Chinese Whaling in the Yellow Sea, c.1930

Posted: September 29th, 2025 | No Comments »

Recently I read Xiaolu Guo’s Ishmaelle Call Me Ishmalle, a retelling or re-imaging of Melville’s Moby Dick with a female lens and some more China angles. It prompted a discussion on whether the Chinese ever really got into whaling. I still don’t really know the answer to that, but recently I came across these photos of a whaler in the Yellow Sea off Manchuria – c.1930 – and what was termed the ‘Whale Dissecting Stations’, also pictured below.

There’s a little bit of information with the photographs. The whaling season opened in April-May when traditionally whales appeared in the Yellow Sea, especially around Haiyang Island on the southeastern part of the Shandong peninsula. There were the whaling stations and the 800 ton whaling vessels. It was a migratory business apparently with the whales arriving and then the whale workers at sea and on land. Ships returning with whales would blast their horns and the crews would run from their lodgings to the Dissecting Stations. A typical Yellow Sea whale could be completely dissected within an hour – entrails removed, meat processed, bones sawn off.

It was recorded that tea houses, lodging houses and bordellos followed them for the season and the atmosphere on the island was ‘riotous’ as men were paid per whale dissection and the ship crews came ashore after a successful hunt.

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