All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Here’s the logo Lane Crawford Department Store (which originally opened in Shanghai in 1872) used throughout the 1930s – exceptionally clean and clear. Below a pic of the store on Nanking Road (Nanjing East Road)….
I won’t say too much about Ben Macintyre’s Agent Sonya as it’s been reviewed everywhere. I don ‘t think the Old Shanghai Hand or China Hand will find much to argue with on his details and his descriptions of Shanghai and Mukden (Shenyang) are all excellent. One word of warning – read the book, don’t listen to the audio book which Macintyre reads himself – it’s the most mangled Chinese ever and completely unlistenable to anyone familiar with the language.
One thing i was particularly happy to see in the book was Macintyre drawing the linkages between Agnes Smedley, Sonya and the former head of Mi5, then a lowly tobacco company employee, Roger Hollis. I think (see the essay in my book Destination Shanghai) that if you look even casually at Hollis’s time in 1920s Shanghai it’s clear he was recruited by Soviet Intelligence and that, to me anyway, indicates he was probably ‘the fifth man’ alongside the Cambridge spies. Macintyre doesn’t quite go that far, but he leans in that direction. The smoking gun that can prove Hollis was a Soviet spy remains to be found – presumably somewhere in Moscow.
Recently I wrote an article for the South China Morning Post on the old Shanghai Art Academy (click here). Xie Zhiguang was one of the leading graduates who went on to work in many areas of commercial art – including calendar girls – and later, after 1949, socialist realist art. But is he the man in this cartoon – it was drawn in the early or mid-1930s by the well known Shanghai-based Russian emigre cartoonist Sapajou for Carl Crow. Xie worked for Crow’s advertising agency. But is this him?
I’ve added the four abridged chapters of Destination Peking that i recorded for RTHK3 in Hong Kong to this website – just look on the home page under ‘Old China Podcasts’….
This cartoon is originally from the French press and here translated for the American newspapers. Visually the message is clear that Japan’s threatening attitude to China – both over the recent annexation of Manchuria and the war in Shanghai – is not evenly balanced. However, nowadadays the Fontenoy reference may be a little obscure to most of us. The Battle of Fontenoy, (May 11, 1745) was a confrontation that led to the French conquest of Flanders during the War of the Austrian Succession…
Wikipedia explains the point of the Fontenoy reference: “Just before reaching the French position, the Allied column halted to check formation; having done so, the British Guards in the front rank allegedly invited the Gardes Françaises to fire first. The opening volley was so important commanders often preferred their opponents to fire first, particularly if they considered their troops better disciplined. Thus goaded, the French fired prematurely, greatly reducing the impact of their first volley, while that of the British killed or wounded 700 to 800 men. The French front line broke up in confusion; many of their reserves had been transferred to meet the Dutch attack on Fontenoy, and the Allies now advanced into this gap.”
Shanghai had a number of sanitoria. The Shanghai Sanitarium (which used the less common spelling or an ‘a’ rather than an ‘o’) was on Range Road, up in the old Northern External Roads past Hongkew Park (what is now Lu Xun Park and the Hongkou Stadium). As this advert comes from 1946 after some road name changes following the abolition of the foreign concessions it is also described as Wutsin Road (and now Wujin Lu). The Sanitarium was linked to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Shanghai, also based on Range Road (I’ve blogged about their building before here).
The Sanitarium was established by Dr Harry Willis Miller, a Seventh Day Adventist, in 1925. Miller ( alifelong vegetarian and one of the original developers of soy milk apparently) was a long term China veteran having arrived in 1903 as a young man. He was a surgeon and apparently performed over 6,000 thyroid operations in China (a particularly bad condition at the time due to the lack of iodine in the salt). He was still active in 1960 when the he was asked by the Seventh Dayay Adventist Church to establish a hospital in Hong Kong
China Natioonal Aviation Corp, the flag carrier for Nationalist China, had a route network up and running after the end of the war – old army transports mostly and routes in and out of the former Free China (Chengdu, Chongqing and Kunming) still running along with the former capital Hankow, up to Beijing and down to Canton. Their offices were down on Canton Road (now Guangdong Lu) – that building is still there i think with successive restaurants on the ground floor in the old CNAC offices (Ever Shine once and then some sort of Scandinavian place – below)…
J Llewellyn & Co (Laou Teh Kee – hong name) chemists were originally at 2C Nanking Road (Nanjing East Road), prior to the clearance of that site for Sir Victor Sassoon’s Cathay Hotel. It was there from before the First World War , though i’m not sure where (or if) it relocated after the Cathay was finished. Below is their advertisement and their store.
