Shanghai Factory Girls of 1939

Just how much did the factory girls of 1939 Shanghai earn? Amazingly just $15 for three years work!….

China’s Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1943

Robert Nield’s China’s Foreign Places – now out and highly recommended as a history of the treaty ports…

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the imperial powers–principally Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Japan–signed treaties with China to secure trading, residence and other rights in cities on the coast, along important rivers, and in remote places further inland. The largest of them–the great treaty ports of Shanghai and Tientsin–became modern cities of international importance, centres of cultural exchange and safe havens for Chinese who sought to subvert the Qing government. They are also lasting symbols of the uninvited and often violent incursions by foreign powers during China’s century of weakness. The extraterritorial privileges that underpinned the treaty ports were abolished in 1943–a time when much of the treaty port world was under Japanese occupation. China’s Foreign Places provides a historical account of the hundred or more major foreign settlements that appeared in China during the period 1840 to 1943. Most of the entries are about treaty ports, large and small, but the book also includes colonies, leased territories, resorts and illicit centres of trade. Information has been drawn from a wide range of sources and entries are arranged alphabetically with extensive illustrations and maps. China’s Foreign Places is both a unique work of reference, essential for scholars of this period and travellers to modern China. It is also a fascinating account of the people, institutions and businesses that inhabited China’s treaty port world.

A Shanghai Suicide – December 31st 1940

On the last day of 1940 these Chinese women attempted suicide by jumping into the Whangpoo River (Huangpu River) tied together. Passersby pulled them out and they did not drown. The newspaper speculated that the harsh life in Shanghai since the 1937 Japanese invasion was probably to blame – and maybe it was (stagflation, hunger, shortages, unemployment, dislocation, death, disease – take your pick?) but maybe they had another story…who knows! It’s certainly quite a haunting picture.

American Hot Dog Picnics in Shanghai on July 4th

Apparently it’s now quite traditional for Americans to have hot dog picnics on July 4th. I think the tradition started, or at least was most famously celebrated, by FDR at Hyde Park when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited in 1939. The tradition spread to Shanghai too with the American community holding July 4th hot dog picnics in Jessfield Park (now Zhongshan Park) – seen here in 1932….

China’s Anti-Smoking Drive, 1936

I’m not sure how China’s current anti-smoking laws and campaigns are going…but they’ve had a go before, back in the 1930s….Shame Xi Jinping hasn’t revived the New Life Movement tagline….

A 1932 Map of Shanghai

This map is from 1932 – not much else to say really!…..except that if you click on it then it should expand….

Rickshaw Puller Insurance

Lao She started writing his great novel Rickshaw Boy in the spring of 1936 and it appeared in the early months of 1937 in installments in magazines. It is a great description of the undoubtedly hard life of the ubiquitous rickshaw puller that was a feature of life in all Chinese cities at the time. Still, nowhere does Lao She mention that Camel Xiangzi might have had an insurance policy in his back pocket! Still, I think this insurance only applied in Shanghai’s International Settlement while poor Camel was trudging round the dusty hutongs of Peking at the time.

Shanghai’s One Bite Rule

Dogs are definitely back in Shanghai after decades of being discouraged, banned and simply unaffordable…the last decade has seen a massive rise in dog ownership and, I guess, dog bite incidents. Any judge in the city now faced with a case regarding dog bites can, should they choose, revert to 1936 precedent and Shanghai treaty port law and invoke the ‘one bite’ precedent….