Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of family life on the China coast with a strong emphasis on the early twentieth century, the heyday of the treaty port system. Focusing on the cartoons of Sapajou, the North China Herald’s famed cartoonist, the chapter draws attention to the ways that Sapajou depicted many of the concerns and elements of everyday life for foreign settler families in China and that this extends beyond the stereotype of the Shanghailander community. Through exploring material culture elements such as ponies, domestic help—the amah—houses and gardens, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which a transient community, namely the families of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, created a sense of permanence and domestic respite on the China coast.
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- 1.
Lethbridge, All About Shanghai: A Standard Guidebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). A recent publication is Yvonne Schulz Zinda’s discussion on Shanghai in popular culture in “Representation and nostalgic re-invention of Shanghai in Chinese film” in Arndt Graf and Chua Beng Huat, Port Cities in Asia and Europe (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 150–161.
- 2.
Robert Bickers , Britain in China: Community, Class and Culture 1900–1949 (Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1999), and Nicholas Clifford , Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of 1920, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1991.
- 3.
Anthony Hewitt , Children of the Empire (Erskineville, Kangaroo Press, 1993, 1995) p. 22. This beloved holiday home was destroyed during the Japanese occupation.
- 4.
See Robert Bickers (ed) Settlers and Expatriates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and two volumes in the ‘Britain and the World’ series by Martin Farr and Xavier Guegan (eds) The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, Volume 1: Travellers and Tourists and Volume 2: Experiencing Imperialism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as examples of recent scholarship examining settler communities throughout formal and informal empire.
- 5.
For the history of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, see Hans Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) and Donna Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China (London: Routledge, 2006).
- 6.
There wasn’t a fixed timing for rotation between ports, but depending on seniority and the needs of the CMCS , Indoor Staff may be rotated every three years, Outdoor staff a little less often, but overall, foreign staff rotated between ports more often than Chinese employees. See Donna Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China, for a discussion of staff movements.
- 7.
Sapajou’s relatively privileged upbringing including education at an art school was disrupted by World War I. During the war, as a Lieutenant, Sapojnikoff was injured in battle, and with the rise of Bolshevism in Russia, he found himself like many other compatriots—in the position of a refugee in Shanghai in 1920. Nenad Djordjevic (ed), Sapajou. The Collected Works of Old Shanghai’s Greatest Cartoonist: The Early Years (Pdf Edition) (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011), pp. xxi–xxiv.
- 8.
See Richard Rigby, “Sapajou” East Asian History 17/18 (1999), for an overview and analysis of Sapajou’s works.
- 9.
Frank H.H. King (ed) and Prescott Clarke, “A Research guide to newspapers on the China coast”.(Harvard University: Harvard University Asia Center, 1965).
- 10.
Carl Crow, 400 Million Customers, London H. Hamilton, 1937, and Shamus A’Rabbit, China Rhymes, Two Classics of Old China Coast Poetry by Shamus A’Rabbit (1937) (republished in 2009 in Hong Kong by Earnshaw Books). Sapajou is also credited with influencing generations of cartoonists (perhaps the most notable being Hua Jun Wu, a PRC cartoonist who was inspired by an exhibition of Sapajou’s work) and the well-loved Herge’s Tintin series The Blue Lotus also seems to have drawn some inspiration from Sapajou’s works. Rigby, p. 137.
- 11.
Rigby, ibid., 135–137.
- 12.
Paul Bevan, A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Bevan briefly discusses Sapajou’s style and his relatively political ‘neutral’ tone in his cartoons.
- 13.
See Robert Bickers, “Shanghailanders and Others: British Communities in China 1843–1957” in Bickers (ed) Settlers and Expatriates, for a discussion of Shanghailander identity.
- 14.
See Isabella Jackson, “The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai”. Modern Asian Studies (46:6, 2012), for an elaboration on the use of Sikh soldiers in China and also for the way in which Sikh imperial diaspora became something of an instantly recognisable ‘short form’ for the presence of the British influence.
- 15.
Bickers , Britain in China, discusses the hegemony of the treaty ports for representations of China and the way in which this also influences scholars examining China, p. 60.
- 16.
Nicholas Clifford , Spoilt Children of Empire.
- 17.
Robert Bickers , “Shanghailanders and Others: British Communities in China 1843–1957” in Bickers (ed) Settlers and Expatriates, pp. 269–301.
- 18.
The journalist Rodney Gilbert’s What’s Wrong with China (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1926) is a work detailing the political scene in China and is written very much from the Shanghailander’s perspective.
- 19.
Robert Bickers , “Shanghailanders: The Formation and Identity of the British Settler Community in Shanghai 1843–1937” The Past and Present, no. 159 (May 1998). pp. 161–162.
- 20.
See, for example, Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons: Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai” Modern Asian Studies, 37(4) 2003, and Eileen Scully, Bargaining with the State from Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port China, 1844–1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
- 21.
See Dorotheé Rihal, “The French Concession in Hankou 1938–1943: the life and death of a solitary enclave in an occupied city” in Bickers and Jackson, Treaty Ports in Modern China as an example.
- 22.
In Britain and Britons over the Seas, Bickers makes the observation that people often shifted between categories of expatriate and settler. And sometimes, even they themselves were not so conscious of this shift.
- 23.
Frank Dikötter , Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) pp. 4–5.
- 24.
See Bickers , Britain in China, for a more detailed discussion of the position of Britons in China.
- 25.
Catherine Ladds , Empire Careers: Working for the Chinese Customs Service, 1854–1949 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) p. 131.
- 26.
Bickers , Britain in China, pp. 76–77.
- 27.
Ladds , Empire Careers, p. 131.
- 28.
See Bickers , Britain in China, pp. 12–14.
- 29.
For a survey of all the treaty ports and outposts in China, see Robert Nield, China’s Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840–1943 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015).
- 30.
Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone, Chap. 2 “An Institutional Review”, for an overview of policies and also staff movements between ports. Also seeLadds , Imperial Careers, on the recruitment policies for Customs men.
- 31.
Yvonne King shared access to a copy of her memoir with the author during field work and an interview in 1999 (in Melbourne, Australia).
- 32.
Yvonne King, A Variegated Life, p. 19.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Bickers , Britain in China, pp. 88–89.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 83.
- 36.
Ladds , Empire Careers, pp. 133–134.
- 37.
Rigby, p. 131.
- 38.
Sapajou Cartoon, 14 March 1925, North China Herald in Nenad Djordjevic (ed), Sapajou. The Collected Works of Old Shanghai’s Greatest Cartoonist, p. xxv.
- 39.
Bickers , Britain in China, p. 78.
- 40.
Ladds , Empire Careers, pp. 133–134.
- 41.
C.A.S. Williams , Chinese Tribute, p. 113–114.
- 42.
Hewitt , p. 25.
- 43.
Homes formed a retreat particularly by the 1920s when anti-foreign (but more specifically anti-British) sentiment was harnessed by nationalist groups in a series of strikes and boycotts. This led to a reversal of British foreign policy in China and a ‘gradual withdrawal’ of British influence.
- 44.
Rassmussen , China Trader (London: constable & Co, 1954), pp. 149–151.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 151.
- 46.
Christopher Briggs , Hai Kuan: The Sea Gate (Cheshire: Lane Publishers, 1997) p. 87. This is part of a chapter entitled ‘The Good Life’ and deals mainly with Brigg’s time in Hong Kong and Macao.
- 47.
Williams , Chinese Tribute, p. 58.
- 48.
For comparative purposes, works by Dane Kennedy on hill stations , Maurizio Peleggi on colonial hotels in Asia as comfort zones and Tim Harper on the British in Malaya are useful.
- 49.
King, A Variegated Life, p. 73.
- 50.
Some of these images are reproduced in Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China, pp. 49–53.
- 51.
King, A Variegated Life, p. 8. c.1917–1920.
- 52.
Ibid., p. 34.
- 53.
See the North China Herald , May 1923, saw Robinson’s Pianos of Nanking Road featured on the front cover of the paper, advertising not only gramophones but gramophones specifically suitable for the nursery. And Robinson’s advertised a Columbia Records special offer in 16 March 1929, consisting of a series of educational lectures on world affairs of the time.
- 54.
North China Herald , 4 January 1927, “The Wonders of the Radio” feature article.
- 55.
Rasmussen, pp. 44–47. Mafoo was a pidgin English term for the ‘horse boy’ or groom.
- 56.
Williams , Chinese Tribute, p. 117.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 118.
- 58.
Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 84–85. See also Timothy Amos’ chapter in this volume for a discussion of horses and the ideal of sociality and social mobility in the Japanese treaty port setting.
- 59.
King, A Variegated Life, p. 42.
- 60.
Ladds , Empire Careers, pp. 140–141.
- 61.
In the North China Herald , Sapajou sometimes depicts hunters shooting fowl as a holiday pursuit (see December 1923 for example).
- 62.
Bickers , Britain in China, pp. 88–89. This was very reminiscent of the British Raj, where recreating home becomes a preoccupation both in town and in the hill stations .
- 63.
King, A Variegated Life, p. 5. Yvonne explains that her family already had a baby-amah but required a wash-amah. Over time, this wash-amah became the main domestic help for her mother, and for Yvonne when she had her own family.
- 64.
Ibid., p. 5.
- 65.
Rassmussen , p. 171.
- 66.
Ibid., p. 176.
- 67.
Bickers , Britain in China, p. 75.
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Brunero, D. (2018). ‘Ponies, Amahs and All That …’: Family Lives in China’s Treaty Ports. In: Brunero, D., Villalta Puig, S. (eds) Life in Treaty Port China and Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7_2
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