The Last Days of Old Kashgar

I don’t really review books on contemporary China on this blog but I will mention Nick Holdstock’s China’s Forgotten People: Xinjiang, Terror and the Chinese State – primarily because (apart from being a good and insightful study of the Chinese colonial experience in Xinjiang and the simmering resentments and resistance by the Uyghur people of the East Turkestan region) it does mention the horrific and wanton destruction of Kashgar.

The recent, almost total destruction of old Kashgar (3,000 years old and mentioned by Marco Polo) was preceded by decades of slow destruction. At first, after “liberation”, by the destruction (as in some cities across China from Kashgar to Zhangjiakou (Kalgan)) of the ancient city wall. Still, apart from a hideous statue of Mao not so much changed until the twentieth century. Watch The Kite Runner movie and that’s Kashgar standing in for Afghanistan. The destruction of the old town was couched in terms of modernisation and protection against earthquakes (which there haven’t been) but was, as Holdstock indicates, really about punishing Uyghurs for resistance and the reinforcement of Kashgar and all Xinjiang as a mono-cultural state, i.e. Chinese with all vestiges of Uyhgur culture eradicated. One interesting fact about the demolitions of the old town I did not know was that the Communist Party erected billboards indicating that UNESCO approved of the destruction.

Kashgar – before the bulldozers really got to work

And, of course, old Kashgar was doomed because nobody, at least nobody connected to the CCP, was profiting from it. Of course with all land in China, including its occupied regions such as Xinjiang, owned by the state (Communist Party) then pulling down to rebuild is profitable for the state in an immediate way preservation, heritage restoration and improvement of existing traditional architecture is not. So old Kashgar got bulldozed – Uyghur culture was diluted, Chinese state control of the region (arguably) strengthened and the Party made a profit. Of course, as Holdstock points out, being “Han” Chinese (used in the sense of the ethnically catchall term it is by most Chinese, Han or otherwise) doesn’t help much as hutong and lilong dwellers in Beijing and Shanghai respectively know only too well.

Old Shanghai’s Ford Taxis

Silver Cabs is probably the best known and most often recorded taxi cab firm in old Shanghai memories – Du “Big Eared Du” Yuesheng owned it reputedly. But Ford Taxis were also big in the business between the wars. The Ford Hire Taxi Company (just call Shanghai 30189) had one distinctive feature – rather than ordinary horns the cars all had very loud klaxons, little boxes mounted just outside the drivers side window.  there was a piston type switch on the top of the box and to operate it the driver leant out and depressed it. the noise was a typical klaxon sound but did make people jump and get out of the way – really, really bad pedestrian behaviour, poor driving, jay walking and generally being an idiot on the road is nothing new to Shanghai!

Rooftop Watchers 1937, Sam Tata

I wrote a piece last year for the Asia Literary Review (issue 29) on the old rooftops of Shanghai (you can get it here on kindle or hard copy). In that article, which comes with some good pictures and old advertising ephemera. Of course you always find the photo you wanted but couldn’t locate too late!! Came across this favourite old picture from 1937 of two very stylish Shanghailanders watching the skies for the fighting over to the north. No idea who these two Settlement Bohemians are – a plaid coat and a white trilby worn just so are amazing! The picture is by the inimitable Sam Tata and  he titled Rooftop Watchers.

Carl Crow and Bandit Helpers – Lincheng, Shandong, 1923

My thanks to Doug Clarke – author of the excellent Gunboat Justice trilogy – for this picture of Carl Crow, with two of his bandit helpers, at Lincheng in Shandong in 1923. Bandits had taken foreigners and Chinese hostage from a train; Carl Crow, on behalf of the Red Cross, was sent in to negotiate. It’s a great story and I attach it below as an excerpt from my biography of Crow, A Tough Old China Hand. What a great photo!!

Becoming a Warlord’s Elder Brother

Of all the warlords Crow met the one he actually struck up a friendship with was the twenty five year old ‘Commander in Chief’ Swen Miao. In Crow’s own words Swen was ‘a real throat slitting bandit of the sort that splash blood on the pages of fiction and sometimes get into Hollywood.’ Crow and Swen’s friendship reached the point where Crow sent cartons of cigarettes to him while the warlord sent Crow bottles of brandy, though Crow noted that while he paid for the cigarettes the brandy was undoubtedly part of the bandit’s swag from some looting expedition. The two eventually got to the point where Swen referred to Crow as dage, or elder brother. A rare privilege indeed.

The story of how Crow got to be such good friends with a bandit warlord was a major news story in Shanghai at the time. Swen was one of China’s best-known and most notorious bandits in the 1930s and made the front pages of newspapers as far afield as London and New York. Crow’s description of him as throat slitting doesn’t sit with the fact that Swen spoke English, was considered patient by his hostages and generally thought to be a good and kind leader of his men – JB Powell called him a ‘young chap…from a formerly respected family’. He had also received military training in the army of Chang Ching-yao, the pro-Japanese warlord who had taken control of Beijing briefly in 1920.

However, in the intervening decades Swen has largely been overshadowed in history by Chang Tso-lin, who was assassinated by the Japanese when his train was blown up in 1928 after forming an alliance with the Nationalists. Crow was forced to admit that Swen slipped pretty quickly from history: ‘He was not, however, a very successful bandit, for he was young and more ambitious than practical; but he might have travelled far after he had gained more experience if he had not been beheaded before he reached the prime of life.’

In fact Swen’s story was fairly typical of many bandits in China. He had come from a successful family who had managed somehow to annoy a local magistrate with their progressive political ideas. His father had ended up losing his head after a show trial on trumped up charges. The magistrate then made every police station in the family’s home province of Shandong exhibit photos of the execution and Swen was smart enough to realise that someone this obsessed with destroying his family would come after him next. So he wisely took to the hills with a few other endangered relatives and sought revenge on the magistrate. As Crow noted, ‘The Chinese learned many centuries ago that crooked officials can never be reformed and that the only practical thing to do is to kill them.’ At least that was the biography of Swen Crow believed. An alternative, somewhat less romantic version, has it that the Swen clan fell on hard times after idle, gambling sons squandered the family’s wealth and so became salt smugglers and bandits.

Whichever was the true story soon Swen had over 700 followers as his ranks swelled with men following the Yellow River flooding in 1920 and 1921 ruining many peasant farmers. Swen initially had a good stock of arms purchased with the proceeds of raids and robberies. However, the local population didn’t care that much as Swen mostly raided police stations or ambushed armed police detachments patrolling the countryside. As their loot grew many disaffected soldiers fed up with low pay and meagre rations joined Swen. Poor peasants worked their farms and then when the harvest was finished would disappear for a little banditry until farm work called them back to their land. Swen moved on to raiding rich landowners and became a Robin Hood figure for many peasants and perpetuated this myth of being an active agent of redistribution by naming his gang the Shantung People’s Liberation Society. All the time he kept on trying to assassinate the original corrupt magistrate who had killed his father though the man kept a loyal force of bodyguards that made the job difficult. As time passed so the Shantung People’s Liberation Society grew still further in a loose way with more bandits joining the ‘cause’.

Eventually the Liberation Society set up a semi-permanent camp on the slopes of Paotzeku Mountain, which was virtually unassailable from below. Swen continued raiding and kidnapping to the point where his reputation grew to such proportions that he rarely needed to leave camp and local merchants and wealthy landowners started paying him tribute and tolls (lijin) as protection money to leave them alone. The magistrate and his forces rarely entered Swen’s territory. It was a stand off between the secure Swen and the well-guarded magistrate.

This situation could presumably have carried on indefinitely to both men’s benefit had Swen not decided on 6 May 1923 to attack the nearby Tianjin-Pukow Railway and derail the new deluxe fast train that plied the route between Shanghai and Beijing, the Blue Express – the first all-steel train in Asia. Swen, and a thousand of his followers, kidnapped all the passengers in the early hours of the morning and looted the train near the town of Lincheng close to the Jiangsu-Shandong border (though technically in Hebei province) leading to the whole crisis becoming known as the Lincheng Outrage. His hostages included 300 Chinese and, crucially, 25 foreigners (foreigners generally fetched larger ransoms). The train was ransacked, all valuables taken and even the mattresses and light bulbs stripped by the bandits as loot.

One short-term hostage was First World War veteran and China Press journalist Lloyd Lehrbas who managed to escape and started filing stories about the incident almost immediately. Consequently the news that foreigners had been kidnapped from the Blue by a warlord and that a ransom was being demanded greatly excited the greatly excitable Shanghai foreign community many of who saw visions of Boxer-like retribution and killing returning. To the insulated residents of the International Settlement Chinese warlords terrorising and kidnapping Chinese citizens was one thing but terrorising and kidnapping westerners was quite another thing altogether. Though the kidnapped were probably relatively safe on the grounds that dead hostages were worthless it was not unknown for prisoners to be slaughtered wholesale by warlords. The bandit soldiers were a mixed bunch and included poor farmers and unemployed youth from the ‘university of the forest’ as well as a hard core of battle trained soldiers who had seen action in Russia and Korea as well as China but had been discharged from the Chinese army and were aggrieved at their loss of status as well as men who had formed part of the 140,000 strong ‘Chinese Labour Corps’ recruited by the British and French during the First World War to do tasks such as clearing the dead from the European battlefields and keeping the trenches supplied. Needless to say these men had seen some of the worst atrocities imaginable, become extremely battle hardened and then sent home with some coppers once their usefulness ended.

In news value terms kidnapping, of either Chinese or foreigners, was not necessarily a shocking event at the time. Crow described kidnapping as a ‘well organised business in China carried out with a large degree of success…’ although kidnapping was still something to be feared. Crow knew that travelling in the hinterland of China between the wars, as he did often, was to put yourself at a certain risk of kidnap whatever precautions were taken. Small comfort was the fact that it was relatively rare for foreign hostages to be abused severely and Crow worried more about lack of food and inclement weather than violent mistreatment.

The rest is in the book…!!

Pegge Parker Remembers Shanghai in the late 1940s

I only came across the autobiography of Margaret Lyons, better known to wartime and post-war American newsreaders as Pegge Parker, recently – Alias Pegge Parker. I did know her rather better known, in China- and Asia-Hand circles anyway, journalist (second) husband John Hlavacek (below).

Pegge Parker had been building a reputation in DC before shipping out to post-war Shanghai as a freelancer. Her autobiography is a useful description of 1946/1947 Shanghai and UNRRA’s efforts in China. Her first marriage to Douglas Mackiernan, CIA agent in China and the first CIA man to be killed on duty, involved Shanghai life. That whole story is told in Thomas Laird’s Into Tibet, by the way.

She had twins in the US Army Hospital in  Shanghai in 1947 – which was then on the ground floor of the Shanghai Mansions (formerly Broadway Mansions) just over the Garden Bridge.After Mackiernan’s death Pegge met John in Shanghai and they married. John Hlavacek was posted to the Chongqing US attaché’s office following Pearl Harbour when the stakes increased dramatically for America overnight. Originally from La Grange, Illinois, Hlavacek had come to China in 1939 and spent a couple of years teaching English in Japanese-occupied Shanxi, followed by a stint driving Red Cross trucks to deliver medical supplies to mission hospitals, before he was sent to Chongqing where he stayed until 1944.

During World War II, Margaret Lyons, a small-town Pennsylvania girl, had a taste for adventure. She began her career as an advice columnist, adopting the pen name Pegge Parker. She set out to literally write her way around the world. Before long, she was headed for China where she met and married Douglas Mackiernan, an undercover CIA agent. The couple became the proud parents of twins, Mike and Mary. Agent Mackiernan was killed by border guards near Tibet, leaving Pegge a single mother. Pegge would soon meet John Hlavacek, the United Press Bureau Chief she would remain married to for the rest of her life. Pegge’s life and career were nothing if not spontaneous, seemingly weaved by fate’s colorful loom. Her prose style of writing is unmistakable, and transports the reader back in time, allowing them to understand and experience life as she knew it more than half a century ago. Alias Pegge Parker also includes four original chapters from Pegge’s next book, Diapers on a Dateline. John discovered the chapters in Pegge’s belongings after Diapers was published, and after she had developed Alzheimer’s disease.

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – Library Book sale 24/1/15

If you’re in Shanghai and need some fresh reading material then head to the RAS’s New Year book sale at the RAS Library. As usual, they’ll be selling their spare and duplicate books to raise money to buy new acquisitions.

When: Sunday 24th January, 2pm – 5pm

Where: Room 206, Sino-British College, 1195 Fuxing Zhong Lu, near Shaanxi Nan Lu

Passport to Hell – James Warner Bellah on 1935 China (“somewhere south of Shanghai”)

I’m hoping someone out there might have access to an archive of old Liberty Magazines – perhaps online (none of my libraries have the online archive) or a stack in a garage somewhere. We’re looking for January 1935 because who could resist this tale…

James Warner Bellah was better known for his westerns – the Virginian series, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Rio Grande etc – but in 1935 he took a little excursion “somewhere south of Shanghai” for his series Passport to Hell. I don’t think Warner Bellah had any direct experience of China – though later in WW2 he did serve in the Far East. Passport to Hell ran over several issues of Liberty from January 1935 (starting in the 12th January issues) and running through to late February in (I think) seven episodes, all with illustrations by Harry T. Fisk and decorations by Carl Pfeufer.

Anyone got copies?

The first episode in the January 12th 1935 issue of Liberty

James Warner Bellah advertising Lord Calvert whiskey

Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c.1620-1720

Xing Hang’s history of the Zhang clan of merchants and militarists…and their rivals the East India Company…looks like a good read….

The Zheng family of merchants and militarists emerged from the tumultuous seventeenth century amid a severe economic depression, a harrowing dynastic transition from the ethnic Chinese Ming to the Manchu Qing, and the first wave of European expansion into East Asia. Under four generations of leaders over six decades, the Zheng had come to dominate trade across the China Seas. Their average annual earnings matched, and at times exceeded, those of their fiercest rivals: the Dutch East India Company. Although nominally loyal to the Ming in its doomed struggle against the Manchus, the Zheng eventually forged an autonomous territorial state based on Taiwan with the potential to encompass the family’s entire economic sphere of influence. Through the story of the Zheng, Xing Hang provides a fresh perspective on the economic divergence of early modern China from western Europe, its twenty-first-century resurgence, and the meaning of a Chinese identity outside China.