American Express at the Grand Hotel des Wagon-Lits, Pekin

Quite a lot of Shanghai recently, so a little excursion north to Peking – in 1930. Here an advert for the American Express offices in Peking, which were in the Grand Hotels des Wagon Lits. The Wagon Lits (or, as the US Marines who gathered in the bar looking for women of easy virtue termed it, the Wagon Slits) is long gone sadly. Built in 1905, it was the first major hotel in Peking’s Legation Quarter. Built in Flemish Gothic style (and significantly added to after 1914) it was a natural home for the city’s American Express offices – close to the railway station.

Clarence Doane Hoggard – Shanghai Curio dealer

I blogged recently about Clarence Doane Hoggard, who came to China in 1919 as an auditor for the international YMCA and stayed. He eventually went into business with W. Warren Sigler (Sigler died some time before the end of WW2)to run Hoggard and Sigler’s, one of Shanghai’s best antiques and curio stores. Their store was located in the Sassoon Arcade, (part of the Cathay Hotel). The shop was partially damaged in August 1937 with the bombing of the Cathay Hotel on Bloody Saturday. Hoggard returned to Shanghai in 1940, salvaged what he could of the stock and left Shanghai once again for America. His ship was near Borneo at the time of Pearl Harbor but eventually made it back to the USA. After the war Hoggard continued to trade Oriental antiques and curios in America – at the time of his arrival back in the USA he mentioned opened stores in both Tuscon, Arizona and St Petersburg, Florida. He did indeed open a new shop at no.9 East Penington Street in Tuscon called “Tjen” (perhaps someone in Tuscon could stroll past and see what’s there now?). Here he seems to have sold the remaining stock of antiques, statuary and curios from his Sassoon Arcade store.

Just to add to that previous post here is an advert for Hoggard-Sigler from around 1930 and a picture of Hoggard published in 1948…

Macao – New Proposed UNESCO Listings – the Canil Municipal & the Ox Warehouse

Macao is submitting a few new proposed listings to UNESCO. Among them are the Municipal (dog) Kennels (Canil Municipal) on the Avenida do Almirante Lacerda. There are some older pictures and a brief history of the Canil Municipal on the Macau Antigo blog.

The other building up for listing is the Ox Warehouse at the intersection of Avenida do Coronel Mesquita and Avenida Almirante Lacerda. It’s an art gallery currently. It was formerly a slaughterhouse, quite close to Macao’s former Canidrome.

Both buildings deserve UNESCO listing….

One Last Post on old Shanghai Laundries – The Shanghai Steam Laundry’s Advertising Blitz!

Sorry -  a third post on old Shanghai laundries (see previous two here and here) – I was going to leave well alone but then Doug Clarke (author of the excellent Gunboat Justice trilogy) got in touch and passed along these three wonderful ads for the Shanghai Steam Laundry Company that appeared in the China Press newspaper….

A Bit More on Old Shanghai’s Laundries – Just How Many Were There?

In case yesterday’s post on the operation of licensed laundries in the Shanghai International Settlement wasn’t enough clean washing information for you I thought a list of all licensed laundries for 1907 might be of interest – note the concentrations on Chungking Road (Chongqing Rd), Weihaiwei Road (Weihai Rd), Seward (Dongdaming), Tongshan (Tangshan), Dent (Dantu), Harbin (Haerbin) and Range (Wujin) Roads predominantly.

The Shanghai Steam Laundry & the Municipal Politics of Laundries in the International Settlement

I know the title of this post sounds like the most boring Phd on China ever but as temperatures in Shanghai hit 102F with 94% humidity think yourself lucky you’re not working in the Shanghai Steam Laundry. However, if you’re running out of clean shirts in the long, sticky days you might glad of these guys….the Shanghai Steam Laundry was on Thorburn Road (now Tongbei Road) out east, just past Tilanqiao, in Yangtszepoo. Of course, if you needed their services, you didn’t have to drag yourself out to Thorburn Road in person – they sent someone round to collect your laundry. Presumably, as a worried tourist in a strange city, you could rest easy in the knowledge that the establishment was “under European management”.

You could also trust the Shanghai Steam Laundry because all laundries in the International Settlement were required to be registered with the Municipal Council and were regularly inspected. If they were found to be unsanitary then they were prosecuted – most were Chinese-run and cases did come up before the Mixed Court and laundries did lose their licenses. The Shanghai Steam Laundry had been around since the start of the century – certainly it was licensed in 1907 by the SMC. Not sure about that European Management claim though – the laundry’s license was issued to a certain Y. Tarui. Originally the laundry had premises out at 451 Weihaiwei Road (Weihai Road) in western Shanghai before moving to Thorburn Street (where it also moved premises up and down the street a few times over the years – No.8 in 1930, moving to No.537 in the late 1930s). Weihaiwei Road was Shanghai’s laundry district – in the early 1900s over half a dozen large scale laundries were registered on the road. The other major street of laundries was Chungking Road (now Chongqing North Road) – indeed most of Shanghai major laundries were clustered at the corner of these two roads (right about where the Four Seasons Hotel is now).

No less an authority on Shanghai than the great Arthur de Carle Sowerby noted that the Shanghai Steam Laundry was probably the city’s first modern (that is to say completely steam operated) laundry – by the time of the First World War it was already in larger premises in Thorburn Road and employing 120 workers. (BTW: if you really do want more on laundries in Shanghai see de Carle Sowerby’s article “Shanghai’s Dirty Linen” in vol.23 of the China Journal from 1935 though I cannot imagine anyone but myself spending time perusing this article!)

When your washing was picked up by the laundry’s “coolie” you were issued with a “Municipal Distributing Ticket” which proved the laundry was registered with the SMC and not one of the notoriously unhygienic illegal laundries that were mostly out of the Settlement over in Pootung (Pudong).

The Banque de L’Indochine, Tientsin

The other week I mentioned the good news that it seems that the Saigon branch of the old Banque de L’Indochine will be restored. The building dates from around 1929-1930. Thanks to old Tianjin Hand Douglas Red for reminding me that the Banque’s old Tientsin (Tianjin) branch is still standing and looking great (it was for many years the Tianjin Fine Arts Museum I believe). Below are pictures of the Banque building then and now. It stand on the Rue de France (now renamed Jiefang Bei Lu), obviously in the old French Concession of Tientsin. I believe the building was completed in 1912, though I’m told a local plaque claims 1902 (which would be too early).

Fox Spirits, Signs for Lost Children and Late Nineteenth Century Japan

Readers of my book Midnight in Peking will know I have an interest in all things fox spirit related. Judging from the feedback I’ve received many readers from all sorts of backgrounds are also interested in fox legends, spirits, fairies and the various interpretations of them in China, Korea and Japan. So, as some readers of China Rhyming might be interested, I’ll give a plug for Sarah Moss’s novel Signs for Lost Children. The jist of the story is below but Japanese interpretations and legends of fox spirits are a major theme of the book and make for interesting reading.

Only weeks into their marriage a young couple embark on a six-month period of separation. Tom Cavendish goes to Japan to build lighthouses and his wife Ally, Doctor Moberley-Cavendish, stays and works at the Truro asylum. As Ally plunges into the institutional politics of mental health, Tom navigates the social and professional nuances of late 19th century Japan. With her unique blend of emotional insight and intellectual profundity, Sarah Moss builds a novel in two parts from Falmouth to Tokyo, two maps of absence; from Manchester to Kyoto, two distinct but conjoined portraits of loneliness and determination. An exquisite continuation of the story of Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children will amaze Sarah Moss’s many fans