Highlights of History, 1930 – The Boxer Rebellion #3 – it’s Chinese Vs Foreigners and no mistake…

Highlights of History, 1930 – The Boxer Rebellion #2 – and so to June 13th 1900…..

Highlights of History 1930 – The Story of the Boxer Rebellion as Comic Strip

A little education, from 1930, on how the American newspapers presented the Boxer Rebellion. J Carroll Mansfield produced many Highlights of History comic strips that were syndicated in newspapers across America. Each historical story ran for a week or so.

Mansfield was born in 1896 in Baltimore, Maryland. He apparently realized at an early age that he wanted to pursue a career in art. He also had a strong interest in history, particularly American history. After serving in World War I in the 7th Infantry in Europe, he co-authored a history of the regiment, titled The Blue and the Grey. His illustrations were an integral part of the text. He later free-lanced for the Baltimore Sun Times. He started the Highlights of History comic strip in 1925.

Anyway, here we have the first strip in the series…I’ll post the next each day as the newspapers ran them in 1930.

Goods from the East, 1600-1800: Trading Eurasia

A new collection of essays on trading with China – Goods from the East…..

The imperative of the long-distance seaborne trade of Europeans, from the age of exploration, was to acquire the goods of the exotic East – the silks and porcelains and tea of China, the spices of the spice islands and the textiles of India. Goods from the East focuses on the trade in fine products: how they were made, marketed and distributed between Asia and Europe. This trade was conducted by East India Companies and many private traders, and the first Global Age that resulted deeply affected European consumption and manufacturing. This book provides a full comparative and connective study of Asia’s trade with a range of European countries. Its themes relate closely to issues of fine manufacturing and luxury goods in the current age of globalization. Goods from the East brings together established scholars, such as Jan de Vries, Om Prakash and Josh Gommans, and a new generation of researchers, who together look into the connections between European consumer cultures and Asian trade.

Any Excuse to Squeeze in a Pic of a Chinese Parasol – Shooting Stars (1928)

The Archive gala screening at the 59th BFI London Film Festival on Friday 16th October 2015 at the Odeon Leicester Square, will be the world premiere of a new restoration of Anthony Asquith’s Shooting Stars (1928). Nothing to do with China, but I do like a restored old film and….wait for it….there’s a Chinese parasol in the flick….and I never miss a chance to post a pic of a Chinese parasol.

Lentheric’s Shanghai Modernized Oriental Frangrance of 1936

Depending on when you visited Shanghai, where you went and how well you lived probably determines how you think Shanghai smells…

Those who know Shanghai of course won’t be surprised to know it was basically a knock off – Shanghai by Lentheric: launched in 1936 but was originally named CÅ“ur de Paris and had been launched in 1911. CÅ“ur de Paris was renamed Shanghai in 1936 and repackaged in a beautiful Chinese urn styled vase (with very 1930s bakelite cap). Old wine; new bottles – if you see what I mean. But still it looked lovely and, even if it was an old perfume brought back in new packaging, who could resist?

The big question – how did it smell? Well the Lenthric blog tells us here – and has more pictures of the packaging….

the bottle

the box

Child of Tientsin & Movie Star – Sari Maritza

Reading the new biography of the crime writer Edgar Wallace – Stranger than Fiction: The Life of Edgar Wallace, The Man Who Created King Kong by Neil Clark – I was interested to know that the actress Sari Maritza, about whom Wallace developed a fascination in the early 1930s, was born in Tientsin (Tianjin).

Sari Maritza was born Dora Patricia Detring-Nathan in Tientsin in 1910, the daughter of Walter Nathan, a British Army Major turned wealthy businessman (in the mining business) in the city and his Viennese wife (reportedly of noble blood). She took her stage name from two operettas Sari and Countess Maritza. Leaving China, initially for her education in Europe, she got her start in the movies in 1930 in Germany, Austria and England and then became well known in Hollywood for dancing a tango with Charlie Chaplin at the premiere of City Lights – Chaplin claimed to have discovered her as the new “It Girl”. She was invariably type cast at the European vamp in Dietrich-like roles (indeed Paramount touted her as the “New Dietrich”) and played up her Austrian heritage despite spending most of her later life in Britain. She died in 1987 though her film career did not survive the 1930s.

Her China origins became somewhat exaggerated perhaps by the Hollywood publicists but basically true it seems. She was said to have been raised in a crenelated castle surrounded by a moat and close to the racecourse by the most prominent foreign family in Tientsin. While perhaps gilding the lily crenelated frontages on treaty port properties in Tientsin were fairly common (examples can still be seen standing in modern day Tianjin), though the moat may be a bit of poetic license. It was claimed that the castle was built by her Austrian grandfather, Gustav von Detring, who had been a counsellor to Li Hongzhang and reportedly a “possible rival to Sir Robert Hart” as head of the Chinese Customs. It does seem Hart disliked Detring describing him as “sanguine, and there is no straw in his bricks”. During the Boxer Rebellion von Detring met with the Kaiser in Germany and told him that “the Chinese only understand force”. Von Detring’s success was put down to have persuaded the Chinese to give his company, The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, its concession – the concession Sari’s father eventually came to run.

Her father himself was said to be one of several famous English brothers including Sir Matthew Nathan, a one-time Governor of Queensland, and Colonel Sir Frederick Nathan, a senior army officer in India.

The family supposedly owned the most sumptuous – indeed “palatial” – property in the fashionable (with foreigners anyway) seaside resort of Peitaiho (Beidaihe) where Sari was noted for her diving skills. Her governess apparently remained in Tientsin when Sari departed for school in Europe.

Crafty Hai-Alai Players Fool Japanese Sentries in Tientsin with Menu

I’ve been researching a lot on the popularity of hai-alai (jai-alai – though always spelt with an ‘h’ at the start in Shanghai) in Shanghai and China’s treaty ports. Here’s a good little story from 1939…..restaurant menus as letters of transit – ingenious!