Shanghai – First Impressions No.8 – Coming to be a Shanghai Radio Star, 1926

Posted: August 27th, 2013 | No Comments »

The Human Crescendo – Irene CorballyKuhn – 1920s

New Yorker Irene Corbally Kuhn (1900-1995) arrived as an early “girl reporter” in Shanghai but went on to become a local radio star. In 1928 the Shanghai-based China Press newspaper backed a new radio station – KRC – that introduced lady broadcasters to Shanghai’s airwaves, initially with Irene Corbally Kuhn. Her first broadcast on December 14^th 1928 was from the studios housed in a back room at the China Press offices: ‘…with my legs melting under me like butter on a hot stove, I had stepped up before a “mike” and sent my voice into the air, the first woman ever to broadcast in the Orient, and probably the first feminine announcer in the business.”

Illusions Dispelled

All the 1,000 miles to Shanghai from Hongkong the weather was foul, and the rain fell in dirty, gray sheets as the Inaba (1) plowed slowly up the thirteen miles of muddy Whangpoo River. We berthed at the Nippon Yusen Kaisha docks in the northern end of Shanghai, and if ever a sight was calculated to dispel illusions of the romantic, exotic Orient, it was here at journey’s end.

All about, on either side of the river were the gray godowns lining the miles of docks; engineering works, cotton mills, silk filatures and shipyards. The river was crowded with shiplighters and sampans. The smokestacks of the factories belched a black, sooty pall over the grayness, mingling their smoke with the fog.

And waiting for us, on the dock, were swarms of ragged richshaw coolies, bare feet squishing up and down in straw sandals. Their importunate yells for trade were only a shade less noisy than a riot. The human crescendo was interrupted occasionally by a series of staccato explosions – fire crackers.

“It’s Chinese New Year,” explained the young British customs officer as he whisked me through with my trunk and bag and eleven pieces of heavy luggage I was chaperoning for Peggy.

“Goes on for days,” he continued, lackadaisically chalking the numerous pieces.

“Say, you’re making quite a stay, aren’t you?” he exclaimed, when he was half way down the row of luggage that now tormented me with responsibility.

“I’ve come here to live,” I told him, not very enthusiastically.

“That’s great!” he said. But at the moment I had my doubts.

“What in the world will I do with all this luggage?” I burst out. “Most of it belongs to a friend. She’s staying over in Hongkong.”

“Don’t let a little thing like luggage worry you,” he said, “We’ll load it all into a couple of rickshaws and you can get it up to the hotel for a few cents.”

He had finished now. “Hey, wambutso! Three piece, four piece!” he yelled.

I shuddered and took refuge behind a trunk, for a fury of rickshaw boys and wheels was bearing straight for me.

But the customs officer knew what to do. He spit out a string of Chinese words, grabbed the leader, a likely looking fellow, grinning from ear to ear, bade him select three of his cronies and dismiss the others. Without more ado they loaded the thirteen pieces of luggage into three rickshaws, indicating the empty fourth as my vehicle.

“Ten cents Mex each, no more now,” yelled the customs officer after me, as I got under way.

We bowled along through the rain, up a shabby street, ironically named Broadway, to the Garden Bridge over Soochow creek, past the consulates, the Public Gardens. I had no idea where I was going; I had given the coolies no destination. But apparently my young British friend had taken care of that, for the coolies dropped the shafts of the four rickshaws simultaneously before the doors of the Palace Hotel on Nanking Road, just off the Bund.

The boys, wiping their faces with incredibly dirty towels and grinning all the while, waited expectantly. I started to pay them off, but ten cents Mex seemed too little for the ride, and there I made my first mistake. I dropped two silver pieces into the palm of my coolie and in less time than it takes to tell it the Chinese equivalent of “sucker” had passed from him to the others. They surrounded me, yelling and gesticulating. A Sikh policeman hove to from the roadway, the doorman of the hotel joined him, and taking two more ten cent pieces from me to add to the two already in my coolie’s hands, they flung the coins at the boys and chased the quartette away with much shaking of fists, club waving, and picturesque Chinese profanity.

The bargain had been made for the ride. The coolies had accepted the prix fixée when they accepted me and my freight for delivery to the hotel. I had marked myself as a tourist; worse, a foreigner who didn’t know the value of money, when I had attempted, with mistaken generosity, to give them more than the fixed rate. No wonder they put up an argument, for if I were an ignorant sucker they might as well scare me into paying plenty.

Inside the hotel I registered, not bothering to inquire rates. I said I wanted a small and inexpensive room and assumed I’d get something for $3 a day.

The room to which a Chinese “buttons” led me was as large as a skating rink. The brass bed had been built to sleep eight. Modern plumbing was absent. But in a closet, as large as a boarding house hall bedroom, was its Oriental substitute, built like a throne, with high back, arms, padded cover. There was a tub, of sorts, filled on demand by white-clad coolies who came into the room with wooden buckets full of hot water swung on bamboo poles over their shoulders.

Today, in Shanghai, the Palace has gone modern; and across the street is the opulent Hotel Cathay, its appointments and fixings the last word in extravagance and luxury. Then it was just an architect’s dream. Somehow, I like the recollections of my own days there better.

Irene Kuhn, Assigned to adventure, (J.B. Lippincott Company, 1938, Philadelphia)

 

 

1) The Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) ship the Inaba Maru was actually pretty old having been launched in 1897. Kuhn must have been among the last passengers on the Inaba as a NYK vessel as in 1923 it was sold to fellow Japanese shipping line Kinkai Yusen K.K. who scrapped it in 1934.

 

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