Anyway, I am most grateful to a commenter on the blog – “Yanli” – for the following information –
“You may find it interesting that the author of the article you cite here from the The Queenslander seems to be Townley Searle. He published a book titled Strange news from China in 1932, which was basically a gourmet’s note on Chinese food. The book is an interesting read showing a lot of thoughts on Chinese culture by the author, though Mr Searle has never been to China himself, according to the Spectator. The section that appears on The Queenslander’s article is recited from this book.’
And so….
This rather delightful edition of the book was first published in 1932 by EP Dutton in New York (US$2.85) and by Alexander Ouseley Limited in London. Townley Searle also illustrated the book of 101 recipes throughout, with simple line drawings and caricatures as well as the lovely dust jacket, and ‘endpapers in five colours with a pattern of Chinese lanterns’, which were beautiful…
Charming as the book looks i’m not convinced it’s totally accurate. It does indeed seem Searle never visited China and some of his recipes might be a bit questionable – Drunken Sparrows in a Rice Trap maybe, but also several hedgehog recipes (I’ve never come across hedgehog recipes or ingestion at all in China?).
And what of Mr Townley Searle himself. Surprisingly quite a few Townley Searle’s pop up in the newspaper archives who might be a pre-Strange news from China Searle but our one was a curator of a London curios exhibition (possibly), and definitely a London artist of the late 1920s. Searle, born in or around 1887, does seem to have been an artist and the owner of the Montmartre Gallery on Soho’s Wardour Street (#39), which seems to have been in business throughout the 1930s. The gallery was not so much a art space as a dealers in books, prints, autographs and curios. Searle was the Secretary of the London Collectors’ Club and, reportedly, scoured places like North London’s Caledonian Market, for discarded or unrecognised treasures
Wardour Street was an intgeresting location – Bohemian and also a centre of the early British film industry – Searle is recorder as a collector of early films from the 1890s, a specialist dealer in the works of WS Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) and self-published a complete bibliography of his work in 1931, The Guardian interestingly noting that Searle had dug out previously foprgotten works from the Lord Chamberlain’s (censors) cellars, and of chess sets.
Also, incidentally, Searle’s residence was #30 Gerrard Street in the West End, now of course London’s Chinatown, but then a more Bohemian Street of clubs, restaurants etc without any particularl Chinese elements. Though, living there, he was walking distance close to all the Chinese restaurants in the West End mentioned in his article in The Queenslander. Later, aroiund 1939, it seems Searle moved to West Street, even closer to Soho and the cluster of Chinese retaurants there.
And then Strange Newes from China which was generally reviewed as a curiosity rather than a serious cookbook or food history. Tomorrow I’ll post some recipes…but, for now, here’s some more pages…
An excerpt from my book Midnight inPeking, about Chinese New Year 1937…
The Year of the Ox began at midnight on Wednesday 11 February. Han and Dennis were at Morrison Street, where the station was like a ghost town. Even though both men were expecting it, they still jumped when the sound of a hundred thousand firecrackers burst over the city.
Peking had shut down a few days beforehand for the Spring Festival holiday, but the days leading up to that were a flurry of activity. Outside on Morrison Street the thoroughfare had been busier than ever, louder than usual, as rich Chinese piled their purchases into their chauffeured cars, and stubborn foreigners braced themselves against the cold, holding their hats to their heads as they headed for tiffins at the Grand Hôtel de Pékin. For commercial Peking, the end of the old lunar year and the start of the new was the time for settling accounts. Merchants and banks tallied up the year’s business on abacuses with flying fingers and sent their messengers scurrying around the city to collect outstanding bills. Chits that had been issued were redeemed; China’s unique credit system of trust and face was invoked. Unless by special arrangement, no new accounts would be opened until the new year began. People hurried to make the last trading day for Peking’s markets – wheat and bean-cake, flour, cotton, stocks and shares – which was on the Saturday, although the gold-bar market always stayed open.
Wangfujing, 1930s
The poor of the city and the newcomers from the countryside walked along Morrison Street gazing at the modern stores and the gleaming black cars. Rickshaw pullers did good business, swarming around anyone with a parcel. Bank messengers darted in and out of rickshaws, the sparking trolleybuses and the lines of cars. Here and there shopkeepers emerged with bags of cash, flanked by bodyguards who escorted them to the bank. For several days Peking’s banks and counting houses had extended their opening hours as queues formed to settle debts. Even though China now had a paper currency, its own dollar, backed by the national bank in Shanghai, jittery Peking didn’t trust it. In this city, cashmight have been king but silver was God.
As the new year approached, all Han’s black-jacketed constables were out on street patrol, truncheons drawn, whistles blowing, to manage the crowds that gathered at the temple fairs and on the food streets, or to watch the impromptu performances of acrobats and opera singers. Crowds were good cover for pickpockets and other criminals, and plainclothes police were also on duty, mingling with the throng to watch for signs of trouble. Patrols had been doubled at major intersections to prevent stampedes caused by delays and anger. Han predicted that marauding bandits would further disrupt the roads and train lines out of the city. Thomas, Pearson and their small band of constables were also increasing the guards on the entrances and exits to the Legation Quarter. The Peking police bicycle squad was monitoring the temples and parks, while the thousand-strong Peace Preservation Brigade, volunteers with armbands, had been called out to assist the regular constables in patrolling the major commercial districts over the holidays. A celebrating crowd could easily turn into panic and frenzy, and this year the mood was heightened. Who knew what would be left to celebrate next New Year? Pragmatic Peking was living while it could.
The receding Year of the Rat was characterised by opportunity and good prospects, but with the possibility of bleak years to follow. The incoming ox symbolised problems that appear never-ending, and those years governed by it were held to be times for discipline and great sacrifice. The ox’s element was fire: ox and fire combined to make a beast motivated by combat.
William Empson, an English academic who had been teaching English literature at Peking University was evacuated to the western regions as part of the new amalgamated South-West Associated Universities in 1938 after the Japanese invasion of northern China. He eventually made it to Kunming and tthen back to England in 1939 was lodged in a small town called Mengtze (now Mengzi) in Yunnan province, where the incident described in this article occurred.
William Empson
‘One of the ideas about China still often held by people in England is that China is full of bandits, and it seems worth offering a bit of out-of-date reportage on this topic; there is no moral except that the bandit situation had very intelligible causes and has been getting under control.
There was a fair amount of talk about bandits, when some departments of the Peking National University and the other Associated Universities, refugeeing in 1938, were sent about a thousand miles from their bases to Mengtze, just off the French railway in Yunnan. The term bandit is vague. In sufficiently remote districts a ‘bandit’ may consider himself a member of the local gentry, receiving rents. The presence of non-Chinese tribesmen in the hills rather complicated the problem for us; some students believed that these people needed a severed head for the autumn sowing, which was very unjust. However, a good deal of smuggling undoubtedly passed through Mengtze; indeed since the railway has by-passed it the place had hardly any other function in human affairs but to be a smugglers’ market town. One did not quite know what smugglers might think fair. Also the suppression of opium-growing and the wartime rise of taxes was believed to have made a number of simple farmers take to the road; though contrariwise many of these losers had been conscripted.
Mengtze
The local gentry sent in formal notes to the university authorities protesting against girl students bathing in the lake (naturally in smart Shanghai swimming suits). Then they objected to Mixed Walking of male and female students. Their next memo was on a different topic. They stated, clearly and at some length, that Mengtze was a market town to which caravans often came from a distance, so that traders had to be accommodated; that the price of their lodgings in the town had recently risen to an uneconomic level owing to the hiring of rooms by visiting teachers and students; and that if any further such hiring went on they would be obliged to shoot one male and one female student as a warning. It was a well-written letter. Of course we Peking chaps exclaimed a good deal against these barbarians and asked why they didn’t work through the officialdom; but I don’t think we took any more rooms in the town. In its way it was quite a rational bit of County Council work; and the same type of unofficial council further east would be equally ready to stand up against Japanese occupying forces.
Far up to the northwest along the Burma Road the bandit control used to be very complete, and there by a bandit you meant a ‘Faerie Queene’ baron with a castle on one of the passes. Parcels for the missionaries (so the older one told me) didn’t go through till a division of the provincial troops went through with a convoy, and the more prominent bandits would be pointed out to you as you went through, sitting armed on the cliffs. The interesting thing is that all that had been cleared up by about twelve years ago, not only well before the China war but well before there was any central government control over Yunnan. All that political work had to have been done first before the Burma Road could have been built at all. The point to get clear about the Chinese bandit situation is that it had been slowly and steadily improving.
However, I was in fact held up outside the gates of Mengtze. It struck me as unlike what one had heard about bandits. I mean from Chinese, of course. What a European Old China Hand said had to be listened to carefully for the bits absurd enough to be repeated. The town lies in a dry plain, and the surrounding hills seem much nearer than they are; on one of them you could see lights at night where a tin-mine was, and I set out to go there. By the time I got onto the main slope I found my legs actually wouldn’t push me up, and there was all the way to go back. I can’t tell you what a beautiful lost hope that ghastly tin-mine seemed in the evening, with the singing and the mule-bells; it is lovely country. Then on the way back after the all-day solitude and drought and heat the cramps began, and I would count a hundred paces and then drop and count a hundred and then go on. Luckily there was a moon, and I thought I can sleep on the road if this gets worse, but I will behave normally and meet my class at ten tomorrow. I remembered other walks a good deal. I was in severe pain. Thus the hold-up seemed very incidental; it came when I was having the last rest with the light on the gates of Mengtze looking reasonably near. In rubbing the back of one leg to remove cramp one was always being caught by the other leg suddenly going wrong owing to taking a strained position, and it was very exhausting to deal with both at once.
Seeing someone pass in the moonlight I felt it polite to express mild complaints because I might otherwise appear crazy. The figures slouched on without reply, and then three suddenly converged, with daggers, I assure you, flashing in the moonlight. Maybe if I had been more frightened or more angry the cramp might have solved itself, but as it was I had to go on rubbing my left calf. Two men held me with what appeared scientific efficiency while a third went through the pockets. Scientific efficiency however interfered with rubbing the left leg and threatened to bring on cramp in the right leg; I had to object, and a compromise was reached. The wrist-watch was taken without comment, the very small amount of money carried was a matter of course; the spectacles were taken, and I stopped rubbing my legs to represent the absurd injustice of this step – I suppose it would have meant being led down to Indo-China for new ones.
Then the important thing happened: the searcher found the cigarettes and matches. All three gasped with pleasure. I think it says a good deal for the local police that the boys couldn’t slip into the town and buy cigarettes. The sinister figures then melted into the night and I went on rubbing both legs. After a pause one sinister figure came back and asked if I wanted help up to the gate; he was sorry he couldn’t lake me in. I assured him I would be all right in a minute or two, so he melted back again. All this sounds as if I talk fluent Chinese, which I don’t, but there was no language problem.
Noting The True Story of Ah Q yesterday and Lu Xun’s role as a modernist, I thought i’d note this new walking tour being organised by Bespoke Shanghai and historian Lily Wang starting this Chinese New Year….
There’s a Chinese component to the current BBC Radio 4 Modernism series celebrating a century of modernism. Matthew Sweet, Gregory Lee and Xiaolu Guo discuss The True Story of Ah Q – can’t listen live? It’ll be on BBC Sounds later for ages….
Dael A Norwood’s Trading Freedom on the American role in the opium trade and early China trade….
The economic and geographic development of the early United States is usually thought of in trans-Atlantic terms, defined by entanglements with Europe and Africa. In Trading Freedom, Dael A. Norwood recasts these common conceptions by looking to Asia, making clear that from its earliest days, the United States has been closely intertwined with China—monetarily, politically, and psychologically.
Norwood details US trade with China from the late eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries—a critical period in America’s self-definition as a capitalist nation—and shows how global commerce was central to the articulation of that national identity. Trading Freedom illuminates how debates over political economy and trade policy, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the looming sectional struggle over slavery were all influenced by Sino-American relations. Deftly weaving together interdisciplinary threads from the worlds of commerce, foreign policy, and immigration, Trading Freedom thoroughly dismantles the idea that American engagement with China is anything new.
For Chinese New Year Bespoke Beijing and Beijing by Foot (aka your guide Jeremiah Jenne) have organised another walking tour based aorund some of the characters and locations in my collection Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books) – aesthetes, scholars, authors and spies. It’s a fascinating meander through the old foreign aesthetes of Peking and some of the most charming remaining hutongs….
Rarely see such a well kept copy of this book, indeed i don’t think i’ve ever seen this one with the spine illustration – the second UK impression of the book….
