“A remarkable family memoir that brings to life the great upheavals of twentieth-century China–from the Russian and Chinese Revolutions to the Second World War and Mao’s extraordinary political campaigns. To have experienced such chaos and upheaval at close quarters, as eyewitnesses, is both extraordinary and deeply illuminating.”
In 1917, Zvia Bowman’s paternal grandparents fled the Bolshevik Revolution, escaping from Odessa on the Black Sea to Harbin in Manchuria. Their son, Isaac, grew up between Jewish and Catholic traditions before establishing a successful business in Beijing. During the Japanese occupation of China, he met Dr. Bowman’s Chinese mother, from a westernized Christian family from Hong Kong. In 1945, both were imprisoned by the Japanese and released only days before Japan’s surrender.
After the Communist victory in 1949, the family faced renewed persecution and uncertainty. Zvia Bowman recounts her childhood in Beijing as China was transformed by revolution, culminating in their dangerous escape during the Cultural Revolution in 1967. Set against the backdrop of revolution, war, occupation, and political upheaval, In the Shadow of Revolutions is a rich, deeply personal story of love, loss, identity, and the resilience of a family that refused to be broken by the forces of history.
Kelly and Walsh famously printed, published and sold books in Hong Kong (as they still do), Shanghai, Yokohama and Singapore. But book retailing has always been tough and you need to diversify. I’ve seen K&W Christmas cards and seasonal wrapping paper, maps and guidebooks. But here’s a rather rare leather wallet and copper plate (for engraving signatures etc). It includes a handy ruler, space for cards, writing paper and envelopes/stamps. I had not realised K&W offered engraving services before.
A letter sent on Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits stationery, Legation Quarter, Peking, to Henry Woodhouse (editor and publisher of Aerial Age) at 280 Madison Avenue, New York City. I think the date stamp is 1920.
One of the saddest stories of the old China press corps and the Japanese war on China is that of Philip Pembroke Stephens (1903-1937)… I tell his final story in my book Through the Looking Glass, a history of the foreign press in China from the 1840s to the 1940s…
The London Daily Telegraph’s correspondent Philip Pembroke Stephens was killed by Japanese rifle-fire in November 1937 in Nantao, the old Chinese city of Shanghai. The American correspondent Harrison Forman witnessed the shooting, which occurred when Stephens climbed over a breach in the old wall dividing the Chinese city and Frenchtown. He stepped onto the platform of a water tower to get a better view of the fighting and a Japanese sniper shot him in the head, killing him instantly. Stephens was a well-liked correspondent who had given up an early career on the London stage and then a second career in the law to cover the Italian invasion of Abyssinia for the Daily Express and then the Spanish Civil War for the Telegraph before arriving in Shanghai shortly after Black Saturday (August 14 1937). His funeral attracted most of the remaining corps left in the city to mourn the loss of a friend and discuss the worsening situation. Randall Gould, Malcolm Rosholt, James Mills and Hallett Abend were all in attendance and Abend and Red Knickerbocker were among Stephens’s pallbearers.
So quite amazing to receive this letter obtained by the great old China ephemera collector Roy Delbyck. A photo of Stephens taken shortly before his death in Shanghai that he wished to be sent to his wife back in London… The heartbreaking letter is from CR Lewis to Mrs Stephens. He encloses a photograph of Stephens at the Hungjao Road Railway Crossing on November 9 1937, just a few days before his death. At that time the crossing – outside Shanghai North Railway Station on what is now Hongqiao Lu, was a frontline between the International Settlement and the Japanese occupying the Chinese districts of Shanghai (Zhabei and Baoshan).
What an awful letter to have to write…
Incidentally, CR Lewis was a roving reporter who worked for many English language newspapers in China and Japan in the 1930s. He had been a reporter with the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury and the North China Star, an American run newspaper in Tianjin. He had also worked in Beijing for the Peiping Chronicle, The China Press in Shanghai and Reuters in China.
An interesting letter sent from the Mines de Lincheng (Lincheng Mines Administration – Hebei Province) on the Pékin-Hankow Railway to a Mr Lionel Wiener in Holland. – Post Box 14, Scheveningue (Scheveningen), Hollande – appears to be a representative of the Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine (General Company of Railways and Trams in China).
A number of interesting things about this letter…
A circular PEKING postmark is visible in the lower-left corner indicating the letter went from Lincheng via the Pékin-Hankow Railway to Peking.
From Peking the letter would normally have gone from China by train to Holland via the Trans-Siberian Railway though the new Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR). Russia was in obvious turmoil given the Bolshevik Revolution, withdrawal from the Allies side in the Great War and the onset of the Northern, Southern Russia and Siberian interventions (Wars of Intervention). Various nations, including China, had troops in and around Vladivostok.
Hence probably the letter went east via Japan (Kobe and Yokohama), crossed the Pacific or went via British-controlled shipping lanes, and entered the United Kingdom en route to continental Europe.
At some point the letter was opened by a censor – I believe this is the reseal sticker of the “British Imperial Censor”.
The Lincheng Coal Mines, formed in 1905 were predominantly a Belgian and French financial investment and employed many nationals of those countries. The Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine was a Belgian railway and tramway enterprise founded in Brussels in 1900 which built the link between Kaifeng (Kaifong-Fou) and Luoyang (Honan-Fou) with the major Pékin-Hankow Railway an 185 km link known as the Chemin de fer du Pien-Lo, which officially opened in 1909.
Sadly we don’t know who was writing to Lionel Wiener but we do a little about the recipient. He appears to be the Dutch representative of Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine and living in Scheveningen, a seaside resort 15 minutes from The Hague. He was also the author of the 1923 paper Les écartements des voies de chemin de fer (something about railway gauges in China) that was included in the papers of the Congrés des Chemins de Fer (Railways Congress). He also wrote somewhat technically about railways in Brazil when he was the Secrétaire general et Chef du Service de la Traction de la Compagnie auxiliaire de Chemins de fer au Brésil (circa 1910). For his 1931 book, Articulated Locomotives, he is noted as a professor. Just to show his international reach Wiener also wrote Egypt and its Railways 1879-1940 (1932).
The Chan Kee Fur Company, 225 Szechuen (Sichuan) Road, Shanghai International Settlement. Purveyors of eady-made fur coats and jackets in the latest styles, custom orders accepted, and furs including sable, leopard, ermine, squirrel, and beaver.
A new biography of Cecil Clementi by Graham Hutchings – Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy: The Career of Sir Cecil Clementi (Hong Kong University Press).
The first full-length biography of a highly gifted colonial administrator who spent half of his roughly 30-year career in Hong Kong and played a major role in the city’s history. As a young official, Clementi quickly mastered Chinese and published translations of Cantonese poetry. He undertook epic journeys across China on intelligence-gathering missions, was closely involved in the land settlement in the New Territories, and the creation of Hong Kong University. As governor, he championed the development of Kai Tak airport and the provision of Hong Kong’s water supply. He also appointed the first Chinese member of the city’s Executive Council. Yet he resisted reforms to the controversial mui-tsai system under which Chinese girls served as housemaids to Chinese families on the grounds that it was a Chinese ‘tradition’. This study of his career, in which he was also posted to British Guiana and Ceylon, sheds light on how Britain administered the far-flung territories that formed its empire.
