Searching for Owen Lattimore in Shanghai

Recently I was one of several folk in Shanghai roped in by Indiana University prof Scott Kennedy to try and locate the previous address of the great Mongolist and Sinologist (and later a man to be horrendously persecuted by that bastard Joe McCarthy) Owen Lattimore. We didn’t have much to go on and his home address was too tricky along with a reference to Shanghai’s ‘American Compound’ which appears to be a generic descriptive rather than an actual place (unless anyone reading this knows different?) – still we did point the interested party in the direction of his former haunts when he worked for Arnhold and Company in the city. It was a pleasure as the person Scott was accompanying to China on a trip was the Managing Editor of the Indianapolis Business Journal Greg Andrews, fully Greg Lattimore Andrews (and if it was me I’d definitely leave the ‘Lattimore’ in all the time) who’s great uncle was the ‘great’ Owen Lattimore.

Anyway, Scott wrote it all up on his blog called The China Track and you can see their tour of Lattimore’s old Shanghai haunts here and the building they decided to adopt as the spiritual home of Owen in Shanghai.

Of course if anyone has anything to add to Scott’s findings I’m sure he, and Greg, would love to hear from you (as would I).

Lattimore tells McCarthy where he can stick it….