Marines – Stay Away from Ma Hsien Hutong! (in 1936 anyway)

Posted: May 7th, 2026 | No Comments »

Today Ma Hsien (Maxian) Hutong is a traditional old hutong in Beijing’s Dongcheng District that connects with Houwei Hutong and is not far from Mao’er Hutong, once the family home to Wanrong, who became the wife of Puyi and so the last empress of China (someone should write a new book about them!).

In 1936 there were apparently some rather dodgy bars at numbers 3, 5, 6, 9, 12 and 18! This area had grown up as a bar street, I think, because the Marine Detachment at the US Embassy had ruled the “Badlands” (around Huoguo and Changban Hutongs to the east of the Legation Quarter) as “out of bounds”. Although (as readers of my book Midnight in Peking will know) British, French and Italian soldiers, as well as civilians of all nations, still congregated there.

So it seems Ma Hsien Hutong became the Marines favoured drinking spot. But then it too got ruled “out of bounds” in July 1936. MPs were sent in to enforce the “Post General Order” issued by Lieutenant Colonel G.B. Erskine, the Marines executive officer.

Erskine (1897-1973), a Louisianan by birth, was one of those Americans with a ridiculously fantastical name – “Graves” (which easily equals Tennessee Williams’ father’s middle name “Coffin”) who served in China (Beijing and Nanjing) from January 1935 to May 1937. He was a Great War veteran having fought at Belleau Wood and later served in Nicaragua. Following his China duty, he became a section chief at the Marine Corps School, Quantico and later commanded the 3rd Marine Division on Iwo Jima in World War Two. He was apparently an expert in amphibious landings – that must have come later because it would, to be frank, be a rather useless skill in Beijing. He became a General and is buried at Arlington.

I wonder where the Marines found to drink after that?

My thanks to the amazing collector of old China ephemera Roy Delbyck in Hong Kong for sending me this treasure.

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