A Big Ben with Chinese characteristics: The Customs House as urban icon in old and new Shanghai

Urban History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 65-84

  Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL HERITAGE; ICONOGRAPHY;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; SHANGHAI;

EID: 33749349496     PISSN: 09639268     EISSN: 14698706     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S096392680600352X     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. The clock-making firm remains proud of this time-piece; see the image of it and comments concerning its history at the J.B. Joyce and Co. website, in the 'Company History' section; http://www.jbjoyce.com/ index.htm (visited 27 Jul. 2004).
2. The Bund's status as Shanghai's top tourist site is asserted in the latest edition of the Lonely Planet's Shanghai: City Guide (Victoria, 2004), 2; a reference to it as the most 'Shanghai-like' part of Shanghai can be found on a local website devoted to encouraging foreign investment in Shanghai, www.sh.com (visited by the author 31 Jan. 2004).
3. On Bunds in general, see Jeremy Taylor,'The Bund: Littoral space of empire in the treaty ports of East Asia', Social History, 27, 2 (May 2002), 125-42.
4. For a good photographic history of Shanghai's Bund, with multiple images of many of the buildings discussed in this article and a bilingual explanatory text, see Lou Rongmin (ed.), Waitan lishi he bianyan (The Bund: History and Vicissitudes) (Shanghai, 1998).
5. There has been an explosion of interesting work on pre-1949 Shanghai published recently in Chinese, Japanese and Western languages, but very few good historical works that move between the treaty-port era and the recent past. A notable exception, on which I have relied heavily here, is Marie-Claire Bergère, Histoire de Shanghai (Paris, 2002).
6. According to a popular English language handbook, by the 1930s the term 'Big Ching' was in general use; see All About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guidebook (Shanghai, 1934-35), 45.
7. Leaving aside guidebooks - a large category - the following are some examples of relatively recently published books with covers featuring the Customs House, included here to suggest the range of such publications as much as their quantity. See Takahashi Kösuke and Furuya Tado et al., Shanhai shi (A History of Shanghai) (Tokyo, 1995)
8. Shiji Shanghai wenshi ziliao wenku (Collected Materials on the History and Literature of Twentieth-Century Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1999)
9. Shanghai yiri (One Day in Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1990)
10. Tom Bradby, The Master of Rain (New York, 2002)
11. Alison McLeay, After Shanghai (New York, 1995)
12. Linda Wong, Lynn While and Gui Shixun, Social Policy Reform in Hong Kong and Shanghai: A Tale of Two Cities (Armonk, NY, 2004).
13. See also the covers of Yeh Wen-hsin (ed.), Shanghai bainian fenghua (One Hundred Years of Shanghai Elegance and Talent) (Taipei, 2001)
14. Rebecca Weiner, Shanghai at Your Door (New York, 2003), part of the Culture Shock! guidebook series;
15. Shanghai by Night: Map'n' Guide (n.p., 2001), a contribution to the 'Groovy Map' series;
16. Lynn Pan, Tracing It Home: A Chinese Family's Journey from Shanghai (New York, 1992)
17. and Shanghai shihua (Shanghai History) (Beijing, 2000), a part of the Bainian Zhongguo shihua (A Century of Chinese History) series.
18. Xue Jiaguo et al., Cong Shanghai waitan dao Jiangnan guzhen (From the Shanghai Bund to the Old Towns of the Lower Yangzi) (Shanghai, 2004). In addition to its cover, analysed below, this guide also has a small image of Big Ching in the upper corner of 18 inside pages.
19. On this building, see Xue Liyong, Waitain de lishi he jianzhu (The History and Buildings of the Bund) (Shanghai, 2002), 73-94
20. and especially Iain S. Black, Between Tradition and Modernity: Hongkong Bank Building in Hong Kong and Shanghai, 1870-1940 (Quebec, 2001).
21. For general background on Shanghai's architecture, see Wu Jiang, Shanghai bai nian jinazhu shi (A History of One-Hundred Years of Shanghai Architecture) (Shanghai, 1997).
22. For basic background on the Bund's architectural landmarks, see Jon W. Huebner, 'Architecture on the Shanghai Bund', Papers on Far Eastern History, 39 (Mar. 1989)
23. and Pan Ling (Lynn Pan), In Search of Old Shanghai (Hong Kong, 1982), 31-49.
24. For the history of this Maoist anthem (and a sense of what it sounds like), see the section devoted to it at www.morningsun.org.
25. See Seng Kuan and Peter G. Rowe (eds.), Shanghai: Architecture & Urbanism for Modern China (Munich, 2004). Prior to the 1990s, the term 'Puxi' - literally, West of the Huangpu - was rarely used, since people assumed that the Bund constituted the eastern border of Shanghai proper. Recently, though, as Pudong has come to be seen as an integral part of the metropolis, rather than a district across the river from Shanghai, the term 'Puxi' is increasingly used to refer to the Bund and all that lies west of it.
26. Two good recent discussions of British influence in the Settlement are Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community. Culture and Colonialism, 1900-49 (Manchester, 1999)
27. and idem, Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (New York, 2003).
28. Phrases such as these can be found in many works of the 1920s and 1930s, such as F.L. Hawks Pott, 'An introduction', which opens the third edition of Shanghai of To-day (Shanghai, 1930); as well as in earlier works.
29. For uses of 'Eastern home', see, for example, 1843 - Shanghai - 1893 (Shanghai, 1893), 62-3.
30. For Big Ben's continuing iconicity, see 'Big Ben Tops London Icons List', BBC story dated 10 Mar. 2003, found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ england/2835609.stm, viewed online on 9 Jun. 2004.
31. The American Cyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (New York, 1881), 824.
32. One of the best online sets of images of Shanghai postcards, which includes ones that portray nearly all of the structures and open spaces discussed in this article, can be found at http://www.talesofoldchina.com/postcard/pstd_list.cfm (last visited 27 Jul. 2004). See also Eric Politzer, 'Shanghai in the mirror', Postcard Collector, 21, 5 (May 2003), 36 and 42.
33. On Nanjing Road's significance, see Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, NY, 2000)
34. Lu Hanchao, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, 1999)
35. and Yomi Braester, '"A Big Dying Vat" - the vilifying of Shanghai during the Good Eighth Company Campaign', Modern China, 31, 4 (2005), 411-47.
36. O.M. Green, 'Introduction', to the second edition of Shanghai of Today (Shanghai, 1927), 13.
37. For background on the park and the debate over the precise wording of its notices limiting Chinese access, see Robert Bickers and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, 'Shanghai's "No dogs or Chinese allowed" sign as history, legend and contemporary symbol', China Quarterly, 142 (Jun. 1995), 444-66.
38. Ni Yiying, Shanghai (Guangzhou, 1938), 2.
39. In addition to already cited works, see Mark B. Dunnell, 'The republic of Shanghai', Overland Monthly (Nov. 1894), 473-81.
40. For my understanding of the Customs Service and the debates surrounding it, I am indebted to Robert Bickers for sharing his insightful unpublished paper, 'After Hart: History and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service', delivered Sep. 2003 at Queen's University, Belfast (cited here with the author's permission). For a positive account of the Customs Service, see John K. Fairbank et al. (eds.), The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868-1907, vol. I (Cambridge, MA, 1975), 1-34.
41. For a harshly critical one, see Xiang Hua (ed.), Shanghai shihua (Shanghai History) (Shanghai, 1971).
42. For a fascinating discussion of the IMCS, see the poignant two-part memoir by Perry Anderson (whose father worked in the institution), 'A belated encounter', London Review of Books, 30 Jul. 1998, 3-10, and 20 Aug. 1998, 28-34.
43. For a contemporary guidebook's take on the 1893 Customs House's importance, see An Official Guide to Eastern Asia: Trans-continental Connections between Europe and Asia, vol. IV: China (Tokyo, 1915), 234
44. a sample use in a foreign reference book is Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada, vol. XV (Madrid, 1927), 963-6
45. for an example of its image being integrated into a recent nostalgia-themed publication, see Wang Anyi, Zhaodao Shanghai (Looking for Shanghai) (Shanghai, 2001), 208
46. and for an example of its image being used in a patriotic illustrated history of modern China, see the cartoon-filled work for children, Wang Rufeng, Zhongguo jindai shi (Hangzhou, 1998), 286. Guidebooks that include multiple images of the 1927 Customs House include Ni, Shanghai, and All About Shanghai and Environs.
47. Other examples of advance publicity include two articles that appeared in the North China Herald, the leading English language weekly: 'The Customs House chimes' (6 Oct. 1927, 59) and 'The Customs House clock tower' (21 Aug. 1926, 351).
48. H.F. Wilkins, 'Shanghai's New Customs House', Far Eastern Review, Feb. 1928, 72-7.
49. On the interplay of utopian and dystopian images of Old Shanghai, in addition to many previously cited works (Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights; Cochran, Inventing Nanjing Road; Ni, Shanghai, etc.), see the 'Introduction' to Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Wen-hsin Yeh (eds.), Shanghai Sojourners (Berkeley, 1988), 1-14 and esp. 5.
50. W. Robert Moore, 'Cosmopolitan Shanghai, key seaport of China', National Geographic (Sep. 1932), 310-35.
51. This emphasis in Western texts on Old Shanghai as a place defined primarily by juxtapositions of 'East' and 'West' predates the 1930s, of course; see, for example, Dunnell, 'Republic of Shanghai', as well as newspaper articles such as 'Shanghai, city of color and smells, an Oriental Paris transplanted', New York Times, 25 Feb. 1923.
52. Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, Journey to a War (New York, 1939), 237.
53. China: Shanghai (Beijing, 1983), 34-5.
54. For citations to relevant works on the park in particular, see Bickers and Wasserstrom, 'Shanghai's "No dogs or Chinese admitted" sign'.
55. Xin Shanghai bianlan (A Handbook to New Shanghai) (Shanghai, 1951)
56. see also the photograph in Shanghai de gushi (The Shanghai Story) (Shanghai, 1963), 9, which shows the Customs House covered with banners celebrating the tenth anniversary of the city's Liberation.
57. A Guide to Shanghai (complied in Shanghai, but published in Hong Kong, no date - though internal evidence, e.g., what is shown and not shown, suggests the 1980s).
58. Before 1949, the Nationalists had likewise tried but largely failed to de-centre the Bund. See Kerrie MacPherson, 'Designing China's urban future: The greater Shanghai plan', Planning Perspectives, 5 (1990), 39-62
59. and Seng Kuan, 'Image of the metropolis: Three historical views of Shanghai', in Seng and Rowe (eds.), Shanghai, 84-95.
60. China: Shanghai, 34-9, which also refers to the buildings demonstrating the 'infinite ingenuity of the Chinese working class'.
61. 'Historical clock in need of renovation', 17 Mar. 2003, Shanghai Daily - accessed at http://www2.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/17/ content_315617.htm, site last visited 2 Mar. 2005.
62. See, for example, the discussion of the Bund and the World Heritage issue in Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), 23 Jul. 2003, accessed online 21 Dec. 2003, at www.jfdaily.com.