Raising the Colours at Possession Point 175 Years Ago

Just for the record – January 26th marked the 175th anniversary of Great Britain formally occupying Hong Kong in 1841, which China later formally cedes.

The island was actually occupied on the 20th but Commodore Sir James John Gordon Bremmer raised the Union Jack and claimed Hong Kong as a colony on 26 January 1841. Bremmer rather liked claiming things – in 1824 he claimed the north coast of Australia from 129° to 135° longitude  as British territory. In 1841 Bremmer reported back, “proceeded to Hong Kong, and took formal possession of the island in Her Majesty’s name, and hoisted the colours on it, with the usual salutes and ceremonies.”

He did all that by the way at Possession Point which is now quite a way inland, due to reclamation.

Calvin Pearl Titus – America’s last Standard Bearer & the First American over the wall during the Boxer Rebellion

Came across this article the other day on the retirement from the US Army of Lieutenant-Colonel Calvin Pearl Titus, bugler, the last American Standard Bearer and the first American over the wall during the Boxer Rebellion. This article from the American press shows he retired in 1930.

So, here’s the story….born in Clinton, Louisiana in 1879 and raised mostly in Wichita, Kansas, Titus is a veteran of the Spanish-American War (he saw service in the Philippines with Company K of the First Vermont Volunteers) and now a musician with the 14th Infantry’s E Company, the chaplain’s assistant and their Standard Bearer (the guy who holds the flag up front, often was a musician, and invariably the first to get killed!). the 14th were deployed to China as part of the Allied Army to put down the Boxer Rebellion and relieve the Siege of the Legations. When the Americans reached the Tung Pien Gate in Peking (now the Dong Bian Gate, or previously known as the Fox Tower – which readers of my Midnight in Peking will be familiar with) they came under heavy fire. There was an urgent need for volunteers to scale the wall close by the Fox Tower, gain a better vantage point on the other side and then lay down supressive fire while the rest of the 14th advanced. 20-year-ld Titus volunteers. He slings a rope over his shoulder, is hoisted over to the wall, climbs all 30 feet of it, and starts firing off so the rest of the Company can follow his lead. Told what his job was legend has it he replied “I’ll try Sir.” the US Army immortalised in a commissioned painting….

Titus himself obviously knew the value of a good quote, or at least a newspaper editor back home did – “The trouble in bad in China, so we may have a good time but this regiment knows only one way to go – that is forward.” The rest of the regiment apparently followed him up the wall hoisting up their rifles and ammunition behind them.

Meanwhile Titus, as the Standard Bearer, stuck the Stars and Stripes in the wall and sounded the bugle for the attack – (the Fox Tower and the portion of the wall Titus climbed are still there…

Titus got a medal, the Medal of Honor, from President Teddy Roosevelt himself when he docked back home in 1901 at San Francisco. He also got an appointment to West Point from President McKinley. He retired from the army in 1930 after 30 years service (he’d been a volunteer in the Spanish-American War) and died in 1966, being buried with full military honours in Hollywood, California.

Shanghai’s January 1932 Refugee Crisis

By 24th January 1932 flooding refugees were pouring into Shanghai with many thousands completely destitute. Weather stations along the Yangtze River between Nanking and Shanghai reported rain totaling over 2 feet (24 in) a month in the autumn of 1931 prompting the exodus. Many obviously made their desperate way to Shanghai…

RAS SHANGHAI LIBRARY WINTER BOOK SALE

Need to update your book collection? Come to the

RAS Library’s Winter Book Sale.

 

We are in the process of reorganising the library and have identified many duplicate copies that we want to sell so that we can free up space for new acquisitions. The books include hard back copies, paper backs and coffee table style books, both fiction and non fiction. We even have a few children’s books and books in languages other than English or Chinese! We also have duplicate copies of old magazines and periodicals from Shanghai going back many years.

All proceeds will go into the RAS fund to boost our collection and make the Library an even better place to read, meet and relax with a good book.

The Library is located on the second floor of the SBC Learning and Resource Centre Building (with the white balcony). As you enter the main gate to the compound it is the first building on your right.

Hope to see you there!

If you know other book lovers, please feel free to forward this note and invite them to come too!

Questions? “Reply” to this email or write enquiry@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn.

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – 23/1/16 – Shanghai Old Town: Topography of a Phantom City Volume One: The Old Docks By Katya Knyazeva

BOOK LAUNCH

Shanghai Old Town: Topography of a Phantom City

Volume One: The Old Docks

By Katya Knyazeva

Who Were Pickard’s Chinese Syncopators?

I picked up an old 78rpm record recently by Pickard’s Chinese Syncopators called Flower of the Orient, a rather charming Oriental Fox-trot from 1928.  Who were Pickard’s Chinese Syncopators?

Well, it seems they were one of a host of Chinese-themed American vaudeville acts of the 1920s, though at some point they spent some time in London and did record in England too. They weren’t Chinese, there were usually about eight of them, and they were probably mostly Filipino musicians. They were a mandolin band (with some Hawaiian guitars and banjos), which was pretty popular at the time and usually appeared wearing Chinese robes and mandarin hats – after a fashion. They were quite prolific and some of their hits include:

You Told Me To Go

Stay Out of the South

Ali Baba

Gypsy Dreams

China Lily

They made it into the movies too – if only briefly with the 1931 short movie Singapore Sue. This was shot in New York and featured two popular Chinese-American vaudeville acts Joe Wong and Anna Chang. A bunch of white American sailors walk into a Singapore dive bar where Joe and Anna are entertaining. The film would probably be completely forgotten if it weren’t for the fact that the uncredited “Sailor No.1”, who tries to pick up Chang, is Cary Grant – the first time he appeared on film and the first time he used Cary Grant rather than Archie Leach, his original name and which he’d kept when he first went from Bristol to America to try and make a career on Broadway.

The Destruction of the former Bridgman Memorial School, Laoximen, Shanghai

Sue Anne Tay of the excellent Shanghai Street Stories blog brings sad news of the destruction of the former Bridgman Memorial School (裨文女中). As she notes the Bridgman was, “Shanghai’s first girls’ school was founded by missionary Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1801-1861) in 1843. The most famous alumnae was the mother of the Soong Sisters, Ni Guizhen (倪桂珍)(1869-1931). Ni was known to be a bright and bold woman, never had bound feet and spoke English. Now you know how her daughters came to be. Ni’s own mother Lady Xu was a descendent of Ming dynasty mathematician and Jesuit concert Xi Guangqi (徐光启). In Chinese, the building was first called 上海第一所教会女中 (Shanghai’s first Protestant school) or 裨文女中 (biyi nvzhong). Located on a small road Xinlinhou Lu（西林后路) by Fangxie Lu (方斜路) near Laoximen (老西门) area.”

To add a bit – Bridgman was an American Protestant Missionary who founded the groundbreaking missionary run journal The Chinese Repository (about which there’s a lot in my Through the Looking Glass book). He was also later an editor of the Royal Asiatic Society’s North China Branch journal (i.e. the Shanghai based branch of the RAS back then). Arguably it was actually Bridgman’s wife, Eliza Jane (nee) Gillett, an American Episcopalian missionary who founded the school. After her husband’s death she moved to Peking, secured substantial property and started Bridgman Academy, noted for educating a large number of Chinese women leaders.

The school was just outside the French Concession on what was then Fong Zia Road (now Fangxie Road), close to the West Gate (Laoximen and officially the Gate of the Ritual Phoenix) and Dah Ling Road (now Xinlinhou Road). The West Gate was torn down sometime around 1912-14. The school was torn down just recently….

How Charlie Chaplin Nearly Retired to China

It’s well known that Charlie Chaplin spent one day (or a little less than a day, more an evening and night) in Shanghai in 1936 (if you don’t know about it the story is told here rather well). What I think is less well known is that he once considered chucking in the moving pictures business and retiring to China. He didn’t obviously, but he apparently, according to himself did consider it.

Chaplin tells the story in his autobiography entitled “My Autobiography”. In 1931 Chaplin had completed City Lights and decided to sail from America to London for the English premiere. He then opted to travel through Europe and head to Asia via the Suez Canal stopping at India, Singapore, Bali and a few other places to get to Japan, which had long fascinated him (indeed had done so since he read one of Lafcadio Hearn’s books about Japan). After Japan, Chaplin sailed back to America on a ship that did dock at Shanghai, but Chaplin chose not to leave the ship. He eventually got back to Hollywood.

Chaplin was not happy in Hollywood in 1932 describing himself as “…confused and without plan, restless and conscious of an extreme loneliness.” He was single and found California a “graveyard“. He was living in a big house, a star, but dining alone each night. He found Hollywood Boulevard and its stores depressing and drab, in the grip of the Great Depression. He writes: “As I walked the boulevards I began to deliberate whether I should retire, sell everything and go to China.”

Chaplin was heartened by Roosevelt’s victory in the 1932 presidential election but still thought he might just up and head East away from it all – “I still toyed with idea of pulling up stakes and settling in China. In Hong Kong I could live well and forget motion pictures, instead of languishing here in Hollywood, rotting on the vine.”

But he never did. What changed his mind? Basically Paulette Goddard – he met her, fell in love and decided to get back to work. So he never did retire to China though he did visit in 1936 briefly with Goddard in tow. She got him back to work and back into Hollywood though they separated after The Great Dictator.

Chaplin and Goddard – if not for her Charlie might have ended up a Hongkonger or a Shanghailander