Chop Suey on the Strand – Whatever Happened to one of London’s top Chinese Restaurants in the 1930s?

I recently wrote a round up of the London Chinese restaurant scene in the 1930s and wartime for The Cleaver Quarterly. I concentrated on the establishments in Soho, though with nods to those nearby on Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly, Charing Cross Road and Denmark Street (not forgetting the few “refreshment rooms” left down in the old, and by then almost over, Chinatown of Limehouse). Space meant omitting a few places for various reasons – one of which was Chop Suey, down on the Strand at the corner with Buckingham Street (that runs down towards the Thames). Technically it was at no.28 Buckingham Street and was listed in the directories as the “Strand Chinese Restaurant”, though advertised itself as the Chop Suey.

Chop Suey cropped up the other day when I was reading the rather amazing 1937 crime book The Face on the Cutting Room Floor by Cameron McCabe (in reality Ernest Borneman). In the book the characters debate where to have dinner and consider the Chop Suey in Buckingham Street. However, one character hates Chinese food and so they head to “the Turkish place in Greek Street” (though could have gone to one of a couple of Chinese restaurants on that street too!). Given that the term Chop Suey is really usually associated in the UK with America many readers may consider that McCabe/Borneman simply invented the name – but he didn’t and obviously knew his London Chinese restaurants. The Chop Suey (sometimes known as the New Chop Suey) had opened around 1930…Here’s a review from a 1932 edition of the Australian Queenslander newspaper (21/7/32 to be precise)…

‘…the Chop Suey, at the corner of Buckingham Street, which is presided over by Mr. Y. Fugii. This Chop Suey is different from all the others, and is probably the only one of its kind in the world. It is unique, in that it is half Chinese and half Japanese. The ground floor is the Japanese department, and here is set a small gas ring upon every table, so that he who runs, or rather sits, may, if he wishes, be his own cook. I should perhaps at once explain that either the proprietor or one of the waitresses will not only show you how to do it, but will actually cook a meal under your very nose and upon the table at which you sit if you are entirely ignorant as to the proper procedure. The fact that all the food is brought to the table in the raw state precludes any possibility of its being other than fresh and good, while a visit to Mr. Fugii’s restaurant affords the novice a very good and free lesson in Chinese and Japanese cooking. Chop-sticks are provided, either of wood (enclosed with a small tooth pick and hygienically wrapped in paper), or of ivory, and the correct way of eating is to put some rice in your bowl and help yourself with the chop sticks from the pan, carrying the food from pan to bowl and there dipping it in the rice and sauce, or whatever you have. It is not correct to fill your bowl from the main dish, and the bowl, as hereafter explained, should be taken near the mouth and the food thrown in by means of the chop sticks. Chop Suey.’

Whether the place was any good or not is questionable – a supposed Chinese visitor writing in 1932 after dining at the Chop Suey commented, “The Chop Suey in Buckingham Street, off the Strand, owned by a Japanese, provides the Japanese dish called Skerki, as colourless a thing as the human palate has ever invented.” However, that diner wasn’t actually Chinese but, in reality, the author of the popular Kai Lung books Ernest Bramah (and used the pseudonym Peh Der Chen), who wrote a 1932 book entitled Honourable and Peculiar Ways that gave a quick round up of London’s Chinese eateries. If anyone has any idea what “skerki” was do let me know?

No.28 Buckingham Street was, I believe, totally destroyed by a German high explosive bomb during the Blitz sometime between October 1940 and June 1941. That area, close to the prime target of Charing Cross railway station, was then left vacant and not redeveloped until later. It is now a modern pub and large block (containing a branch of NatWest Bank at ground level) fronting on to The Strand – here is site of No.28 and the Chop Suey looking up Buckingham Street towards the Strand at the junction with York Place….it is not overly attractive I’m afraid…After that the bomb damage maps for the Strand that show the havoc the Nazi Luftwaffe dropped on London – while the junction of Buckingham Street and Strand shows no damage close by on either side are purple squares indicating “damaged beyond repair”. And finally the Post Office Directory for 1943 (as above) yet now with No.28 gone completely never to return!

Rain at the Maxine Elliot Theatre, 1922

Following on from yesterday’s post on the John Colton/Clemence Randolph stage adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Rain I thought we should see a few pictures of the production. Broadway producers were apparently nervous – perhaps unsurprising given the short story and the play’s content – prostitution and the attempted seduction of a religious man. Still, Jeanne Eagels took the role and the play opened in November 1922 at the 900-seat Maxine Elliott Theatre on West 39^th Street…

Jeanne Eagels as Sadie Thompson

John Colton and Clemence Randolph’s 1922 Adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Rain

I’ve blogged before about W. Somerset Maugham’s great Far East-set tale of prostitution, temptation and redemption, Miss (Sadie) Thompson – otherwise known as Rain, written in 1921. I had known that there was a Broadway adaptation of the short story by John Colton, who later in 1926 wrote the original stage play The Shanghai Gesture (of course filmed much later in 1941 by Josef von Sternberg).

Anyway, I came across a copy of the stage play version by Colton and Clemence Randolph the other day from 1923 (the play version first being staged in 1922)….

BTW: as you can see the play was first staged at the Maxine Elliot Theatre (note that the word ‘theatre’ was spelled correctly by Americans in the 1920s) in New York. I was not familiar with Maxine Elliot until a couple of weeks ago I read Mary S. Lovell’s new book The Riviera Set, the first half of which is bascially all about her wonderful life in America, London and the south of France.

Mr Wong Gee’s Canton Restaurant, 1932 – Greek Street, Soho

This picture popped up the other day on the Flashbak site. It’s Greek Street in London’s Soho in 1932. For China Rhyming readers the interesting bit is the sign of the left hand side that says Chinese Restaurant (no.51). This was the Canton Restaurant run by a Mr Wong Gee. It’s particularly interesting because the Canton was not a long lived restaurant, indeed it was out of business the following year and had only been in business a year or so – hence, there are few remembrances or photographs of the place compared to the far more famous and long-lived Shanghai Restaurant at the other end of the street by the junction with Manette Street.

However, because Mr Wong Gee was an interesting character it does get a nod in my recent article on London’s Chinese restaurant scene of the 1930s and war for The Cleaver Quarterly (an excellent magazine and well worth buying!!). We have one description of the place – the ground floor windows, “full of Chinese delicacies.” Due to debts on another restaurant on Charing Cross Road round the corner, the much larger Canton Café and Restaurant, he eventually left London and settled in Edinburgh (for the rest of his life) where he opened a Chinese-style cafe on Chambers Street and became a British citizen in 1950.

Gloria Sutter of Shanghai

So this is Gloria Sutter of Shanghai in the summer of 1937, her picture taken shortly before the bomb attacks on the city that August 14th. I’m afraid I have not been able to track her down at all. I don’t know where she was from, how she got to Shanghai, what she was doing there or what happened to her later. There’s just this portrait of her in a bathing suit, applying lipstick and posing.

Architectural Conservation in Asia: National Experiences and Practice

Just published and perhaps of interest to China Rhyming readers….John Stubbs and Robert Thomson’s Architectural Conservation in Asia: National Experiences and Practice…

 

When Standard Time Came to Beijing

Until January 1937 Peking (Beijing, if you prefer) had no standard time. Of course there was a set time but very few clocks agreed and some people relied on gongs during the night, a cannon shot at noon and other forms of timekeeping. However, with the treaty ports having introduced standard time through electric clocks (and also Nanking, the capital) Beijing decided to get modern too. Additionally standard time would be a great help to train, bus, trolleybus and, just starting for Peking, flight timetables. And so seven electric clocks were installed in the city to allow people to set their own watches and clocks by these.

Nanjing had bought a KS Clock from Germany (I have seen this written but can find no trace of K.S. clocks) in 1929 which sent out a time signal at noon and 6pm each day for people to synchronize with. The National Astronomical Observatory had been opened in 1912 in Beijing and did answer telephone queries about the time – a sort of personalised Speaking Clock.

Maybe someone knows the following – what clocks did Peking use and where were the seven timepieces located?

Armour Factory Alley in 2016 – Holding on…

A friend recently strolled down Armour Factory Alley in Beijing, now Kujiachang Hutong. It was of course where both the Werners (from my book Midnight in Peking) as well as Edgar and Helen Foster Snow lived….The latter courtyard house is gone; Werner’s remains (though intensely sub-divided). Anyway, at least it survives amazingly….