul General in Shanghai between 1906-1919 before moving on to be US Consul General in Melbourne.

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