Enclave to Urbanity: Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries 9789888208876, 988820887X

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Thirteen Factories
Situation
Origins and Materials
Façades—Changes and Continuities
Plans and Room Use
Everyday Life: Inhabitants and Rituals
The Pearl River: Transportation, Habitation, and Linkages
Connecting Fabric: The Square, the Streets, and Regulating Relations
Violated Boundaries and the Factory as Fortress
Turf Disputes
Tensions Boil, Crowds Erupt
Defensible Space and Its Final Vanity
Chapter 2: Westerners Draw Their Boundaries
Modest Living and Work South of the River: Honam
A New Era but a Separate Peace: Dwelling on Shamian
Presenting a European Face: A Survey of Houses on Shamian, 1870–1900
Western Official and Commercial Buildings Outside Shamian
Domesticity and Division: Inside the Foreign House and Yard, 1865–1900
A Problem of Translation: Missionaries Confront (and Inhabit) the City
Neighboring Sparks, Local Flames: Violence and Space in the 1880s
The Later Nineteenth Century and the Two Worlds of Guangzhou
Chapter 3: Dining, Shopping, Bombarding, and Touring
Guests and Customers: “Invited” Foreigners in the Early Nineteenth Century
Visiting a Buddhist Monastery
Flower Grounds
Invitation to a Chop-stick Dinner
The Impulse to Buy
The City Question: Entry and Mapping in the Third Quarter of the Nineteenth Century
Tourism at the Sunset of Imperial Guangzhou: Institutions, Ideologies, and Power
The Press of the Crowd
The “Regulation” Sites
Urban Fabric and Western Perceptions
Chapter 4: Xin Guangzhou
New Business, New Buildings, and Cross-Cultural Controversy in Twentieth-Century Shamian
Learning and Living Together: Foreign Philanthropic Institutions
Xin Guangzhou: Foreigners and the Modernization of Canton
Civic Visions: The Sights of Republican Guangzhou
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Plates

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“Enclave to Urbanity is a study of one of China’s most important cities at the most exciting time in its history. This carefully researched work not only offers an in-depth look at Canton (Guangzhou), it narrates history through anecdotes and personalities associated with the city. The superior illustrations combined with the excellent choice of quotes will be appreciated by audiences who are familiar with the city as well as those who have never been there.” — Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, University of Pennsylvania “Cross-cultural exchanges draw a lot of attention across various disciplines today. Painting a fascinating picture of the multiple ways in which Western traders and their families transformed Guangzhou/Canton together with local Chinese people from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, Farris provides a finely illustrated, close reading of life and building in a global context.” — Carola Hein, Professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Delft University of Technology

Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

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Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With over a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou.

Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Johnathan Andrew Farris received his BA from Yale University, his MA from the University of Virginia, and his PhD from Cornell University. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, he currently teaches art and architectural history in Hong Kong. China / History / Architecture

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Enclave to Urbanity

Enclave to Urbanity

Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Johnathan Andrew Farris

Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © 2016 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8208-87-6 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: The Thirteen Factories: An Architecture of Sino-Western Collaboration and Confrontation

8

Situation Origins and Materials Façades: Changes and Continuities Plans and Room Use Everyday Life: Inhabitants and Rituals The Pearl River: Transportation, Habitation, and Linkages Connecting Fabric: The Square, the Street, and Regulating Relations Violated Boundaries and the Factory as Fortress Turf Disputes Tensions Boil, Crowds Erupt Defensible Space and Its Final Vanity Chapter 2: Westerners Draw Their Boundaries: Insular Living and Its Exceptions Modest Living and Work South of the River: Honam A New Era but a Separate Peace: Dwelling on Shamian Presenting a European Face: A Survey of Houses on Shamian, 1870–1900 Western Official and Commercial Buildings Outside Shamian Domesticity and Division: Inside the Foreign House and Yard, 1865–1900 A Problem of Translation: Missionaries Confront (and Inhabit) the City Neighboring Sparks, Local Flames: Violence and Space in the 1880s The Later Nineteenth Century and the Two Worlds of Guangzhou

9 14 15 19 30 41 45 52 53 56 62

67 67 74 85 98 105 127 140 143

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Contents

Chapter 3: Dining, Shopping, Bombarding, and Touring: Foreigners in the Traditional City Guests and Customers: “Invited” Foreigners in the Early Nineteenth Century Visiting a Buddhist Monastery Flower Grounds Invitation to a Chop-stick Dinner The Impulse to Buy The City Question: Entry and Mapping in the Third Quarter of the Nineteenth Century Tourism at the Sunset of Imperial Guangzhou: Institutions, Ideologies, and Power The Press of the Crowd The “Regulation” Sites Urban Fabric and Western Perceptions

145 146 146 150 152 160 164 172 178 180 187

Chapter 4: Xin Guangzhou: Architecture, Foreigners, and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century

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New Business, New Buildings, and Cross-Cultural Controversy in Twentieth-Century Shamian Learning and Living Together: Foreign Philanthropic Institutions Xin Guangzhou: Foreigners and the Modernization of Canton Civic Visions: The Sights of Republican Guangzhou

190 204 213 220

Chapter 5: Conclusion

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Glossary Bibliography Index

235 237 245

Introduction

I shall be very happy if my humble efforts are the means of inducing my readers to turn a portion of their attention towards the Celestial Empire; and the further they pursue their researches, the more they will find to praise in the peaceful energy, industry, and ingenuity of the most enlightened of orientals.1 —Osmond Tiffany Jr., August 1849 Everything new originates in Guangzhou. —Popular Chinese saying In Canton, therefore, we have truly a city where the old and the new thrive along in harmony, where tradition is honored and modern ideas quickly assimilated, where indeed East meets West. This cosmopolitanism of the citizens is easily recognized from the very appearance of the city, and from the life of the people.2 —Ng Yong Sang, October 1936

Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. The overall goal of this work is to explore architecture as a frame for Chinese-Western relationships from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries in Canton (Guangzhou), China.3 This will be examined in a number of locations and themes. Chapter 1 will discuss the environment of the first neighborhood of Westerners in the city, the Thirteen Factories, 1. 2. 3.

Osmond Tiffany Jr., The Canton Chinese or the American’s Sojourn in the Celestial Empire (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), p. ix. Ng Yong Sang, Canton, City of the Rams (Canton: M. S. Cheung, 1936), p. 40. Since the purpose of this work is to examine architecture and spatial dynamics, examination of the problems of complex identities within the larger categories of Chinese and Western must by necessity be treated only in a cursory manner in this work. In the following text, the term Chinese is used to address identity in China in the most general sense, as well as refer to characteristics that are broader than the local (for instance, when referring to the actions of the Imperial government). Cantonese is used to refer to a condition of identity or being that is more local, referring to the denizens and characteristics of the city itself. Chinese is sometimes used as a default term, however, because the city had a fairly diverse population drawn from different ethnic groups (the majority bendi or local Cantonese language speakers; the ethnically distinct but related people of the boats; and then the more distinct Manchu officials, Hakkas, Fujianese, etc.). When a distinctive ethnic identity within the local population is relevant, another term will be used. Likewise, the term Western is used when it can be applied broadly to figures from Europe and North America, but when national distinctions are relevant, they shall be discussed accordingly.

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which existed from the eighteenth century to the late 1850s. This era is defined by a largely local Cantonese vernacular building type and the confinement of the traders (an all-male Western community) to a certain quarter of the city by imperial decree. A theme starting in this era, and continuing through various phases, is the separateness of the identities of various nationalities of Westerners as they operate in the Chinese context. The second phase of Western habitation, roughly dating from 1860 to 1905, is the topic of Chapter 2. It will be concerned with the construction of, and upon, the concession island of Shamian, as well as the short-lived adjacent American concession and the increasing missionary presence. The introduction of a climate-adapted Western building type occurs in the decades after the Arrow War (c. 1860–1905). This era witnesses a self-imposed isolation of Western residence from the Chinese city, as  well as the arrival of Victorian nuclear families, complete with women and children. Chapter 3 will be concerned predominantly with the Western views of and interactions with the Chinese city in the nineteenth century. Themes of tourism, hospitality, and commerce will dominate this discussion. Finally, Chapter 4 will introduce the radical changes to the city fabric witnessed by the third and last phase of foreign habitation addressed here, namely from circa 1905 through the early years of the Chinese republic, including selective use of Western building technologies and forms in Chinese contexts. This work will also locate Westerners within this setting, and raise the question of a Chinese “modernity.” The choice of Canton is significant. Canton (the Chinese name Guangzhou will be used interchangeably) has a rich and varied history as a port of the Maritime Silk Road.4 While the initial arrival of European traders on a large scale in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was scattered all along the China coast and Taiwan, their presence (excluding the Portuguese in Macao) was largely transitory and ephemeral. In 1757, the Chinese emperor restricted all foreign trade to Guangzhou, a regulation that was not abandoned until the Treaty of Nanjing in 1843. In the aftermath of the wars of foreign coercion in the mid-nineteenth century, Guangzhou was surpassed by Shanghai and the British colony of Hong Kong (with which it had a certain collaborative relationship) as centers of trade, but the city still remained an important economic center for Chinese and foreigners well into the twentieth century. As the earliest and longest-lasting settlement of English-speaking residents in China, the city

4.

These general facts regarding the history of Guangzhou can be found duplicated in many sources. For general reading in China’s history, including the place of the city within it, there are many sources. For a broad overview, see Conrad Shironkauer, A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), and for the more modern period, Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1990). For works that focus on Guangzhou’s history specifically, see Valery Garrett, Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and Graham E. Johnson and Glen D. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Guangzhou (Canton) and Guangdong (London: The Scarecrow Press, 1999).

Introduction

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lends ideal conditions for examining Sino-Western relations in an architectural and urban context. Chapter 1 covers the first of the three distinct phases of foreign habitation in Guangzhou, the Thirteen Factories, characterized by Westerners and Chinese employees living in close quarters in structures closely following adjacent buildings in a Chinese business district, which were part of the Cantonese vernacular tradition. By the late eighteenth century, these buildings had acquired Western façades using the vocabulary of Neoclassical architecture. While initially these buildings were occupied seasonally by the employees of various national joint stock “East India” companies, they would begin increasingly to be occupied by “resident” merchants whose working year became longer and longer in the nineteenth century. At this stage, Sino-foreign trade was highly regulated by the Chinese imperial government. Certain Chinese cohong merchants, or monopolists who had exclusive rights of trade of the major export commodities with Westerners by imperial appointment, became the primary protectors and facilitators of the foreign community. They largely helped with the staffing of the foreign firms with Chinese specialists to facilitate their trade and functioning. The fact that few Westerners had any command of the Chinese language, as it was illegal by Chinese decree to teach it to foreigners, required a great deal of pragmatism in crosscultural transactions. British and, later, French desire to have greater control over their trade with China resulted in a series of incidents and, subsequently, full-scale warfare in the mid-nineteenth century. The era of the Opium Wars (for the purpose of this work referred to as the Opium [1839–42] and Arrow [1856–60] Wars) resulted in an escalation of cross-cultural violence albeit with few Western fatalities. The second war resulted in the destruction of the Thirteen Factories. Several questions become necessary to consider within the context of the Thirteen Factories. First, what was the form and composition of the buildings themselves, how was the neighborhood arranged, and how did it relate to the surrounding Chinese urban fabric? How was interior space arranged to accommodate the everyday business of the foreign firms, and how did the combination of building plan and activities of the workday shape the interaction between foreigners and Chinese employees? What role did the spaces between the factories and the Chinese city play in the interaction of foreigners with the Cantonese populace at large? As tensions escalated in the midnineteenth century due to British economic and military expansionism, how did crosscultural tensions play out spatially? The foreign victories in the Opium and Arrow Wars fundamentally changed the roles of foreigners in Guangzhou. The Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the Opium War, opened other ports on the Chinese coast to foreign trade and created the British colony of Hong Kong at the mouth of the Pearl River (Zhujiang). Hong Kong and the other so-called treaty ports initially only slightly threatened Guangzhou’s trading status. With the destruction of the Thirteen Factories during the Arrow War, a military

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action fundamentally engineered to enforce parts of the Treaty of Nanjing with which the Chinese were loath to comply, as well as to press for further concessions, Guangzhou became increasingly viewed as dangerous and a less desirable location than Hong Kong or Shanghai for foreign firms. The volume of trade conducted through the city, however, ensured that it would necessarily remain a place of foreign habitation—in some respects as a point of origin of goods shipped from Hong Kong, as well as a vast market for Western goods. Chapter 2 will cover the period encapsulated between circa 1860 and 1905. The victorious belligerents of the Arrow War, Britain and France, were granted substantial indemnity funds and the rights to construct a foreign concession in the form of an island in the river called Shamian, literally “sand-face,” after its origin as a sand bar. The Americans made an attempt to negotiate their own concession on the old factory site, but their use of this property was short-lived. The questions raised by this era revolve around an increasing isolation of the trading community from the Chinese populace, as well as the arrival of increasing numbers of missionaries whose job was, in contrast, to engage everyday Cantonese. How did concerns over security shape the foreign concessions? What were the building forms utilized in the construction of a completely new foreign neighborhood? How did these buildings restructure relationships between foreigners and Cantonese employees? How did the arrival of Western women and children influence Sino-Western relationships? How did the spatial relationships of Western missionaries to the Chinese city evolve and what role did missionaries have in changing the spatial order of cross-cultural interactions? This question is a bridge to the subject of Chapter 3, the relationship of foreigners to the Chinese city per se. Should nineteenth-century Westerners choose to wander outside the narrow confines of their residential enclaves, they would by and large have been confronted with an entirely Chinese, or more specifically largely Cantonese, and highly populated city to explore. Initially, the places they were allowed to frequent were very limited indeed, but with the treaties after the wars in the mid-nineteenth century, the gates of the Chinese city were essentially forced open. The removal of restrictions on foreign movements was one of several implicit motives for the Arrow War. How did the initial restriction of foreigners to certain areas frame their ideas about the Cantonese and their city, and what sociocultural accommodations were in place to accommodate them? How did the wars of the mid-century change the experience and views of foreigners in Guangzhou with regard to the city? In the later nineteenth century, how did tourist practices evolve and how did preconceptions shape the Westerners’ views of their immediate environment? How did the list of sites worth seeing within the city change? How were the activities undertaken by Western tourists transformed, and how did their treatment of the city’s attractions change? How did the Chinese represent their city, control the Western visitors after regulations were

Introduction

5

removed, and attempt to profit from the foreign presence? These are among the questions that will be answered by Chapter 3. The final discussion, Chapter 4, examines the third phase of Western habitation, along with the emergence of a modern China and a “New Guangzhou” in the early twentieth century. The years immediately before and for several decades after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 are the focus here. Framing this era are the arrival of full-blown multinational corporations in the modern sense, and the arrival of foreign and foreign-influenced philanthropic educational and social institutions. Guangzhou’s status as the backyard of Sun Yat-sen influenced the city’s initiatives to modernize in terms not only of city fabric and utilities but also in terms of form and outlook. Leading the city’s modernization initiatives were a number of Westerneducated Chinese. Within this context, Westerners found themselves in a number of often conflicting roles; both the demand for, and comfort of, extra-concession places of residence are central to the issue during the first half of the twentieth century. What role did the arrival of Western technologies, business institutions, and educational enterprises have in changing the form of the city? How did the Westerners or their behaviors change when confronted with the modernizing city? How did the selective embrace of Western ideals by the Cantonese change the dynamics of the city? These are primary questions posed by the dawn of the twentieth century. By exploring the changes that occurred in the urban and domestic footprints of foreigners, the Western interaction with the traditional Chinese city, and the rise of a modern city in China over the course of more than a hundred years, this work will produce some useful conclusions. In the concluding text of this project, several questions will be posed and partially answered. The first will be the problem of the impact of Guangzhou in creating a Chinese modernity and the role of the West within that process. The second area of concern will be the legacy that the foreign neighborhoods have left, and the meanings supplied to them in a contemporary context. The ongoing radical transformation of Guangzhou and its rapid growth, especially as shown in its eastern suburbs, has definite implications for the identity of the city and brings forth another set of East/West relationships that both echo and contrast with historical trends. The final, and perhaps most valuable, reflections will concern the lessons that the history of the foreign presence in this notable Chinese city provides with regard to the best interests of foreigners and Chinese today, in an era when Westerners are once again returning to China in large numbers. With these issues and goals in mind then, let readers begin their journeys.5 They will first arrive along the steamy banks of the Pearl River, departing from many-masted, 5.

It is my intent to lead the reader on a journey that is at once an enjoyable adventure and also an occasion for personal reflection on the nature of human interactions and the roles that architecture plays in them. My choice of straightforward language and narrative form is intentional. While well acquainted with the

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ocean-going vessels, through a swarming river-bound population, and entering the suburbs of a bustling Chinese metropolis with their tightly packed blue brick, tileroofed residences and businesses. To the British and newly arrived Americans, this is the “Emporium of the East.” The tour guide, a citizen of a very different America, arrived in September 2002 via plane and train to a very different Guangzhou, swarming with red taxis and dotted with an increasing number of glass-and-steel buildings reaching skyward. With reflections on the joys and trials of Chinese and Westerners as they build their lives together over generations, this guide humbly submits these visions and interpretations in the hopes that the reader will profit from the adventure.

practice by some contemporary scholars of placing theoretical considerations in the forefront, I have chosen another path. The assumption here is that readers can bring their own sense of ethics and their own faculties to the story that I present. I also sincerely hope that this work will attract both scholars and a more general audience to a topic that I feel has such strong interest for current global developments. This populist approach to scholarship, my concern with looking at architecture as a product of social interaction rather than individual genius, and my interest in the entire lives of buildings rather than just their construction, all reflects affiliation with and admiration for my many colleagues in the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Chapter 1 The Thirteen Factories An Architecture of Sino-Western Collaboration and Confrontation

Not the least remarkable feature of Old Canton life was the “Factory,” as the common dwelling and common place of business of all the members, old and young, of a commercial house.1 —William C. Hunter, 1882

The era of the Thirteen Factories of Canton defined the first phase of long-term Western habitation within a Chinese city. It lasted through much of the later eighteenth century into the 1850s, and was characterized by a population of Western traders living and working side by side with their Chinese employees and mercantile peers in a dense urban environment. The neighborhood and even the buildings the Western traders inhabited were essentially Chinese, or more specifically Cantonese, but the foreign presence was announced by foreign flags and applied neoclassical façades in a steady march along the riverbank. Hybrid structures housed a collaborative existence, where the business of acquiring teas, silks, spices, and other luxury goods for shipment to the West was the constant objective. Despite barriers of language and culture, goodnatured curiosity and tolerance were characteristic of the daily cross-cultural encounters performed here. With the rise of geopolitical concerns in the imperial centers far from Guangzhou, including distress in London over trade imbalances, anti-opium reforms issuing from Beijing, and a rising distrust of their own dynasty and fear of foreigners on the part of many common Chinese, the Thirteen Factories of Canton were later transformed, increasingly amidst acts of violence. The story of the buildings and spaces of the Thirteen Factories illustrates and shapes the collaboration for mutually beneficent trade and the transformation and alienation wrought by crosscultural tensions. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Westerners who came to Guangzhou were introduced to their new environment on a boat trip from the main deep-sea port at Whampoa along the broad but busy Pearl River. Their destination 1.

William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825–1844 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1911—second edition is the version used here), p. 124. A native of Kentucky, Hunter was sent in his teens to Guangzhou in 1825 and resided there seasonally for nearly twenty years. His highly readable reminiscences are considered a standard source for the period.

The Thirteen Factories

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was a series of long, low buildings facing the riverfront, which apart from their distinctive façades resembled much of the rest of the general panorama of the city. The several hundred merchants who took up seasonal residence in Guangzhou starting in the mid-eighteenth century represented the most regular and largest presence of Western traders yet seen within the bounds of the Qing Empire, excluding the sleepy Portuguese colony of Macao.2 The foreign habitations in Guangzhou for the century between the 1750s and the 1850s were the primary focus of everyday interaction, both cooperative and confrontational, between the Cantonese and citizens of the majority of Western powers. The buildings allotted for foreign residence, called the “factories,” housed all of the residential and business facilities in which the substantial international trade occurred. The factories inhabited by the foreigners occupied a stretch of riverbank usually estimated between 800 and 1,000 feet long.3 The appellation of factory was rooted in the eighteenth-century world of great national joint stock companies (the British East India Company, et al.). By the mid-nineteenth century, writers felt that the term needed explanation as a synonym for “agency” rather than “manufactory.”4 The Chinese also had a name for these buildings indistinguishable from similar buildings of native merchants, which was hang, often spelled hong by Westerners, meaning a business or firm in general, hence the common Mandarin Chinese name for the site, Shisan Hang, or Thirteen Factories.

Situation The site allocated to Western habitation by the Chinese imperial government reflects the role Westerners would play in Guangzhou over the course of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The factories occupied the riverbank within the southwestern suburbs of the city. The oldest section of the city, the largest area enclosed by the city wall, had, after the Qing dynasty consolidation of power over the city, been allocated to Manchu high officials and military officers, as well as governmental functions more generally. The indigenous Cantonese and also merchants from other provinces largely occupied the neighborhoods of the southern or “new” city and the western suburbs. 2.

3.

4.

For more details on why Canton was chosen as the main site for Sino-Western trade rather than other cities, see Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), Chapter 1. The 1,000-foot estimate is mentioned by Hunter in William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p.  20. Downing estimated that the factory site did “not exceed seven or eight hundred feet facing the river,” in Charles T. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), Vol. 3, p.  123. Perhaps the most reliable source, a survey map done by British military officers dated April 19, 1847, indicates the site’s length along the river was closer to, but slightly less than, Hunter’s estimate of 1,000 feet [Foreign Office, Political and Other Departments, General Correspondence before 1906, China, FO 17/127, Public Records Office, Kew, United Kingdom]. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 20.

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The Westerners’ factories nestled closely among the Chinese merchants’ hangs (Pl. 1, Fig. 1.1) and were situated just south of a bustling neighborhood of skilled tradesmen and manufacturers. Thus, in both physical and social terms, Westerners occupied a place that was, on the one hand, peripheral to political and cultural life, yet, on the other hand, increasingly central to the commercial life of the provincial metropolis. Each of the Thirteen Factories had its own particular appellation, both in English and Chinese. Using typical Western nomenclature, from left to right were the Danish Factory, the Spanish Factory, the French Factory, Chunqua’s (later Mingqua’s) Hong, the American Factory, the Paoushun Factory, the Imperial Factory, the Swedish Hong, the Old English Factory, the Chowchow Factory, the English or New English Factory, the Dutch Factory, and the Creek Factory (Pl. 1, Fig. 1.1).5 After 1841, the so-called “New English Factories” completely replaced what were the English (East India Company) Factory, the Dutch Factory, and the Creek Factory. Each factory with a European name also had a Chinese name, with a meaning either inspired by or meant to bestow prosperity on its inhabitants.6 The factory between the French and American factories was the premises of a merchant who rented to some Western tenants. The Paoushun and the Chowchow factories maintained their Cantonese names in foreign writings. 5.

6.

The names of the factories are repeated in numerous sources and on several maps or diagrams. A useful chart of the appearances of names over time can be found in Liang Jiabin, Guangdong Shisan Hang kao (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1999), pp. 348–49. The Danish Factory was the Huangqi hang (in the nineteenth-century spelling of the local dialect, the Tehing Kai, meaning the “yellow flag factory.” The Spanish Factory was dubbed the Da Lüsong hang, or “big Luzon factory.” This factory received its name from the presence of the Philippine Company; the Chinese simply named the Spaniards who traded for it until 1832 after the island of Luzon, Da Lüsong meaning “big Luzon” and referring to Spanish traders rather than Philippine islanders, who were referred to as “small Luzon.” French Factory was known as either the Gao Gong (“high public”) or Fa Lan Xi hang (reflecting a phonetic translation of France). The Westerners named the fourth factory from the left after the hong merchant who owned or utilized it, but it was known in Chinese as the Zhong He hang (locally, chung ho, meaning “middle peace”). The American Factory was the Guang Yuan (Kwang-yuen) hang, the meaning of which was translated by contemporary English speakers as “wide fountain.” The Paoushun hong (Bao Shun hang), as it was always known, was “precious and agreeable.” Next to it, the Imperial (in this context referring to Austro-Hungarian) Factory was spelled Ma-ying by contemporaries, probably referring to the two-headed bird that was part of the Austrian crest. The Swedish Factory was the Sui hong (Mandarin Rui hang), which was both an example of local pronunciation of “Swede” and could be translated also as “lucky factory.” The Old English Factory was given the appellation Lung-shun (Mandarin Long Shun), the “thriving and agreeable factory.” The Chowchow Hong received its name from the pidgin language that was used for most transactions between the English and local Chinese. “Chowchow” in this context meant “assorted,” and referred to the diverse origins of its South Asian inhabitants, “representatives of every description of native from the three Presidencies—Calcutta, Bombay, and Madreas [sic]—consisting of Malwarees, Persians, Moors, Jews, and Parsees.” The Chowchow was also called in Chinese the Fungtai (Mandarin Fengtai) hang, “abundant greatest” or “great and affluent.” The New British Factory was the Pauho (Mandarin Baohe), meaning “protecting or ensuring tranquility.” The Dutch Factory was the Tsih-I hong ( Jiyi hang), well translated at the time as “collected justice factory.” Finally, the Creek Factory, whose English name simply resulted from the body of water that abutted it to the east, was named the I’ho (Yihe) or “justice and peace hong.”

Fig. 1.1 Map of the city of Canton and its suburbs, 1840, drawn by W. Bramston, engraved by James Wyld, with inset of foreign factories. This map indicates the location of the Thirteen Factories in the bottom left hand corner of the city, and then provides an insert showing the footprints of the buildings, labeled with frequently used names to distinguish the individual buildings. Used with the permission of the Hong Kong Museum of Art (AH1964.0115).

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The naming of many of the factories after Western nationalities had its roots in the eighteenth century, when many traders were tied to national “East India” companies, and the whole factory would be occupied by one nationality. Technically, various hong merchants to whom ground rents were paid owned the factories themselves.7 In the mid-eighteenth century, in an era when very little is known about the factory buildings themselves and a few ships might represent foreign trade from a country for the entire season, habitation was segregated by nationality. Pehr Osbeck, the chaplain of a Swedish East India Company ship, wrote during his voyage of 1750–51, “Commonly each ship takes a factory for itself; but sometimes two ships of a nation may be together.”8 By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the British East India Company dominated the European-bound trade. The Americans had arrived in the mid-1780s and within a couple of decades were easily the second most flourishing foreign traders on the ground in Guangzhou. In the beginning, most of the foreign traders quite literally arrived with the trading season and left when the season ended, returning to their home countries. A vague census taken by the British East India Company in April 1815 still revealed relatively few people whose continuous occupation warranted them the title “Foreign Residents.” Other than the “Honorable Company’s” staff, these included three Dutch supercargoes, a Dutch surgeon, the Swedish Consul, a Prussian consul and vice-consul, the American consul and other Americans simply specified as “several individuals.”9 The Chinese imperial government required departure during the summer, but by the 1820s, it was common practice for most of the resident merchants to simply board a ship down river to Macao for an “off-season” vacation.10 The procession of boats ferrying the British East India Company down the Macao Reach of the Pearl River delta was accompanied by a rather festive mood, complete with a chorus of gongs and firecrackers.11 Some American traders eventually began to remain year round contrary to regulations, but were generally overlooked or tolerated.12 By the early nineteenth century, the traditional names of the individual factories often had little to do with the nationalities of those who inhabited them. Consuls in residence flew national flags in front of their factories. While late eighteenth-century views might show that the official representatives of Denmark, Spain, France, Sweden, Britain, and Holland were in residence (see Pl. 1), early and mid-nineteenth century views often show only the “flowery flag” (as the Cantonese are recorded to have identified it) of the United States and the British Union Jack, perhaps accompanied by the 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 24. Pehr Osbeck, A Voyage to China and the East Indies (London: Benjamin White, 1771), Vo1. 1, p. 204. Mui Hoh-cheung and Lorna H. Mui (eds.), William Melrose in China, 1845–1855 (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Ltd. for Scottish History Society, 1973), p. 10. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, pp. 210–17. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, pp. 82–85. Ibid., pp. 85–86.

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13

Dutch or Danish flags (Pl. 4, 8, 10). Note that even if the appropriate flags were flying, persons of that nationality might not be present in the factories—the Scots principals of the firm Jardine, Matheson & Company had regular long-term appointments as the consuls for Denmark, and American merchant Gideon Nye acted as consul for Chile, among other instances.13 By the 1830s, the tendency was for the factories at either end of the site to be predominantly British-occupied, while the center factories had a notable American presence, in the American, Imperial, and Swedish factories in particular.14 Though this general pattern varied from year to year, as different merchants arrived, left, or switched addresses, the trend was notable enough so that Dr. Melchior Yvan, a French visitor of the 1840s, asserted that the Americans had “absorbed within their limits” all of the factories in the central block except for the Chowchow.15 A thriving Parsee community, operating under British protection and indeed outnumbering the Americans, also inhabited blocks scattered throughout the factories, though the Chowchow and French factories sheltered the preponderance. The front block of the Dutch factory, until its destruction in 1841, continued to house the small staff of the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. Europeans of other nationalities generally took up residence in no evident pattern. Entrepreneurs also leased parts of the factories to run as hotels, largely to accommodate supercargoes and ship captains.16 Evidence of this comes from Bryant Parrott Tilden, an American supercargo.17 He spent trading seasons in Guangzhou in the 1810s, when he resided at a “factory hotel” run by Rhode Islander William Magee, and in the 1830s he rented his premises from Englishman Charles Markwick, whose premises occupied Numbers 4–6 of the Imperial Factory.18 With few brief and chronologically late (i.e., post–Opium War) exceptions, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Factories, regardless of their nationality, were exclusively male as the Chinese imperial government did not allow Western women to take up residence in the country. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

Maggie Keswick (ed.), The Thistle and the Jade (London: Octopus Books, 1982), p. 63, and Chinese Repository, Vol. 16 (1847), p. 11. A good indication of the patterns of habitation of the factories may be found in the lists of foreign residents at Canton in the Chinese Repository (Canton, China: 1837), a particularly early one being Vol. 5, p. 429. Melchior Yvan, Inside Canton (London: Henry Vizetelly, 1858), p. 39. Jacques M. Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American Policy (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1997), pp. 90–91. A supercargo in this era was a merchant attached to a particular ship or set of ships who managed purchasing and other transactions. The supercargo would leave when his ships did. This is opposed to the resident merchants, permanent inhabitants of ports that acted as year-round agents for foreign companies. Benjamin Parrott Tilden, Father’s Journals (unpublished manuscript, Peabody Essex Museum) Vol. 1 (second voyage), pp. 201–2, Vol. 2 (seventh voyage), pp. 127–29. Two copies exist of Benjamin Tilden’s handwritten volumes of his father, Bryant’s, journals. The copies appear to date from around the 1870s. While the original journal does not seem to have survived, the detailed nature of this source, including copies of Bryant Tilden’s sketches, makes the source very credible. Bryant Tilden’s stays in Canton included three trading seasons in the 1810s and four in the 1830s.

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Enclave to Urbanity

Origins and Materials The factory buildings were initially directly derived from the general patterns of Cantonese urban vernacular design. They resembled in construction, though not necessarily in patterns of habitation, the neighboring business premises of substantial Chinese merchants. The precise date of construction remains a mystery. Not many detailed representations predate the last third of the eighteenth century. By that point it is clear that the buildings resemble their Cantonese neighbors except in the addition of Western-style “classicizing” façades, in particular the two-story verandahs of the buildings, sporting columns and pediments, inhabited by the English and Dutch East India companies (Fig. 1.1 and Pl. 2—far right). The foreign factories were built overwhelmingly of local materials. The walls of these structures largely consisted of locally produced bricks. During the first half of the nineteenth century, three types of bricks were commonly used in Guangzhou. While the first type, which was simply sun dried, possessed a pale brown color, thoroughly kiln-baked red bricks were also present, and bricks of a bluish-gray hue, fired for a short time only, were the most common.19 From the evidence of contemporary paintings of the Thirteen Factories, the last type seems to have been the predominant brick used for the foreign factories, presumably indicating their middling status in terms of Guangzhou’s overall urban fabric. Very few written documents regarding the materials and construction of the factories survive. Bryant P. Tilden recollected his general impression of the buildings: “The factories make a handsome show from the river, & square in front, and are built of stone & sun burnt bricks as are all the other buildings at Canton and the steep roofings are covered with fire baked tile.”20 A catastrophic fire in 1822 necessitated the rebuilding of all the factories; a list of materials and estimates for the reconstruction of the British East India Company–inhabited factories survives in the company’s “agency consultations.”21 The British East India Company employed their comprador (manager of all a company’s Chinese-speaking laborers and general chief business go-between), who was known as Aming, to estimate the cost of rebuilding their facilities. Besides brick, materials on the list included tile for roofs and drains, wood for framing, stone for paving and probably door frames, chunam (a word apparently borrowed from India for lime, and used in the Guangzhou context to refer to materials made with it, such as exterior stucco/plaster, some sort of paving material, and perhaps mortar), iron nails and “work,” lead and tin, marble for chimney pieces and fittings for a “bathing room,”

19. 20. 21.

The Chinese Repository (Canton, China: 1833), Vol. 2, pp. 195–96. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (seventh voyage), p. 127. India Office Records, Canton Agency Consultations Season 1823–24 (consultations of November through early February), Vol. 2, G 12/229, British Library.

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and a “bamboo house.”22 This last structure was erected as a sort of roofed scaffolding for support and shade during building, and this craft still lives in the construction of Cantonese opera theaters in the region today. The main residential factory for the Honorable East India Company also included the specialized structures of a verandah with “stone columns below,” “outer columns above of stone,” and “inner ones of wood,” along with an underground substantial masonry “treasury.”23 While the British company buildings were the most sumptuous, the materials used in them were probably fairly representative of the composition of the Thirteen Factories overall. Earlier in their history, the factory buildings appear to have had more wooden components, particularly interior partitions and upper, verandah-decked stories, as can be seen in early paintings where some of the buildings had yet to obtain classical-influenced façades (Pl. 1).24 In the eighteenth century, many of the windows were apparently made of mother-of-pearl or shells.25 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the presence of more typically Western glazing is notable in many visual representations.

Façades—Changes and Continuities The façades of the factories all eventually become Westernized, though little is known about this process. These neoclassical fronts, while giving the appearance of Europeanstyle buildings, were actually disguises of a sort. This is evident in a painting from around the first decade of the nineteenth century, which shows a closer view of the Imperial, Swedish, Old English, Chowchow, and New English Factories (Pl. 2).26 This work shows the very regular, neoclassical façades, displaying a heavy, sometimes rusticated, ground floor and columns and arched openings surmounted by keystones articulating an airier piano nobile on the Italian palazzo model. What lies behind the southern elevation of these buildings, however, is belied by the presence of the narrow, end-gabled tile roofs typical of Cantonese architecture. Particularly informative is the portrayal of the New English Factory, which behind its substantial classical verandah is a gray brick edifice complete with applied gable decoration that is part and parcel of the local building idiom. From the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, a series of changes do take place in the factories’ southern elevations, witnessed by the continually popular

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Ibid., specifically February 2, 1824 consultation. For the translation of chunam as lime, see Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 62. Ibid. Osbeck, A Voyage to China and the East Indes, Vol. 1, p. 205. Ibid, pp. 204–5. See Peabody Essex Museum and Hong Kong Museum of Art, Views of the Pearl River Delta: Macau, Canton, and Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Urban Council of Hong Kong, 1996), pp. 168–69.

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Enclave to Urbanity

paintings of views from the perspective of the Pearl River. Though very sparsely documented, these changes have provided a baseline for dating topographical views.27 Sometime around 1800, the first floor of the verandahs of the New English and Dutch Factories became more enclosed, with masonry arches supporting the airy terrace above. The Old English Factory acquired a pediment and a second-story recessed porch, flanked by two enclosed rooms, probably in the 1810s. The catastrophic fire of 1822 meant that all of the factory buildings had to be rebuilt (Pl. 3). The 1820s rebuilding left all, with the exceptions of Chunqua/Mingqua’s Factory and the French Factory, with thoroughly classical elevations, and even the former acquired a neoclassical pavilion appended to its otherwise very traditional form (Pl. 4, Fig. 1.2). The Spanish, Swedish, Imperial, and Old English Factories were left with column-adorned upper stories that now made reference to a classicism that was in a heavier Greek Revival vein than the preceding Georgian neo-Palladianism. A mezzanine floor seems to have been added to Number 1 Imperial Factory. The New English and Dutch Factories were reconstructed with similar verandahs, although the portico of the latter was considered by one foreign observer to be “a humble imitation,

Fig. 1.2 View of the factories, 1839–40, anonymous (ink on paper). This is perhaps one of the most accurate delineations of the factories between the 1822 fire and the destruction of the eastern factories in 1842. It also illustrates the increasing enclosure of the square in front of the factories on the eve of the Opium War. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E81458).

27.

The standard source for this is Appendix C to Carl L. Crossman, The China Trade: Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver, and Other Objects (Princeton: The Pyne Press, 1972), pp. 259–65.

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in very bad taste.”28 Both of these now had armorial escutcheons in their pediments, the former bearing the arms of England and the motto Pro Regis et Senatus Angliae (“for the king and parliament of England”) and the latter with the Dutch national arms and the motto Je maintiendrai (“I will endure”).29 The New English, Dutch, and Creek factories were destroyed in the riot and fire of December 1842, in the wake of the Opium War. For a few years afterwards, very little in the way of construction occurred on the site of the three easternmost factories, though the development of the “American Garden” and the addition of a third, flat-roofed story to the Old English Factory took place during these years (Pl. 5). In late October 1843, the Danish, Spanish, and French factories were destroyed in an accidental fire, but were shortly rebuilt to more or less resemble their previous states.30 The typology of all of the foreign factories up until the 1840s continued to fit comfortably within the range of urban, South China variants of the traditional courtyard dwelling. In contrast to the ample, spreading, four-sided courtyard houses of North China, the urban pressures of Guangdong led to the development of buildings with very narrow and deep footprints, where the courtyards were sometimes shrunken to mere light wells. Though fewer and fewer examples of traditional Cantonese urban dwellings may be seen in Guangzhou, smaller examples exist, notably of the “bamboo tube” type of house (Pl. 6).31 While these single- to two-story dwellings are sometimes only one bay wide, and thus on a rather smaller scale than the factory buildings, they share the common urban pattern of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suburban Guangzhou holdings in being much deeper than wide. They also share the small courtyards and skylights that were part of the traditional construction features used in the Thirteen Factories. The structures most comparable to the original foreign factories were probably the urban premises of the “hong merchants,” the small group of Chinese merchants who were granted a monopoly for supplying the foreigners with the most valuable trade commodities, such as tea and silk. By 1845, the Chinese Repository asserted that building activity on “houses of a new and much improved order” was underway on the eastern end of the site, apparently starting with a new British Consulate.32 The consulate was the first constructed of a double row consisting of fourteen detached buildings to be built between 1845 and 1847. These structures warrant a separate discussion later, as they mark a transition

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

W. W. Wood, Sketches of China (Philadelphia: Carey & Lear, 1830), p. 67. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 22. The Chinese Repository, Vol. 14 (1845), p. 348, and Paul S. Forbes Diary, Forbes Collection (Baker Library, Harvard University), Box 6, folder 65, entry for October 24, 1843. See Wu Qingzhou, “Guangzhou (Guangdong),” in Paul Oliver (ed.), Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Vol. 2, pp. 899–900, and Lu Yuanding and Wei Yanjun, Guangdong Minju (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1990), pp. 51–61. The Chinese Repository, Vol. 14 (1845), pp. 348, 351.

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between the initial Western accommodation within essentially Cantonese structures and the more Western construction of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A survey by British military officers, dated April 1847, gives presumably a very accurate impression of the arrangement of the factories at this particular moment (Pl. 7).33 In addition to buildings’ footprints, the plan illustrates patterns of occupation, showing European residences in red (now faded to pink), Chinese residences in black, public streets in brown (now tan), and private passages left white. Work began on a church in front of the factories in 1848. The last phase of the Thirteen Factories lasts from 1848 to the total burning of the site in 1856, during the Arrow War. A relatively large number of paintings can be found to illustrate this final phase (Pl. 8, 9). In addition to the new eastern factories and the churches, the American and Paoushun Factories seem to have acquired a third story the Old English and Chowchow Factories were renovated with an additional story; and a new, narrow three-story building was constructed in what formerly was a street dubbed “Hog Lane.” On the western end of the site, new factories were added in front of the Danish, French, and Mingqua’s Factories (dubbed “New Hong, New French Hong, and Mingqua’s New Hong”).34 Mingqua’s New Hong appears to be a Westernized, verandah-clad block much like the New British factories on the east end of the site, set in front of a two-courtyard unit of traditional Cantonese domestic architecture. Finally, two new buildings housing amenities for the foreign community, a pleasure-boat house and library, are added more or less in front of the American and Mingqua’s Factories. The classicizing southern elevations of the Thirteen Factories contrasted the residences of foreigners with the rest of the city fabric. The verandahs of the British and Dutch East India Companies, into the 1840s, also projected the power and identity of the powerful national joint stock companies, allowing their inhabitants plenty of room to survey the goings-on in the confined neighborhood of friends and competitors. Initially, most of the rest of the factories were fairly homogeneous with regard to their public faces in an era when the quarters rented by a particular firm would change frequently. As American firms settled in particular quarters in the center of the factory site, the façades of their buildings also began to take on an individual identity. A Chinese merchant living among the foreigners and renting rooms to them in his own dwelling experimented with a combination of Eastern and Western forms in a way that allowed Cantonese contractors to develop skills that would serve them in the future. In the 1840s, the British rebuilt their factories using a new typology that would contribute expansive verandahs and hipped roofs, which later influenced the architecture of foreigners in Guangzhou for most of the rest of the nineteenth century.

33. 34.

Foreign Office, Political and Other Departments, General Correspondence before 1906, China, FO 17/127, Public Records Office, Kew, UK. The Chinese Repository, Vol. 17 (1848), pp. 419–20.

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Plans and Room Use Spatial arrangements proved to have more continuity over time than the factories’ façades. The most common plan of the factory building was a series of two- to threestoried blocks of rooms, separated by courtyards linked by an open central passage running through the structure. Baltimore native Osmond Tiffany expressed as much after his 1844 visit: “The hongs are entered by means of a wide passage-way running the whole length of the building, and each are composed of numbers of houses detached from each other, yet all serving their turn like the distinct glasses in a telescope.”35 Each block of rooms was numbered, so that an address for a foreign merchant in residence might be expressed as “Number 1 American Hong” or “Number 3 Imperial Hong.” A rough diagram of this arrangement is shown in the inset of the 1840 Bramston map of Canton (Fig. 1.1). This diagram, while useful for clarifying where various persons and firms situated themselves within the factory grounds, has a regularity in its steady progression of masses and voids that does not reflect the real geometry of the buildings, both before and after rebuilding following the 1822 fire. A painting by an unknown Cantonese artist reveals this by taking its unusual viewpoint from the roof of the Dutch Hong, facing to the southwest over the roofs of the British East India Company factory, the Chowchow Hong, and beyond (Pl. 10). The irregular roofline of the East India Company’s factory and the varying sizes of the blocks and courtyards of the factories beyond are clearly illustrated. The 1847 Lieutenant Da Costa plan of the factories (Pl. 7) was the result of a survey post-dating the rebuilding of the new Western-appearing British factories on the eastern end of the site. The remaining factories in this plan, however, still maintained their Cantonese vernacular footprint, with their long, narrow lots and fairly irregularly interspersed courtyards. Descriptions of the interior of the factory buildings are rare. Presumably the resident merchants’ familiarity bred lack of interest, for short-term visitors are the ones who left us with most of the detailed descriptions of the interiors. Osmond Tiffany enumerated types of rooms within the factory as consisting of “counting rooms, an establishment for the tea tasters, of dining and sleeping rooms, and in some are nicely furnished parlors.”36 Fitch W. Taylor, chaplain to the American East India Squadron that circumnavigated the globe commencing in 1838, stated of the American Factory, where he briefly stayed: Within this range of walls are the store-rooms, and rooms occupied by the comprador, coolies, and other servants attached to the hong, comprising the basement

35.

36.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 214. Tiffany (b. 1823) was a merchant, government clerk, and author who studied at Harvard but did not graduate. He was author of both fiction and nonfiction; besides The Canton Chinese, he also published Brandon, A Tale of the American Colonies (1851) and Sketch of the Life of General Otho H. Williams (1851), and was editor of Patriarchs and Prophets of Biblical Story (1860). Ibid., p. 215.

20

Enclave to Urbanity stairs or ground-floor, and the second story affording fine drawing-rooms and chambers, both spacious and airy, two requisites for comfort in this climate.37

A visitor for several seasons, supercargo Tilden states of the factories in his description “each having its go-down or store room, kitchen, & other lower story accommodations for servants, coolies, & c. & c.”38 Tilden was the one visitor to leave a plan of an individual factory with the rooms labeled (Fig. 1.3).39 This building, the Imperial Factory as it was in the mid-1830s, was shared by resident firms (notably the American firm of Wetmore & Co. in Number 1) and the English-run Markwick’s Hotel in Numbers 4 through 6. The drawing, while idiosyncratic, reveals how factories housed the social institutions and mechanisms by which business and everyday life were carried out. The sketch, which reflects Tilden’s memories from 1833 to 1837, survives as a copy of the original sketch pasted into a copied journal. It shows the first and second stories of the factory side by side and joined by lines that result from a desire to make both have equal dimensions. The plan shows the first four residential blocks, and asserts that the fifth block is three stories high and “last in the range, with same accommodations as N. 4.”40 Other sources indicate that the Imperial Factory actually had six units— perhaps Tilden simply never ventured beyond the fifth.41 The ground-floor plans show the familiar arrangement of a long, arched passageway running the full length of the building, in this instance apparently 500 feet, and joining the courtyards between blocks labeled by Tilden simply as “open space.” The American firm of Wetmore & Co. occupied the most commodious quarters, in Number 1 Imperial Factory. Wetmore & Co., composed primarily of Philadelphians and Rhode Islanders, was the successor to the Quaker firm of Nathan Dunn & Co.42 Retaining some of its Quaker flavor, the firm generally stayed out of the opium trade, but on the other hand was known to be inclined to somewhat sumptuous living.43 Immediately upon entering the Imperial Factory from the square to the south, a visitor of the 1830s would find himself surrounded by the service rooms of Wetmore & Co. To his right is the company’s godown, or warehouse. A visitor to the factories during the 1820s noted: The internal construction of the houses is very similar to our own, with the exception of large rooms, purposely made for storing merchandise, and called, as in Bengal, Go-downs. In these, goods are deposited on wooden frames or sleepers, 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Fitch W. Taylor, A Voyage Round the World (New Haven: H. Mansfield, 1848—Ninth Edition), Vol. II, p. 138. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (seventh voyage), p. 127. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid. The Bramston plan (ill. 1) and the 1837 census in Chinese Repository, Vol. 5 (1837), p. 429, indicate six tiers in the Imperial Factory. Downs, The Golden Ghetto, pp. 209–21. Ibid.

Fig. 1.3 Plan of Imperial Factory, Canton, copy of sketch c. 1831–37, by Bryant Parrot Tilden. The plan of the ground floor is on the left, the upper story is to the right. South is to the top of the page, therefore No. 1 (Wetmore & Co.) is indicated by the block on the top of the drawing. No. 5 Imperial Factory is not shown but is indicated at the bottom of the page as “with same accommodations as No. 4.” Used with the permission of the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum (MH219).

22

Enclave to Urbanity raised several inches above the floor, the supports surrounded by rice chaff, tar, or quick lime as a defense against the white ants, which are very destructive.44

These dark rooms, stacked high with tea crates and other containers waiting to be counted and transported to the foreign ships at Whampoa, were relatively plain and functional. To his left, the visitor to the Imperial Factory would find the dwelling rooms of the locals hired to handle much of Wetmore & Co.’s business with the outside world. These included the comprador, the purser (the man in charge of keeping track of the firm’s cash), and the cooleys (then used as a term without the current negative connotation to indicate general laborers who transported goods and ran lesser errands). These men lived in close quarters, perhaps separated by little more than simple partitions. The cooleys lived in a somewhat barracks-like organization. Osmond Tiffany describes how men of this class were accommodated in a Chinese merchant’s hong: On the sides of the building, at considerable elevation from the ground, were some twenty or thirty shelves, intended for beds, arranged like the berth in a steamboat, consisting of rough boards with square wooden blocks for pillows. Each was inclosed by a coarse, blue mosquito netting, suspended on bamboo poles.45

Although the cooleys employed by the foreign merchants were fewer, and therefore their accommodations on a smaller scale, in all likelihood their place of rest was very similar. Tilden does not draw in any partitions in the Chinese staff ’s rooms, which could indicate either the lack of any substantial room divisions or that he failed to venture into these chambers. Though in this plan there is no evidence for a particular person being assigned to serve as a watchman, Tiffany recorded of factories in general, “The gate-keepers sit in grim majesty in a little pigeon hole, just within the entrance door, and only wide enough to turn around in and accommodate a bed.”46 Although Tilden’s plan has no such feature, the presence of the firm’s servants just inside the door would have served to restrict access or announce the arrival of a visitor, as the individual instance required. The front western room of Wetmore & Co.’s building also contained a treasury or “money vault,” probably with iron doors and stone walls, which was under the charge of the comprador.47 Beyond the “outdoor” Chinese workers’ rooms on the left was where servants and cooks who supported the domestic comfort of the merchants found their accommodation. On the right, beyond the godown, the visitor might smell the evolving results of the cooks’ labors and hear the banging of kitchen pantries. Before continuing, he might need to visit the “outhouses” in the courtyard behind Number 1, which here 44. 45. 46. 47.

Wood, Sketches of China, p. 69. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 116. Ibid, p. 219. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 24. Hunter also states here that usually in front of the granite treasury was “a well-paved open space, with table for scales and weights.”

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is almost certainly synonymous with “privies.” If the visitor had been lucky enough to obtain an invitation to the bountiful table of Wetmore & Co., he would then proceed up an interior stairway, located between the kitchen and godown, to the second floor. The downstairs realm of the Chinese staff was assuredly plain, decorated perhaps with a few personal items that senior members might possess, Cantonese lower- and middle-class tastes in interior furnishing being sparser than that of Westerners of the mid-nineteenth century. The upstairs/downstairs arrangement appears configured to some vague notions in the foreigners’ minds about Renaissance palazzos filtered through eighteenth-century neo-Palladianism. It might also indicate notions about climatic desirability, as the top rooms were better situated to receive a cooling breeze off the river. On the other hand, there are plenty of still, sunny, and sweltering days in Guangzhou during which the Chinese staff would be more content to be in the darker, perhaps slightly damp, lower rooms. Cantonese traditional dwellings may seem rather too dark by Western standards for this very reason. The visitor of the 1830s, upon his arrival at the top of the flight of the stairs, is greeted by a partner in the firm, perhaps the ample, stiff-collared, and red-headed visage of William S. Wetmore himself. The guest has the accommodations of the American businessmen quickly pointed out to him. He peeks through the slightly ajar door of the second room on the right to the gleaming china cabinet and storeroom of goods for the household’s consumption. Ignoring the other four rooms on the right (Tilden labels each of these simply as “room”), the host points out the private chambers of the American staff and shows him the two counting rooms where these men spend most of their days. The host then leads the guest back to the center of this southern line of rooms, where they enter the dinner hall, as Tilden terms it. After dinner, the rest of the evening probably passes in an attempt to keep cool in the shade of the marblepaved verandah, the green shutters of which are positioned to deflect the last rays of the setting sun or opened to observe the activity of the square and the river beyond.48 The interiors of the factories’ rooms are very sparsely documented. An exceedingly rare visual portrayal of an interior is a watercolor of the tea taster’s office in Wetmore & Co.’s hong (Pl. 11), painted by Warner Varnham, an Englishman employed as Wetmore’s tea taster. This room is on the second story, due to the fact that the top of a balustrade is visible through the window. It may have been one of the undesignated “rooms” indicated by Tilden on the north side of No. 1’s central passageway, although the plan indicates no verandah on the rear of the block, or it could be one of the “counting rooms,” or alternatively it could be rooms rented in No. 2 Imperial Hong by the company. There is no record of the latter, but the balustrade and architectural backdrop that can be seen sketchily indicated through the window are suggestive of such a situation. The interior is very spare, with white walls, a single Western-style 48.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 214. Here, Tiffany supplies details of the marble of the floor and the color of the blinds; the latter can also be seen in Pl. 2.

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sash window surmounted by a fanlight, chair rails and baseboards running around the room where shelves and drawers do not hide them, crown molding, and the hint of a skylight. Varnham’s local assistant sits in a delicate neoclassical chair, probably of Chinese or Indian manufacture. Turned legs set off the tea-taster’s desk, but the drawers and shelves have a generally unadorned, functional appearance. Granted, this is a workspace rather than a dwelling space, but surviving descriptions indicate a standard room in the factories would not look dissimilar. The counting rooms of the factories made their impression on Tiffany mainly through their atmosphere rather than their physical features; he noted that “one of the pleasures of the counting-room is smoking,” resulting in the “clouds of vapor that float around one.”49 There is sparse evidence for Westerners’ dwelling rooms in the factories. One gouache in private hands is believed to be a dwelling room in the British or Paoushun Factory.50 It shows an uninhabited interior with a white dado, simple chair rail, light-blue upper wall, and a restrained neoclassical marble (or marbleized) mantle. Wedge-shaped writing desks occupy the tops of three tables, and three rush-bottomed chairs, a stool, a black-and-white-striped sofa or recamier, and a rattan armchair complete the room’s contents. Additional evidence is textual. The finicky Charles Downing was not impressed with his bedchamber at Markwick’s Hotel, the same establishment in which Tilden lodged during his last three voyages to Guangzhou. Complaining of the lack of unspecified things “which to an Englishman are considered essential,” Downing describes his room: The walls are perfectly bare without the slightest attempt at ornament, and the window is generally without any blind or screen to free you from the observation of your opposite neighbour. A fourpost bedstead stands on one side of the room, with a mattress and bolster spread with a couple of sheets, and encircled by a large green mosquito-curtain. A small table, a chair or two, and a washbasin without soap or towel, complete the furniture of this desolate apartment. There is no looking-glass on the table or carpet on the floor.51

During his stay there on his last three China journeys, the facilities at Markwick’s seem not to have excited comment by Tilden, one way or another. Nathaniel Kinsman, an employee of Wetmore & Co. in the 1840s, found his quarters in No. 1 Imperial Factory rather gloomy, as “the walls here were painted dark green & are now nearly black.”52 By the late 1840s, the strict confinement of Westerners to the Thirteen Factories had started to break down somewhat. During the year 1849, William Melrose, 49. 50. 51. 52.

Ibid., p. 223. Patrick Conner, Paintings of the China Trade: The Sze Yuan Tang Collection of Historic Paintings (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Maritime Museum, 2013), p. 18. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, pp. 263–64. Letter dated January 29, 1843, Kinsman Family Papers (Peabody Essex Museum, MSS 43).

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the Guangzhou buying agent for a Scottish wholesale tea business run by his father Andrew, described quarters he rented in Mowqua’s hong, the second building to the east beyond the Creek Factory: It is one of the old Hong merchants’ houses (Mowqua) but done up in English style. I have two bedrooms—one I sleep in and in the other I have my bath and shower-bath—office, tea room, dining room, and a veranda.53

Melrose used the opportunity offered him by a Chinese merchant to move out of crowded quarters in the factories to a comfortable suite. Though he gives little detail of how the interiors of what was a fairly traditional Cantonese building—he in fact calls it a “China house”—the phrase “done up in English style” is suggestive.54 While the exterior of the building likely reflected the Cantonese urban vernacular, the interior was furnished with Western furniture, and perhaps a few minor architectural details. The dining room was the center of social life within the foreign firms. The first memory upon arrival of young John Heard, nephew of the principal of Massachusetts firm Augustine Heard & Co., was of the firm’s dining table at the Creek Hong: We got to Canton about 3 PM, a few minutes before dinner was announced, and this was quite a revelation to me. There must have been more than a dozen at the table, as partners and clerks all sat down together, and there were always stray captains from Whampoa. The first thing that struck my attention was that a bottle of wine was placed at each plate. “Ah” said I to myself, “no more short corners here” . . . the whole dinner was on a satisfactory scale of abundance.55

The factory inhabitants used the communal space of the dining room around four times per day, for an early breakfast, a light lunch around noon, a large dinner around three or four in the afternoon, and often a “tea” in the evening.56 The main furnishing for this room was a table and chairs, capable of seating all of the firm’s Western employees as well as a number of guests. The other major feature of this room was the punkah: This is an immense fan suspended by the two ends of the ceiling, and kept in motion by means of a rope alternately pulled and slackened by a machine in shape of a cooley, who stands outside of the dining room, and who never thinks of stopping until he is told to, should the dinner continue six hours.57

This feature, looking like a large, square, cloth sail stretched on a wooden frame above the middle of the table, seems to have been imported by the British from India and was soon in use by almost all the foreign houses. William C. Hunter described the New 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Mui and Mui, William Melrose in China, 1845–1855, pp. 54–55. Ibid., pp. 54–55, 107. John Heard Diary, Heard Papers (FP-4), Baker Library, Harvard University, p. 29. This is in reality a reminiscence penned in 1881, well after Heard had returned to the United States. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, pp. 220–34, passim. Ibid., p. 229.

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English Factory, under its original occupant the East India Company, as having the most elaborate dining and leisure facilities: Their dining room was of vast dimensions, opening upon the terrace overlooking the river. On the left was a library, amply stocked, the librarian of which was Dr. Pierson; on the right a billiard room. At one extremity of the dining room was a life-sized portrait of George IV in royal robes, with crown and sceptre, the same that had been taken by the Embassy of Lord Amherst to Pekin, offered and refused by the Emperor Keen-Lung, and brought to Canton overland. Opposite to it hung a smaller full-length portrait of Lord Amherst. From the ceiling depended a row of huge chandeliers, with wax lights; the table bore candelabra, reflecting a choice service amidst quantities of silver plate.58

Another source indicates that the George IV portrait was full-length and done by no less a talent than Sir Thomas Lawrence.59 The East India Company dining room was extraordinary in its scale and lavishness. The buildings that composed the factories almost universally sported verandahs. These, sometimes dubbed “terraces,” were obvious features of the New English and Dutch factories, as they projected far into the space in front of the buildings. The other factories had narrower verandahs recessed behind their even façades. These spaces served both climatic and social functions. They were places for relaxing escape from the often hot and close atmosphere within the factory interiors, and for this purpose were furnished with light furniture, in some instances “India cane” chairs.60 Close views of the verandahs in Guangzhou are relatively scarce, though a view of the factories from the first decade of the nineteenth century (Pl. 2) shows Westerners peering out of their classicized settings. Renters always most prized the first blocks of factory buildings, both because they had the most undiminished breeze off of the river, and because the view presented a constantly changing scene of passers-by. Although the imaginary tour through Wetmore & Co.’s quarters in Number 1 Imperial Factory allowed a view of features common to all foreign dwellings, there was also, as we have seen from the discussion of the East India Company’s New English Factory, variation from dwelling to dwelling. Even in Tilden’s plan of the Imperial Factory (Fig. 1.3), this variation is clear. Numbers 2 and 3 are smaller than Number 1 and have the counting rooms downstairs among the servants’ quarters. They also have only a single row of rooms on the second story, accessed by a stairway that leads up to the verandah. Markwick’s Hotel, occupying the northern end of the factory, has blocks with plans more resembling Number 1, but having to accommodate more functions. Here, all servants are accommodated in one downstairs room. On the left, the counting room shares space with a shop. Markwick apparently included in his hotel a sort 58. 59. 60.

Hunter, The ‘Fan-Kwae’ at Canton, p. 31. Gideon Nye, Jr., The Morning of My Life in China (Macao: J. M. da Silva, 1877), p. 19. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 234.

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of general store, dubbed the “Europe Bazar [sic].”61 Also downstairs at Markwick’s was a room simply labeled “Billiard & other rooms.” All that it took to set up a billiard room was a game table, as reflected by William Melrose’s anxiety about his peaceful residence just beyond the Thirteen Factories’ bounds: I heard some Americans intend taking the next door (the one house is part of the other) as a billiard room, which I did not relish; however, I got it put a stop to. I would rather take it and pay the rent than be bothered with them. They would be there at all hours half seas over and making a terrible noise. The Chinaman who has the letting of the hong (I do business with him) would not give it without my consent.62

Among the other spaces for amusement in the foreign neighborhood was a billiard room in the New English Factory, which before the fire of 1822 also sported a small racquet court.63 In the East India Company days, the New English Factory also had a specially built chapel with a short spire that held Guangzhou’s first public clock, a library, and a “reception room.”64 As previously mentioned, the 1850s also saw the burgeoning of recreational and edifying facilities in the grounds in front of the Thirteen Factories. In addition to the already mentioned church, the diary of Caroline Stoddard, young daughter of the captain of the clipper ship Cathay, enumerated the following in her 1856 diary: Lately the foreigners have erected a very nice building, upon the water’s edge and directly in front of the gardens. Underneath is a boat house, where all the gentlemen keep their fine boats. In the next story is the Canton Library, and they have a very nice collection of books. Next that is the concert room, and next that the Free Masons have their quarters, on top the house there is a very nice walk, and an excellent view of the river, and all the life thereon.65

Unfortunately, this and the panoramic oil paintings from the 1850s provide the only evidence that remains for this short-lived building. Finally, somewhere around the factory site was a space that the twenty-five members of the Canton Bowling Club used as their “club house,” though it is hard to say from scanty evidence whether this was a bowling alley or simply a shed at the edge of a bowling green.66

61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

The Canton Register, Vol. 2, June 2, 1829, No. 1. This, an edition of the first English-language newspaper published in Guangzhou, contains the following advertisement: “Markwick & Lane have just received a small consignment of superior French Claret, which is now on sale at their Europe Bazar, No. 3 Imperial Hong Canton, and at their European Warehouse, Campo Sam Francisco, Macao.” Mui and Mui, William Melrose in China, 1845–1855, p. 91. This is mentioned in passing in Canton Agency Consultations, India Office Records G/12/227, Nov. 2, 1822, p. 399. Hunter, The ‘Fan-Kwae’ at Canton, p. 31. Caroline A. Stoddard Journal, Peabody Essex Museum (LOG 1856 K), entry for Saturday August 9, 1856. Heard Papers, Baker Library, Harvard University, Case 29 (reel 170), 87-1505.

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The new factories constructed on the eastern end of the site in the second half of the 1840s seem to have presented a more wholly Westernized appearance than the older factories. As the 1847 plan of the factories shows (Pl. 7), they consisted of two rows of detached, rectangular houses, with the largest being at the southern end of the lot towards the riverfront, and the smallest being at the northern end. Notably, the elongated lot for the new factories determined that the foreigners would still live in tiered buildings, even though lanes rather than courtyards now separated them. This scheme was laid out in late 1843 by “Messrs. Gordon and Cleverly,” the former being the land officer and the latter the deputy surveyor of the new colony of Hong Kong.67 Although of different sizes, the new factories were all apparently intended to be relatively similar in appearance, as indicated by an 1843 press release issued from Hong Kong by the British superintendent of trade, announcing the intended leasing of the grounds: It is not intended that any part of the said Ground should be occupied by Warehouses (exclusively) and it will be expected that all Firms or Individuals to whom lots may be assigned, will bind themselves to build Houses according to a regular plan which will be laid down and communicated to them the day of the allotment of the ground takes place.68

As this posting contains proscriptions of buildings to act only as warehouses, it is probable that the trading community was feeling real pressure to find additional workspace. An 1854 commercial announcement by Adam Scott indicates that foreigners had gone in search of warehouse space well beyond the factory boundaries, as it advertises a packhouse “ready to receive goods on storage and for laying down teas” across the river on Honam Island.69 Paintings indicate that the new factories, at least those that faced the riverfront, were three-storied, hipped-roof structures with front and rear verandahs (Pl. 9, 12). Of the information surviving on these buildings, much comes from the records of the firm of Augustine Heard & Co., in many ways the American trading house most closely allied with British interests, in particular with Jardine Matheson & Co., for whom they acted as agents during the British expulsion from the city during the Opium War.70 Heard’s firm inhabited at least three different buildings in the new factories at different points in time. 67. 68. 69. 70.

British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/71, Dispatch 168). British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/71, Dispatch 168, Enclosure 3). This is dated December 12, 1843. Heard & Co. Papers (Case 31), Baker Library, Harvard. There would have been significantly more information on the “new factories,” erected largely under the watch of the British Consul, if not for a more recent historical incident. In January 1948, a demonstration against the British demolition of Hong Kong’s Kowloon walled city was organized in Guangzhou. The event turned unexpectedly violent, and the protestors partially demolished and burned the British Consulate compound. The building where most of the records were kept was the most badly damaged. In  the Department of Works file assessing the damage afterwards, there is actually a photograph of “Archives on racks completely destroyed.” See Department of Works file (WORK) 10/301, Public Records

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Augustine Heard’s nephew John, a clerk and later partner in the firm, recalled from his experiences around 1848: I think it was about, or before this time that we left the French Hong, and moved into a new house built by Nye, on the grounds occupied formerly by the Company’s and Dutch factories. This ground had been leased by the British Government on a perpetual lease, and lots were sold under this lease conveying the same rights. Nye  had built on the third lot from the front, on speculation. The house and position were less good than our old Dutch factory, but they were better than the place we had been for the past few years. And we were nearer the other residences,—more in the swim! We also took part of the house in front of us, the other part being taken by Mr. Moses. This gave us very good offices.71

Heard goes on to add that, while his uncle made a trip home to Massachusetts from 1850 to 1852, he took the liberty of renting new offices in the front building of the row from Jardine Matheson.72 It is assuredly this latter building that the painter Tingqua portrayed in a detailed view (Pl. 12). The watercolor shows a three-story building with a masonry basement punctuated by arches, and two verandah-decked upper stories. Columns with Cantonese interpretations of Ionic capitals divide most of the bays, while rectangular piers punctuate the ends and divide the fifth and sixth bays. In between the supports are railings with turned balusters and folding louvered shutters. The tiled, hipped roof and a number of chimneys are visible behind the roof parapet. Heard’s first quarters in the new factories are little recorded beyond what John Heard had written. Heard’s discussion does hint at why the buildings take on a more Western aspect. American Gideon Nye, who himself comfortably remained in the old-fashioned Number 1 Old English Hong during the entire period between the Opium and Arrow Wars, was apparently the speculative builder of this house. These houses were all apparently constructed under the direct supervision of the Western merchants, whereas, before, the hong monopolists, who owned the land on which the factories were built, had often been intermediary forces in construction. The builders and tradesmen were uniformly Chinese, though. Notably, in July 1847, the Chinese contractor “Yik Shing” completed the British Consulate’s building, the first in the left (west) row of buildings.73 After Heard & Co. moved into the front building in the row, mysterious plans and descriptions of an upper and lower story of a building in Guangzhou are included in the company’s records.74 These documents, dated 1855, are puzzling in at least

71. 72. 73. 74.

Office, Kew, UK. For Heard’s involvement with Jardine Matheson & Co., see Downs, The Golden Ghetto, pp. 195–96. John Heard Diary, Heard Papers (FP-4), Baker Library, Harvard University, pp. 63–64. Ibid. British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/129, dispatch 136, enclosure 1). Heard Papers (Case 27, folder 46), Baker Library, Harvard.

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two ways. First, they make reference to a “wharf ” (including “front verandah projects over wharf ”), making no immediate architectural sense, and certainly making little sense with regard to the new factory site. It is possible that the reference is simply to the ground beneath the factories, so that the entire site is considered a wharf. Second, the descriptions take both the tone of the specifications for an existing building as well as the voice of orders for construction. The drawings indicate overall proportions and measurements that closely match the footprint of the second eastern building from the front indicated on the 1847 Da Costa plan of the factories. Assuming that the plans do in fact represent this building, they could well be for desired renovations or larger scale rebuilding. The drawings definitely reveal that, although the new factories were more Westernized in external appearance, the patterns of room use remained much the same as in the older factories. Below were large spaces dedicated to storage and rooms for “coolies” and “boys.” One hopes there were not many servants, as the indoor and outdoor servants were accommodated in two twelve-by-fourteen-foot rooms. The lack of a kitchen probably results from the fact that Heard & Co. was at this point occupying more than one building. On the second floor, the verandahs provided much of the circulation between rooms, and two tiers of four bedrooms were divided by the stair passage from a household storage, a parlor and dining room, and two offices. An interesting climatic adaptation is indicated, with doors between abutting bedrooms that could be opened to provide cross-ventilation. That the parlor and dining room were connected and considered a suite of sorts is indicated by the statement, “Instead of door between parlor & dining room put two ornamental pillars & hang a curtain which may be drawn entirely aside.”75 Although the foreign factories of the Shisan Hang were modified, rebuilt, and replaced, the continuities in spatial organization were emphatic. Even after the new “British” factories were built as detached, hipped-roof houses, servants’ rooms and warehouse spaces were kept on the first floor, while the habitations of the foreign merchants remained on the piano nobile. Spatial usage reflects social usage, so the next task at hand is to populate the factory rooms.

Everyday Life: Inhabitants and Rituals The primary relationship inside the walls of the factories between the foreigners (both Westerners and Parsees) and the Chinese was of employer and assistant.76 This relationship is articulated in the upstairs/downstairs hierarchy of room use. The Chinese 75. 76.

Ibid. My discussion here focuses on the spatial relations of residents of the factories, and not on the dynamics of the “Canton system” of trade generally. For the dynamics of and participants in this commerce more generally, see Van Dyke, The Canton Trade.

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inhabitants of the factories were subordinate, in the sense that they served at the pleasure of the foreign merchants. They also, however, served according to their own pleasure, and their service was mediated by the institutions of the foreigners’ protectors, the monopolist merchants with whom they had their most substantial dealings and the chief servant, the comprador. The spatial hierarchy of the factory interior demonstrates how much the foreign merchants valued and trusted their local staff, with whom they worked closely and on a daily basis. Chief among these was the comprador. William C. Hunter writes: The most important Chinese within the factory was the Compradore. He was secured by a Hong merchant in all that related to good conduct generally, honesty and capability. All Chinese employed in any factory, whether as his own “pursers,” or in the capacity of servants, cooks, or coolies, were the Compradore’s “own people”; they rendered to him every “allegiance,” and he “secured” them as regards to good behavior and honesty. This was another feature that contributed to the admirable order and safety which characterised life at Canton. The Compradore also exercised a general surveillance over everything that related to the internal economy of the “house” as well as over outside shopmen, mechanics, or tradespeople employed by it. With the aid of his assistants, the house and private accounts of the members were kept. He was purveyor for the table, and generally of the personal wants of the “Tai-pans” and pursers.77

Hunter continues to explain the responsibilities of the comprador in very concrete terms, noting that he was often in charge of enormous quantities of cash, totaling between a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and over a million.78 The comprador earned his money by taking a percentage of each transaction between the foreign firm and the Chinese merchants and tradesmen from whom he procured goods and services.79 The responsibility of this position could not be borne lightly. The comprador had to answer to the “Hong merchant” who procured him for the foreign house, who was generally one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the city, outside of the imperial government. He always had to insure replacement should something go missing from the house. Osmond Tiffany recounted that the table silver was once stolen from his factory’s table after dinner was over, and new substitutes were in use by the following teatime.80 A highly responsible position, the comprador’s position could also be quite a profitable one—Augustine Heard & Co.’s comprador apparently accumulated $70,000 (the modern equivalent of over $2 million) from his arrival in 1840 to his death in 1846.81 The purser mentioned in Tilden’s plan of the Imperial Factory 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Hunter, The ‘Fan-Kwae’ at Canton, pp. 53–54. Note that “tai-pans” were heads of the foreign trading houses and pursers were their clerks. Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 55, and Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, pp. 215–16. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 215. John Heard Diary, Heard Papers (FP-4), Baker Library, Harvard, p. 33.

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is probably in this instance the immediate assistant of the comprador, who acted as an in-house shroff, or money changer. The “cooleys” whose quarters were adjacent to the comprador’s, and who were like all of the other servants hired by him, carried out most of the heavy manual labor surrounding the foreign firm, as well as sometimes running errands. Tiffany describes them as “strong backed, nimble men” who “perform every office connected with the hongs.”82 Perhaps the most important job for these men was to act as porters, as described by Englishman Charles Downing: That work of conveyance, which is generally assigned to horses, is here performed by vast numbers of coolies or porters, who carry on their shoulders a bamboo, having half of the load hanging in slings or baskets from either end. Another way is to have the weight suspended from the middle of the pole and a man at each end.83

Although members of the cooley class rarely emerge as individuals in Western accounts, some of particularly long and devoted service did come to be considered members of the foreigners’ commercial family, such as Russell & Co.’s devoted workman “Old Qui.”84 Even the more transient supercargoes were impressed with how trustworthy this laboring class was. Bryant Tilden stated: In our estimation the factory porters and coolies are about the most happy class of celestials [i.e., Chinese] we see at Canton. They are always ready, within call, and work cheerfully and but seldom quarrel. We freely trust them while carrying specie or merchandise from place to place, and they know as well as we do how much treasure is in the factory money vaults.85

Though generally the American merchants tended to be more effusive in their praise of their Chinese working men than other (especially British) merchants, the cooley class frequently displayed great loyalty and service to their foreign employers, even in times of natural disaster or civil disturbance, as will be discussed later. In Wetmore & Co.’s house at the time of Tilden’s visit, the house servants and cooks occupied the ground-floor room behind the comprador and cooleys’ room, facing the interior courtyard. Of the cooks, very little description remains. Their job was chiefly hidden in the kitchen, where if Westerners went they left no description of its goings-on. Osmond Tiffany notes with relish, however, the work of the invisible Chinese cooks, proclaiming, “The Chinese show their imitative powers in nothing more than in the ease with which they emulate European dishes, and every meal could not have been more completely like home had it been transported by lightning line.”86 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 217. Note I have chosen to use the antiquated spelling “cooley” to signify the occupation of these men, to distinguish it from later, more derogatory usages. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, p. 291. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 217. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 1 (second voyage), p. 148. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 221.

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The house servants, or valets, or “boys,” as they were variably called, were a much more visible presence. Each foreigner of sufficient station to acquire quarters among the Thirteen Factories was assigned one of these servants, probably a young man in his teens or twenties. He would typically have been neatly dressed in a blue tunic with baggy sleeves, with white undergarments and stockings covering his legs.87 A portrait by the professional British artist George Chinnery of a wealthy Parsee merchant also depicts his Chinese servant, who sports exactly such a costume.88 This class of servants had some independent standing, and considered themselves answerable only to the comprador and their employer.89 Osmond Tiffany seems somewhat astonished as he writes of the attentiveness of his “marvellous boy,” from waking him in the morning to attending him at all meals.90 The station of these young men, however, was quite defined, as Tiffany notes: The varlet [sic] thinks it no degradation to bring fresh water and make up your bed, but he would consider it humiliating in the last degree to be forced to sweep the room out. He is a gentleman, and has a cooley under him to do the dirty work; and though he will go on errands, he would scorn to carry a bundle.91

In fact, when supercargo Tilden weighs in about manservants, he asserts, “if a bundle, or pack, is to be sent, Mr. Servant calls a house cooley & directs him to follow.”92 At dinner, the valet would echo the behavior of his employer, changing into finer clothing, and would wait on only his employer, ignoring the other foreigners at the table should they request anything of him.93 Visitors thought of Chinese servants variably as wonderfully helpful or completely frustrating, perhaps simply as a fulfillment of prejudicial views. Only in his twenties at the time of his visit and apparently the guest of Russell & Co. (then the most important American firm), Tiffany was evidently quite pampered. This contrasts with the attitude towards his valet of Englishman Charles Downing. Downing expresses exasperation at frequently not being able to find his valet and having to speak pidgin English to him.94 Although Tiffany and Downing assessed their experiences with their valet with different degrees of satisfaction, both men emphasized the handsome, wellgroomed, and somewhat haughty character of this class of men, indicating that among servants they had a very particular and “hand-chosen” identity. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, p. 270. This is often thought to be a portrait of Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, but recent work has shown that this is highly unlikely. See Patrick Conner, George Chinnery 1774–1852: Artist of India and the China Coast (Woodbridge, UK: Antique Collector’s Club, 1993), pp. 216–19. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 216. Ibid., pp. 217, 220–25. Ibid., p. 217. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (seventh voyage), p. 132. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, pp. 217, 225. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, Vol. 1, pp. 264–71.

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Though many of the foreign visitors and residents found their relationships with Chinese staff quite satisfactory, a budding racist consciousness of the staff as a frustrating or even vaguely threatening “other” also occurs in a few writings. Downing has several passages in his writings that intimate these feelings. Recalling his entrance into the Imperial Factory to find accommodations at Markwick’s Hotel, he discusses the staff : Seated on the steps, or loitering about, are crowds of natives who are the servants belonging to the establishment, or the domestics of private individuals. . . . after walking about for some time and wearying himself to no purpose, he is fortunate if he is able to find a native who can talk a little broken English. To your repeated inquiries after the landlord, you receive perhaps only a vacant stare, and the words, “No saa-vez,” accompanied with a slow shake of the head, until you meet with some gifted personage, who comes up in a very independent manner and asks, “What thing you want-shee?” Upon telling him you want a room, he runs away after he has uttered his grand word of assent, “Can.” After leaving you for some time, to be stared at by the idlers about the house, he returns and walks away before you at a quick rate down the passage, holding a key in his hand at the same time. Great numbers of servants lounge about the walls of the passages, or squat down in the corners of the landing-places, on the stairs. Some are seated before the doors of the rooms, keeping the dishes warm over a pan of charcoal, until required by the company within.95

The numbers of servants, the fact that they are apparently idle, and that they seem to be keeping watch over him, bothers Downing. He interprets their behavior as idle and impudent. This clearly reflects upon his expectations as much as it does the behaviors of house servants and cooleys. His use of the phrase “belonging to the establishment” is somewhat telling—he interprets their status as nearly chattel. In reality, however, they are independent employees, and whether indoor or outdoor servants, a large part of the job of such men was to wait patiently until needed by their employers. The stares he feels as rude are also protective surveillance and attentiveness that would be considered desirable by their employers. Finally, the hotel orderly who briskly leads Downing down the passage to his room is merely being efficient, not knowing his guest expected him to behave like an English servant by using diffident manners of which he had never been informed. While the Chinese working in the factories had been hired to make the work and desires of their employers their primary concern, the foreign merchants led a fairly self-absorbed life of hard work, plentiful social dining, and generally routine, if restricted, exercise. Who were the foreigners housed by the Shisan Hang? The Western and, to some extent, South Asian merchants were mostly men of a middling 95.

Ibid., pp. 260–62, passim.

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status in their home countries. They generally derived from families with mercantile or maritime connections. The American merchants were frequently poorer relations of moderately substantial families already engaged in long-distance commerce elsewhere.96 In the days before the dissolution of the East India Company’s monopoly, the British merchants in China occupied a social position a level or two above the typical American, as their appointments had an official and political aspect that required some well-placed connections. This was probably true of other European merchants as well. The enormous, hierarchical staff of the British East India Company included the resident company chief, several of his subordinate officers, and company captains living in the New English Factory, and the “2nd and 3rd supercargoes, the secretary, the chaplain, tea inspectors, and other officers” in the Old English Factory.97 Later, the independent British traders came from a range of backgrounds—for instance, William Jardine was more or less a self-made man hailing from small farmers in rural Scotland, while his partner, James Matheson, grew up in a large mercantile family with connections around the globe.98 Towards mid-century, an increasing number of British and American missionaries that shared factory accommodations with the merchants might come from modest backgrounds indeed, but also by their vocation were necessarily well educated. Even among the South Asians, the later fabulously wealthy Parsee, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, emerged from humble beginnings working as an assistant in his uncle’s bottle shop.99 Excepting the British who had previously served the Honorable Company in India, it is largely safe to say that most of the foreign merchants in Guangzhou had not previously been used to a life with services like having their own valet. The staff of American and later “independent” European establishments generally featured a handful of junior clerks, often one or two mid-level employees consisting of specialized professionals such as tea tasters, and the senior “on-site” partners of the firms. Then there were the seasonal visitors of ships’ captains and supercargoes, who could either be associated with a resident firm or independent traders. John Heard, a junior clerk for his uncle Augustine Heard’s firm at the time they were acting for Jardine & Matheson during the Opium War, described the employees of a fairly typical American resident firm. The clerks were John himself, who looked after the actual counting and loading/unloading of merchandise, a Mr. Roberts who kept the books, and a Portuguese clerk named Gutierrez, who “wrote a beautiful hand but was very slow and could do nothing but write.”100 John’s conception of the activities of the other employees was somewhat more vague: 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

Downs, The Golden Ghetto, pp. 222–30. Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, pp. 18–19. Keswick, The Thistle and the Jade, pp. 12–21, passim. Ibid., p. 17. John Heard Diary, Heard Papers (FP-4), pp. 37–38.

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Enclave to Urbanity Mr. Coolidge had charge of important business of the house—my uncle bought all the teas, and Mr. Dixwell took charge of things generally. Mr. Ryand did nothing but draw his share of the commission account. Jardines sent up a teataster Mr. Humpstan—didn’t do much but grade teas.101

During the peak of the trading season, all the merchants kept long, monotonous, and often uncomfortable hours doing the paperwork of global trade in their offices. In  Heard’s firm, the pervasive New England work ethic combined with his uncle’s belief in the benefits of exercise to allow very little sleep for the young John, who noted, “The fact that Mr. Coolidge used to keep me up [doing accounts] till past 12 o’clock was not a good preparation for a row at five o’clock the next morning.”102 According to Osmond Tiffany’s estimate: The immense amount of work performed in one of the large Canton houses is indescribable, and the clerks are occupied on an average of from twelve to fifteen hours a day. They seldom quit the desks before midnight, being all the time occupied in the various processes of receiving and dispatching cargoes, of making out sales and interest calculations, copying letters, filing away papers, and the perpetual round of business employments.103

The senior partners, mid-level specialists, and independent agents might have slightly less monotonous occupations, with duties requiring them at least to move from room to room or among different buildings in the factories and the Chinese merchants’ warehouses. These might not always be pleasant errands, though. Independent tea buyer William Melrose recounted one experience in the 1850s of a business visit to a building in the new British factories: I went into Turner’s tea room the other day to see some of the Shanghai samples but it was terribly hot; the sun was coming right down the skylight. I looked at two or three of them but said it was so hot I could not stay in it any longer. Their tea taster said, you’re quite right, young Thorburn when he was in here one day got a stroke of the sun and had to get his head blistered afterwards, so I took care not to go back again. But when Thorburn was in, the shade was not drawn so it must have been much hotter than when I was in.104

The close quarters of the tea warehouses could obviously be uncomfortable and even hazardous. The ship captains and supercargoes seem to have had the least confined work life.105 Their household concerns while in the city were already arranged by either the resident house hosting them or, if they were independent, by one of the factory 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 39. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 223. Mui and Mui, William Melrose in China, 1845–1855, p. 117. A good example of the experiences of a ship captain affiliated with a resident commercial house can be gleaned from Charles P. Low, Some Recollections by Captain Charles P. Low, 1847–1873 (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1906).

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“hotels” that existed at different points in time. Their main concern was with a single cargo, and while waiting for it to be assembled or for the best timing for purchasing (prices fluctuated, sometimes wildly, during the season) they had, at least comparatively, a relaxed schedule. Within the factories, as mentioned earlier, the scarce social time of the clerks and partners centered on the dining table. One need only look at the diary-like letters of Robert Bennet Forbes of the American firm Russell & Co. to get a taste for this prominent feature of social life. Selected excerpts below are from just after his arrival as an in-residence agent of the firm in 1838: 12 Octo—Yesterday called on several residences & received calls dined with Frank Hathaway, Mr. Nye & Mr. Everet [American merchants] & had a hearty meal, Mutton & c. 13 Octo—Made calls till 2, mostly on English people—dined at home 14 Octo Sunday—callers in the morning prevented my going to meeting—then dined with Delano with Hathaway, Howland, Nye & c. 16 Octo . . . I am to dine with Dent & Co. today 18 Octo—I dined with Dent accordingly a party of 25—& as I was placed on the right of the host I conclude the other guest & dinner were for my a/c [account]— eate & drank a good deal & staid to Whist until midnight.106

The last entry is indicative of some recognition of rank and honor in the environment of the dinner table in terms of seating, even if the American Forbes only infers the Englishman Dent’s meaning in inviting him to sit on his right. Social activity around the Christmas season included two especially notable occasions for Forbes. At one dinner he was one of the twenty-six guests at Wetmore & Co. where they drank tea rather than wine seemingly because of the presence of two reverends, who, however, went home early.107 The next day, he attended a dinner at Lindsey’s, an English merchant who was a “remnant” of the days of the Honorable Company, where Forbes was much impressed by the china service, silver, glass, and general style of living.108 Alcohol in fair quantities usually contributed to the sociability of these occasions, and a dry day at Wetmore’s would be rare indeed: You can form no idea of the enormous extravagance of this house, the consumption of the article of Beer alone would suffice to maintain one family comfortable in Salem. Our young men finish an entire bottle each at dinner, a dozen bottles are drank at the table on ordinary occasions & frequently 1-1/2 dozen bottles. W[etmore] is in the habit of calling for beer 5 or 6 times during the day and evening, and a fresh bottle is always opened, from which he takes one glass, the 106. Phyllis Forbes Kerr (ed.), Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838–1840 (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc., 1996), pp. 63–64, passim. 107. Ibid., p. 79. 108. Ibid.

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Enclave to Urbanity residue is thrown away or drank by the servants! I mention this as an example in the article of Beer. Every thing else is pretty much in the same ratio.109

To confirm this picture of Wetmore’s hospitality, a younger Wetmore relative who joined the firm in the 1850s recalled that “bachelors’ dinners were the chief entertainments; and, everyone liking to keep under the punkah as long as possible, they were kept up until a late hour of the night, . . . the wine flowed freely, notwithstanding the heat of the climate.”110 Drinking and singing songs like “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and “We Won’t Go Home till the Morning” seem to have passed the time around the dinner table during these long evenings.111 Though it is safe to say that such merrymaking was an important part of life at the Guangzhou factories, a less bibulous and more biblical time was more typical of Olyphant & Co.’s dining and drawing rooms in No. 1 American Factory. David W. C. Olyphant, dubbed by the chronicler Hunter “one of the quietest men in the world,” and his partners were primary sponsors of the American missionaries in Canton, and sermons were perhaps likelier than songs to be heard emanating from their dining room.112 Generally speaking, the rounds of dinner parties were given by Westerners for other Westerners. To some extent this seems to have been irrespective of nationality. Parsee and possibly other Indian merchants on rare occasions received invitations to “special event” dinners, presumably with allowances made for dietary restrictions by their Western hosts, such as at the feast held in the New English Factory in honor of William Jardine upon his departure from Guangzhou in 1838.113 As will be discussed later, the Chinese hong merchants fairly frequently hosted dinner parties for the Western merchants; however, few descriptions exist of foreigners inviting Chinese whom they considered social equals to dinner in the factories. The comparatively small size of entertainment facilities in the foreign factories versus the extensive houses and gardens of the hong merchants, or the prejudices that some Chinese merchants and officials held against things Western might perhaps explain this. Only a few recorded instances reveal that the hospitality mechanisms established by Westerners among themselves could also be utilized for Chinese guests. Hunter, having an unusual social ability as one of the few foreigners who could speak Cantonese, recalled hosting a son of one of the merchants of the Chinese salt monopoly and his friend to dinner.114 Unfortunately, the host does not describe the event per se, but records the young man, a Mr. Lo, bringing a possibly contrived letter that his friend wrote to relatives in Beijing. The friend’s written reaction to the event, an object of Kinsman Papers (Peabody Essex) as quoted in Downing, The Golden Ghetto, p. 218. W. S. Wetmore, Recollections of Life in the Far East (Shanghai: North China Herald, 1894), pp. 56–57. Ibid. Downs, The Golden Ghetto, pp. 56–57. The quote appears in Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 115. See also William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885), p. 168. 113. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 135. 114. Hunter, Bits of Old China, pp. 36–40. 109. 110. 111. 112.

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mirth shared by the host and Lo, was one of shock at the taste of Western food. Hunter also recorded that the merchant Mingqua was an able whist player and a frequent guest for games in the foreign factories.115 Bryant Tilden recorded being visited by tea merchants and strangers from “the interior” who wanted to see how foreigners lived.116 Apparently an agreeable sort, Tilden said he was always “well compensated by their politeness, remarks, and questions, as interpreted by the servant; they always retired well pleased, at seeing how comfortably we lived.”117 Tilden also recorded a more formally organized event with lively details. He was lodging at Magee’s hotel during the 1818–19 trading season, when a son of the merchant Paunkeiqua asked if he could bring some friends to Magee’s to hear foreign music.118 Magee arranged to have a large dinner party, to which he invited a number of musically talented foreigners; the amusing events that transpired were as follows: Our instrumental music consisted of a base viol, flute, violin, and my clarinet as an accompaniment to a dozen fanquie sing-song-sters which the celestials seemed to enjoy, keeping perfect silence. A short while after, Paunkeiqua Jr. and his friends signified that they had heard of, and would like to “make see dat too much culious fanquie dance pidgin so fashion”—and for our own as well as their amusement, by way of sport, mustered a cotillion set & having no ladies as partners had to imitate them as well as we could, but by no means so cleverly as the Chinese boys do the women characters in their sing-song theatres. “Olo Magay”—as master of ceremonies—after a Scotch reel had been got through with, seeing that the dancers flagged—said “D-n your eyes! Ladies and gentlemen you don’t know how to dance! . . . Tilden give us a fisher’s hornpipe, and I’ll show’em how its done.” & sure enough he shuffled & danced it handsomely in the true sailor fashion, much to the amusement of guests—servants, cooks, and house coolies, who had mustered upstairs to see the sport, which they enjoyed as much as we do, when Indians entertain us with a war dance, on visiting our cities. Indeed our gentlemen not having ladies as partners, danced very much like savages. However, after supper we pleased our guests, with very good English song-singing, which they liked “more better” than our dancing; and retired as they came attended by their lantern bearers at midnight having chinchinned [sic, bade farewell to, probably with some gesture, the clasping of hands in front of the chest and a short bow] all of us at parting.119

This event, by breaking down social barriers with frivolity, created bonds of goodwill not only amongst hosts and guests, but apparently with the local staff as well. After long hours at the account books, the foreign merchants could rely on the release brought by the atmosphere of the dining room. Dinner parties in the factories served to strengthen the community of foreign merchants, who during the day were highly 115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

Ibid., p. 45. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (seventh voyage), p. 130. Ibid. Ibid., Vol. 1 (third voyage), pp. 212–14. Ibid.

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competitive with each other. In rarer instances, the festive atmosphere was broadened to include Parsee colleagues and representatives of Chinese trading families. If the net of hospitality could have broadened to include Chinese officials, and if they had accepted the invitations, one wonders if some of the tragic conflicts of the midnineteenth century might have been avoided. After the festivities of the dining room on a hot day, the foreign merchants were apt to retreat to the very surfaces of the factories. The foreigners routinely occupied the verandahs and the platforms built upon the roofs of some of the houses as leisuretime retreats. While the shelter of the factory buildings led to a rather self-contained everyday existence, these spaces were initial vantage points for interacting with the Chinese people around them. Chinese merchants might give the foreigners an afterdinner social call, and would during some seasons of the year join the factory inhabitants for discussion on the verandah. Seated behind the porch piers of No. 1 American Factory, Mr. Olyphant was known frequently to conduct prolonged if friendly theological debates with an “outside” (i.e., not cohong government-appointed monopolists) Chinese merchant named Quanshing, without either having much success in converting the other.120 The former hong merchant Kingqua, when he urgently needed to discuss matters involving the Taiping Rebellion, was led up to a napping William C. Hunter on the verandah of his then residence, No. 1 Mingqua’s Hong, where they would then consider matters of great import.121 The verandahs and roof decks provided also an important post for surveillance. The view from these elevated areas allowed merchants to size up the shipments going into their competitors’ factories, to keep a watch out for fires, which in Guangzhou as in many other nineteenth-century cities were endemic, and to see the goings-on in the river and surrounding city. These vantage points worked two ways, though. As  recorded by Fitch W. Taylor during his visit on the eve of the Opium War, the foreigners could be on display in ways they did not particularly anticipate: The front windows of the American hong overlook the wide flagging running in front of the factories. From the windows of the second story, therefore, in front of the drawing-room, we have a fine view of the passers-by as they come down in streams from old China-street. It is amusing to witness the insuppressible and unbounded curiosity of these celestials when they find us at the windows. They make a full halt. The boys, who have early been taught to repeat the term “Fanqui,” in contempt of the foreigner, gaze, where they are better bred, gravely, and then pass on; while the more mischievous cry aloud “Fanqui! Fanqui!” and, with a shout, are again on the way. The elder pause, some with a smile, while perhaps a thin and long-bearded old man approaches, and hesitates his step with grave reflections on the past, and with undefined musings in connection with the

120. Hunter, Bits of Old China, pp. 169–70. 121. Ibid., pp. 88–89.

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future. The late transactions here, make the foreigner more than ever an object of curiosity both to the citizen and to the visitors from the interior.122

The Westerners were objects of observation, and even tourist attractions, to the residents of and Chinese visitors to Guangzhou. Though sequestered in the Thirteen Factories, the foreigners and the broader Chinese world would interact profoundly. The frontiers of this interaction were the river and the spaces surrounding the buildings of the factories themselves, which would form the primary connection between the factories and the broader life of the city.

The Pearl River: Transportation, Habitation, and Linkages The Pearl River (Zhujiang) created the commercial highway that gave the trading community in Guangzhou its raison d’être. Beyond this, however, it was an urban extension of the city itself. It connected the Thirteen Factories, the traditional city and suburbs, and the primary portage for ocean-going ships, Whampoa (Mandarin Huangpu). Beyond this, it was inhabited by a boat-bound population of Chinese ethnic minorities and foreign mariners. Finally, it was a place of both recreation and refuge for the resident foreign merchants. That the topographical views of the Thirteen Factories generally contain depictions of the river crowded with Chinese vessels and, beginning in the 1840s, with Western steamships as well, attests to the Pearl River’s thorough integration into the foreigner’s spatial experience of Guangzhou. At the eastern end of the “urban” experience of the river lay the ten-mile-or-so distant anchorage at Whampoa (Pl. 13). Whampoa, it should be pointed out, is a district rather than a precise point on the map; in Western conceptions, it included the areas around a series of small islands (dubbed “Dane’s,” “French,” etc., after the nationalities that used these as loading stations in the eighteenth century) as well as the eastern tip of Honam (Mandarin Henan) island that stretched miles to the west along the south bank facing the city. Whampoa was the closest that many mariners ever came to the metropolis, apart perhaps from a few rare excursions to Hog Lane, a narrow alley within the factories that catered to their particular consumer desires. The primary impression of Whampoa rendered by topographical views is a few low-lying islands, with pagodas in the background, dominated by the tall masts of Western vessels forming a sort of floating village. Sailors and sometimes even their captains lived aboard ship during their entire stay in China. For extended stays, the boats would actually be transformed into stationary, floating residential quarters. A conflict between 122. Taylor, A Voyage around the World, pp. 139–40. Here it is appropriate to note that fanqui, or variably fan kwae, as the nineteenth-century English and Americans more typically spelled it, was translated by them as “foreign devil,” though a more accurate interpretation might be “foreign ghost”—a comment on the strangeness of their appearance. This could be used in varying degrees of insult or benignity, and was proudly adopted by some of the “old China hands.”

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foreign powers, the War of 1812, resulted in the blockading of the American ships in the port by a British war fleet. Against this backdrop, the typical transformation of the dormant vessels was described by US seaman George Newell: Orders came from Canton to strip the ship of her masts & rigging, which being done, a frame of bamboo was built over head and covered with mats, which served to protect both from the sun and rain. The mouth of the river was soon blockaded by two English frigates, and by all appearances our fate was sealed during the war. In the spring of the year 1813 the English E. I. Company fleet of 18 large ships arrived and anchored below the American ships, of which there were then a dozen dismantled like ourselves.123

This transformation was not simply an emergency measure, though. The best visual records of these “dismantled” vessels are the views of “Hunt’s fleet” dating from the late 1840s or 1850s (Pl. 14). Thomas Hunt was a mariner who had through trade earned enough to settle down with his wife in a floating residence at Whampoa. He started his own prosperous ship’s provisioning business and attained official status as American consular agent at the portage and resident US marshal.124 Hunt was hardly alone in the ships’ provisioning business at Whampoa. Briefly, during the mid-nineteenth century, Whampoa contained the largest docking facilities in East Asia. Englishman John Couper’s ship repair facilities, including a still-extant stone dry dock, did a brisk business.125 The transient community of sailors and ships’ captains at Whampoa also left a permanent trace in the form of a cemetery, where those who had passed away on their trip to China or while waiting for their ships’ cargo to be loaded were interred (Pl. 15). British and Americans mainly used this site, erecting stone obelisks and table tombs that were often standard forms for grave markers in their home countries. The site remains today, in a very recognizable state on the hillside depicted in mid-nineteenth-century paintings. Traces of a much less intact Parsee cemetery can also be found on another hilltop on the island.126 From the eighteenth century, a Chinese “bamboo town” existed along the shore to supply the maritime industry with equipment and provisions, though little can be told about it from existing descriptions or views. It was apparently quite modest; as Tiffany noted, “The shops were mean and dirty, and their proprietors evidently very poor; they seem to have nothing to sell beyond joss sticks [sic, incense], cheap tea, and ordinary rice.”127 The rural inhabitants of the village seem to have gone about their 123. George Newell Papers (Peabody Essex Museum, B1 F1). 124. See Chinese Repository, Vol. 20 (1851), p. 16, and Low, Some Recollections by Capt. Charles P. Low., p. 87. 125. Views of the Pearl River Delta, pp. 108–9. The dry dock is easily visible on-site, but a special guide is required to access it. 126. It has been noted that burial (rather than cremation, etc.) may have been unusual for traditional Parsees. It is unknown at this point whether the particular circumstances surrounding the Parsee community in China encouraged the practice of burial, if some had converted to Christianity, or if there was some other reason for this practice. 127. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 137.

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business with little or no disruption to excite comment. Besides ship maintenance and provisioning, much of the time at the anchorage was simply spent waiting for cargo to arrive and socializing with other Westerners, both mariners from other ships and visiting factory residents. As Captain Low pointed out, “with no business to do we had leisure for dinner parties.”128 All in all, life at Whampoa was usually peaceful and uneventful, as maritime discipline was generally enforced. At Whampoa, interaction between Westerners and Chinese was generally strictly transactional. Chinese customs officials performed cargo inspections, though they might also be bought off during the course of smuggling transactions.129 Compradors were then assigned to take charge of getting the vessels all they needed in terms of necessary provisions and equipment. Some freelance Chinese provisioners, such as a favorite supplier of livestock to Americans and dubbed by them “Boston Jack,” would come on board to supply their wares.130 Local laundresses and doctors also seem to have supplied essential services aboard ships during their stay in the port.131 The final cross-cultural experience the foreigners were likely to have during their stay was the loading of their cargo: After the ship is cleared of rats and roaches, the ballast is trimmed and the Chinese stevedores take charge of the hold; and it is interesting to see them stow the tea away with boxes of firecrackers and mats of cassia. They make such close stowing that you can hardly get a case knife between the chests.132

Besides these shipboard interactions, the only other local people that the foreign mariner might interact with were the large, ethnically distinct population who spent most of their lives on boats in the river. The boat people (or South Sea people), traditionally and disparagingly termed tanka by the land-dwelling Cantonese, dwelt upon the river in great numbers, and few escaped foreign visitors’ mention. While looked down upon by other Chinese, the boat people appealed to something in the Western psyche and in travelers’ writings are mysterious and always present. Tiffany asserted, “There is no spectacle in the world more wonderful to a stranger’s eyes than the river population of the Celestial Empire.”133 Downing agrees that “Nothing strikes the stranger with more astonishment on his first visit to China, than the almost endless variety of craft which is seen upon the river.”134 With this introduction, the Englishman embarked on a lengthy contemplation of the nature of living one’s whole life on the water, followed by a description of the flotation devices that the boat women attached to their toddlers, 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

Low, Some Recollections by Capt. Charles P. Low, p. 87. Ibid., p. 26. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 135. Ibid., p. 134. Low, Some Recollections by Capt. Charles P. Low, p. 29. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 22. Downing, The Fan-Qui or Foreigner in China, Vol. 1, p. 103.

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and continuing his chapter with an extended catalogue of ship types to be seen on the river.135 Fitch W. Taylor concurs, “Here was a scene of life that no other stream of the world, probably, exhibits.”136 The responses given by Western travelers to the boat people and the dense traffic of the Pearl River were generally superlative, betrayed great curiosity, and, finally, infected with a profoundly orientalizing gaze. The boat people, who would continue practicing their unique lifestyles until after the Second World War, are in some ways perceived as completely without analogy in the West. Western authors’ treatments of the boat people ranged from interest and affection to pity and distress, but they were by and large viewed as a benign presence. There is some evidence that the boat people were not always kept at arms’ length by the foreigners, particularly the long-term residents of the factories. The women in particular seem to have drawn interest from certain Westerners. Tiffany mentions that in the evenings it was common to see young clerks “talking to the boat girls.”137 This seems to imply that some members of the boat communities transacted enough business with the foreigners that they knew at least some pidgin. It is also highly likely that many young and not-so-young residents in the factories took a sexual interest in the boat women. Deprived of the company of Western females, and with little access to middle- and upper-class Chinese women, the boat women were a natural draw for the foreigners. Although some merchants did at times have wives and families resident in Macao, most were without ready access to such conventional relationships. Parenthetically, some foreigners were also quite content to live as bachelors in an all-male community. In one instance, Samuel Russell, founder of Russell & Co., wrote of a peer, “My friend Wm R. Talbot seems to like what he has seen of Canton very much & I think it just the place for such a confirmed Old Bachelor.”138 The precise implications of this statement may be matter for speculation. Besides celibacy, and perhaps homosexuality, the main opportunities for relationships seem to have been with the boat women. Chronicler William Hunter is known to have had a long-term, “responsible” relationship with a mistress of boat people ethnicity.139 Because the Chinese authorities had little interest in the boat people, foreigners were able to have freer interactions with them. The foreigners increasingly were able to mingle small recreational craft among the “floating city,” as the mid-nineteenth century approached. Technically, there was a provision amongst the “eight regulations” dating from 1760 that forbade foreigners from

135. 136. 137. 138.

Ibid., Vol. 1, Chapter 5. Taylor, A Voyage around the World, p. 134. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 230. Records of Russell & Co. Library of Congress (MSS19, 140) microfilm--reel 4 (letter from Russell to Oliver H. Gordon, Feb. 12, 1836). Also Gideon Nye, who resided in Guangzhou for decades both before and after the Opium Wars, and Augustine Heard, founder of Heard & Co., were both lifelong bachelors. 139. See Downs, The Golden Ghetto, p. 49, also Chapter 1, note 111, and Kerr, Letters from China, pp. 270–72.

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boating on the river for leisure.140 This regulation, along with restrictions on visits to the great Buddhist temple on Honam and the Fati (Huadi) gardens on the other side of the river, were often disregarded by foreigners and subject to only sporadic enforcement.141 In 1837, some foreign merchants established the Canton Regatta Club, and the final attempt to restrict activities such as boat racing is indicated by a letter from the hong merchants expressing anxiety about collisions with Chinese boats.142 In the wake of the Opium War and the resultant shift of the balance of power, the 1840s saw river excursions develop as a regular and important part of life in the factories. The less athletically inclined of the community typically took after-dinner floats on pleasure barges, and, “when they come to the Macao passage, they anchor for half an hour, and have a comfortable snooze.”143 The Pearl River became an extension of the dwelling space of the factories. Increasingly a place of respite for the foreigners, it offered opportunities to find interesting and less restricted interactions with the Chinese boat population. It also formed an escape hatch from tensions and dangers ashore. As will be discussed later, the inevitable way of escape and rescuing of goods and cash during disturbances was to rush, arms laden, to the river. Finally, the British would find it an indispensable path in controlling the city during the conflicts of the mid-century. These disruptions, however, belie the comparative peace presented by the river during the daily life of the fan kwae.

Connecting Fabric: The Square, the Streets, and Regulating Relations All access between the foreign factories and the city proper was generally conducted through three streets that ran off “Thirteen Factories Street” in the rear of the buildings and ended in the square in front. Some of the factories also had rear doors that opened up directly onto the street in the rear, but these were sometimes sealed in times of tension between the foreigners and Cantonese citizens. The square in front of the factories was the primary outdoor space where foreigners were free to roam without special arrangements, and was often the focus of tensions and negotiations with regard to the foreigners’ control of their immediate environment. The river, crowded with the residential vessels of the boat people, formed the foreigners’ primary access to the outside world. It provided a contested ground for foreign recreation as well. A study of these urban spaces and their evolution reveals an ongoing spatial conflict and negotiation that formed part of the everyday life in the Shisan Hang. It also forms a backdrop for the popular protests and broader conflicts of foreigners with Chinese administrations. 140. 141. 142. 143.

Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 29. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 47. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 230.

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The three streets that linked the square and front entrances of the factories to the city were dubbed by their foreign inhabitants New China Street, Old China Street, and Hog Lane. New China Street, between the Danish and Spanish factories in the west, and Old China Street, between Mingqua’s Hong and the American Factory, were both gated commercial thoroughfares. Old China Street was the broadest street. It terminated to the north in a widening of Thirteen Factories Street in front of the “Consoo” house, the council house of the monopolist hong merchants. Old China Street had gates at both ends to regulate traffic, as well as a guardhouse whose location shifted over time. The south end of the thoroughfare ended in the broadest river landing steps serving the factories. New China Street had one gate, towards its southern end. Both of these streets were lined with fairly respectable shops selling souvenirs and luxury goods to the foreigners. Initially, they apparently had special permission to sell to Westerners, but later when the long-term residents might go further into the suburbs to find good deals they still made a healthy profit from visitors and ship captains whose experience of the city went only as far as their gates. The third, most narrow street, Hog Lane, was filled with vendors of booze and cheap trinkets catering to Western sailors on “Liberty Day” from their ships at Whampoa. It seems never to have had gates and, given its lack of regulation and its clientele, there seems to have been a lot of truth behind John  Heard’s assertion that “Nearly all the troubles at the factories originated there.”144 Also, after 1838, missionary Dr. Peter Parker ran a hospital in the Chowchow Hong that had an entrance on Hog Lane, which was undoubtedly convenient for locals needing care. Heard characterized Old China Street as containing “most of the decent shops of the silk men, and the sellers of matting, fire crackers, and all sorts of chowchow [i.e., miscellaneous luxuries and novelties]” and as “respectable as Hog Lane was the reverse.”145 It appears that Old and New China Streets had fairly substantial shop cubicles within them, while Hog Lane was inhabited by fairly temporary frame structures. Western shoppers in these streets will be discussed later with a broader discussion of the foreign experience of the rest of the city. The square in front of the factories underwent several transformations from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. From what pictorial evidence exists, the space between the river and the factories was open and unadorned through much of the eighteenth century, except for flagpoles usually indicating the presence of a foreign consul. Chinese export porcelain punch bowls from around the 1790s start to delineate a gated fence along the riverbank and paving in front of the factories leading to the landing steps, as does at least one contemporary oil painting. More detailed oil paintings around 1810–22 show individual fenced-off yards in front of the New British Factory and Dutch Factory, while a large square enclosure in front of the entire middle block of factories is also depicted. No such barriers existed in front of the Creek 144. John Heard Diary (Baker Library, FP-4), p. 29. 145. Ibid., p. 30.

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Factory to the east, nor in front of any of the factories west of Old China Street. The great fire of 1822 resulted in the removal of all fences in the square (Pl. 3). Following the fire, the square was left undivided and occupied by a sizable pile of rubbish until 1828, when the pile was removed and the square once more enclosed.146 During the course of the 1830s, the enclosures in front of the New British and Dutch gardens were rebuilt. The resident British planted the space in front of their most high-profile residence with shrubs and trees, composing a long, narrow garden leading from their portico-bedecked “terrace” all the way to the river. A view dated to 1839–40 (Fig. 1.2) shows the British Garden, as well as the central enclosure of the square, and an additional fenced-in yard in front of the factories to the west of Old China Street.147 This drawing shows highly confined circulation, with not only the separate enclosures in front of the factories, but also gates at the river end of Hog Lane and Old China Street, as well as gates subdividing the walks in front of the different blocks of factories. The enclosure in front of the western factories apparently resulted from some post-fire land reclamation, of which no documentary record has yet been found. In front of the Danish Factory, there is also now a smaller masonry walled enclosure. At some point, another walled yard was built in front of this where foreigners’ livestock, such as cows, sheep, goats, and chickens, were kept. In the wake of the destruction of all but the central factories in the early 1840s, the western enclosures vanished as new factories were built on the site. From around 1800 to around 1850, small customs houses occupied the river’s edge in front of the factories. Here, Chinese officers examined the goods coming in and out of the factories. These buildings seem to have been fairly temporary in construction, and they seem to shift about in the painted views of the factories. William Hunter’s plan of the factories indicates three such buildings, one in front of the Creek Factory, one in front of the square, and one beyond and west of the Danish Factory.148 In the mid-1830s, two customs houses stood on the square, one of which underwent a transformation described in the Chinese Repository: “First there was a small bamboo shed; next some posts; and by and by, brick walls appeared, and last year, a large mat shed came over the whole, and after a few weeks when it was removed it disclosed a neat brick house.”149 In most representations of the factories, the customs office in front of the central part of the square seems to have been a simple structure with walls of matting. The functions performed by these structures seem to have been taken elsewhere by the last few years of the Shisan Hang, as they do not appear in some of the paintings from the 1850s. 146. Wood, Sketches of China, p. 66. 147. See Views of the Pearl River Delta, pp. 172–73. The author is unsure of the basis for the precise dating of this work, but the drawing matches well documentary sources for the era. 148. Hunter, Bits of Old China, facing p. 221. 149. “Walks about Canton” in Chinese Repository, Vol. 4 (1835), p. 44.

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The last decade of the existence of the Thirteen Factories saw the square’s final and most elaborate design phase. The planting of the so-called American Garden in the central enclosure (Pl. 5) commenced the final phase of the square. Writing in what was probably the initial year of the garden’s existence, Nathaniel Kinsman of Wetmore & Co. stated: the square or park—is a great improvement and great credit is due to those who designed the plan, and to Mr. Bull who devoted his time to oversee and complete the work of laying out the ground, ornamenting, & c. It is literally Yankee Square, for I believe the English, who did very little toward it, seldom avail of the place to promenade.150

Mr. Bull was the American merchant Isaac M. Bull of Providence, Rhode Island, and it is to him apparently that both the design and the contracting out of the garden were mostly due. The design that Mr. Bull and his partners in the enterprise produced seems a climate-adapted take on the “Gardenesque” of British landscape architect John Claudius Loudon. A year after Kinsman’s letter, Tiffany summarized the basic garden concept as “neatly laid out into walks and plats of grass, and great efforts have been made to induce trees to grow, but they have hitherto obstinately resisted the most assiduous nursing.”151 Paintings show the gardens with very defined, off-white walks surrounding rounded beds of grass with a scattering of willow trees and younger deciduous plantings, as well as flowerpots on stands. Tiffany specified that the garden walks were made of the aforementioned chunam, which he describes as “a kind of hard, bluish plaster, which is greatly used for covering houses, and is waterproof.”152 The material for the walks was not the only environmentally adapted feature of the garden. The most detailed view of the early phase of the garden (Pl. 5) shows the pragmatic plantings that resulted from efforts to find plants that would thrive. In addition to the trees, bamboo, cotton, and (apparently) banana palms appeared.153 The potted flowers remained, and were drawn from a common traditional practice in Cantonese gardens (still in use today), where the green permanent vegetation was supplemented by portable seasonal flowers in pots. This view also shows the stone benches that were installed in shady spots of the garden as well as female visitors, the latter appearing with any frequency for the first time after the Opium War. Around the time of the building of the New English Factories in the mid-1840s, a wall was built around the entire eastern end of the ground in front of the factories, excepting the riverfront. After the construction of the church and the closure of Hog Lane around 1848, the walls between the American Garden and the New English Factories were demolished, and the garden was extended across the entire remaining frontage of the factories 150. 151. 152. 153.

Kinsman Family Papers (PEM Mss43, Box 3, F9), letter dated November 28, 1843. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 243. Ibid. Cotton has been identified in Views of the Pearl River Delta, p. 192. The other plants are of my identification.

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(Pl. 8, 9). At this point, the size of the garden was estimated at two and a half acres.154 The general views from the river give the predominant impression of a tree-bedecked riverfront, but one closer view (Pl. 8) reveals that the chunam walks continued to provide structure for the gardens. The square was an active place, a focus both for leisure and for contesting boundaries. Besides the comings and goings of foreigners and goods, the square hosted Chinese visitors and street vendors, and witnessed the daily rounds of speed-walking foreign clerks. Before the advent of the American Garden, the square was sometimes known as Respondentia Walk, apparently a common title for promenades in British colonial cities. The foreigners relied on the square as a place for exercise, or “their only breathing place” after a long day at the counting desk. 155 Before breakfast or at sunset, Osmond Tiffany noted, “A never failing amusement, or rather pilgrimage, for the sake of exercise, is performed daily, and consists in walking violently around the square in front of the factories.”156 Besides walking, at least one merchant found another form of exercise in the space in front of the factories. The enclosures of circa 1830 in front of the Danish Factory, besides acting as the pen for Dr. Richard Cox’s sources of goat milk and cheese, also housed Augustine Heard’s pony, which he rode around in circles.157 Besides exercise, the merchants also used the square as a place to simply relax out of doors. Tilden recalls the visibility of the Parsee merchants: On fair weather days, they assemble after dinner in the factory square and near the river landing, where a few lounge, & smoke, reclining upon bamboo settees brought from boats; or stand, always in circles, of from five and more, with folded arms, and converse freely, but never more than one speaking at a time.158

Some Westerners, like Tilden, do not appear to have ever tried to insert themselves in these Parsee conversation circles, but Tiffany apparently introduced himself, as he notes, “Many of them speak English well, and all are very courteous in their manners.”159 The cultivation of gardens was an attempt to make this area more pleasant for walking and lingering, but at least one factory inhabitant still complained of “circling around, in and out, through the shrubberies, in a walk almost as monotonous as that of pacing up and down the deck of a ship.”160 The Western sense of entitlement to, or even ownership of, the square was continually challenged by the presence of certain classes. In the period following the 1822 fire, 154. Anonymous, Passenger Journal from the Ship Eureka, March–August, 1854 (Peabody Essex LOG 1854 E3, B19), entry for April 9. 155. Ibid. 156. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2, pp. 243–44. 157. Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, p. 29. 158. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (fifth voyage). Note that Tilden refers to Parsees as Persians, but it is amply apparent from the context exactly whom he is talking about. 159. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 246. 160. Wetmore, Recollections of Life in the Far East, p. 55.

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the lack of partitions in the square drew vendors and beggars. This was to some extent predictable, as in traditional Chinese cities open squares tended to serve as markets. William Hunter recounted that during the 1820s, the square, hitherto reserved for the foreigners, drew food vendors, minstrels, jugglers, cobblers, tailors, and hat salesmen, among others.161 The local employees of the factories also probably used the square in off hours, perhaps standing in a circle playing a game in which they kicked, as the Westerners termed it, a “shuttlecock” between them—a precursor to twentiethcentury “hacky-sack.”162 This crowd is apparent in some of the factory views of the era (Pl. 4). Hunter further explained, however, that when the foreigners became too annoyed at the motley crowd after several days of stifled exercise, a message could be sent to the office of the chief linguist officer, who would alert the police.163 The Chinese policemen, armed with whips, would appear from the guardhouse at Old China Street and handily disperse the crowd.164 After a few weeks of this enforcement, which never seems to have happened without an explicit request, the vendors, entertainers, and beggars would begin to trickle back into the square and the cycle would start again.165 The six or so years after the fire also saw some reluctance on the part of the authorities to restrict the square or otherwise make it more pleasant for the foreigners. Besides the crowds, a primary issue of the mid-1820s was a large pile of refuse from the fire: The bricks and rubbish of the fire, formed for a long time an offensive mound of earth and filth, the gradual accumulations of the scavengers for several years, and latterly was considered so serious an annoyance, as to induce the residents to petition the city authorities for its removal. In process of time it had increased to such a degree as to encroach upon the square, and was receiving daily formidable additions from the labours of the collectors of street dirt.166

W. W. Wood’s mention of the petitions for the removal of the unsavory pile was further elaborated upon by William C. Hunter. He explained that after complaining to the hong merchants, who made little headway, a large group of foreigners progressed to the “petition gate” of the walled city to complain to civic officials, an action “discouraged by the authorities.”167 This seemed to obtain the desired response, and the sanitary hazard was cleaned up in 1828. The removal of the refuse was followed by another dispute between foreigners and officials regarding the square. The East India Company, near the end of its occupancy of the New British Factory, built its private garden, and in 1831 sought to expand 161. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 13. 162. A description of the “shuttlecock players” on the square is in Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (fifth voyage), p. 859. 163. Ibid., p. 14. 164. Ibid. 165. Ibid. 166. Wood, Sketches of China, p. 64. 167. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, pp. 113–15.

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it towards the river. Locals took this expansion as an encroachment on access to the river, and the “Hoppo,” or top ranking Guangdong imperial customs official, was then summoned, and a debate ensued. According to varying accounts, the British then reduced the garden to its former size, or alternatively the Chinese officials had the walls demolished when the company was in Macao and the garden was subsequently rebuilt.168 Whichever occurred, it is clear that possession of and access to the square was an actively contested issue between foreigners and locals. Everyday tensions were sometimes created by Western resentment of a sort of Chinese gaze. As mentioned previously, Westerners occupying factory verandahs were objects of interest to visiting Chinese. This was even truer of the foreigners exercising in the square. French Catholic envoy Abbé Huc noted from his experiences in South China in 1846: The Chinese of the interior, whom business takes to Canton or Macao, always go the first thing to look at the Europeans on the promenade. It is one of the most interesting sights for them. They squat in rows along the sides of the quays, smoking their pipes and fanning themselves, contemplating all the while with a satirical and contemptuous eye the English and Americans who promenade up and down from one end to the other, keeping time with admirable precision.169 When they see Europeans spend hours in walking for the mere sake of exercise, they ask if it is not more comfortable to civilized ideas to sit down quietly to smoke and drink tea when you have nothing else to do, or still better, to go to bed at once.170

The spectator/unwilling performer relationship even went a step further in the case of Augustine Heard exercising his pony around the square. Gideon Nye records that Heard’s “riding a pony up and down” was “to the intense amusement of Chinese spectators in a native restaurant overlooking it [the enclosure in front of the Danish Factory]—where seats were sold—so rare it was to see the antics of a barbarian’s pony.”171 While many of the foreigners, particularly the Americans, took their status as spectacles in their stride, the tensions that the basically non-aggressive practice of these Chinese observers brought forth in the unnerved foreigners could sometimes explode. The notably sympathetic Paul S. Forbes recounts one such incident in his diary for May 15, 1843: Last evening, however, there was something of a row in front of the factories, in  consequence of the overbearing impudence of the foreigners as much as any blame of the Chinese. The garden of the factories is surrounded by a high 168. For the former, see “Walks in Canton” in Chinese Repository, Vol. 4 (1835), p. 44, and for the latter, see Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, pp. 254–55. 169. Excerpt from E. R. Huc, The Chinese Empire. as transcribed in Chris Elder (ed.), China’s Treaty Ports: Half Love and Half Hate (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 159. 170. Ibid., p. 160. 171. Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, p. 29.

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The scuffle Forbes recounts admittedly occurred in the aftermath of the disruptions of the Opium War, but it certainly reinforces the image of the square as contested ground. Furthermore, his discussion recognizes that one of the reasons behind the creation of the garden was to have a segregated space for foreign recreation. The fenced garden, far from being a simple aesthetic endeavor in botany, served the purpose of removing in a more permanent way what to some Westerners were undesirables from the space before the factories. The Chinese authorities initially confined the foreign traders to the Shisan Hang, but the foreigners continually attempted to have greater control within its bounds. The confinement of the foreigners to the Thirteen Factories followed a centuriesold tradition of Chinese planning restricting foreign traders to particular parts of a city. Increasingly, though, this restriction seems an attempt by the Chinese authorities to maintain civic harmony by buffering the interaction of their own populace with the foreigners. The gates of New and Old China Streets, the guardhouses, and the clearing of the square of nuisances on request were attempts to maintain the benefits of the foreign merchants in residence while minimizing disruptions in the traditional functioning of the city. The Westerners, while continuing to rely heavily on trusted Chinese servants and colleagues, increasingly appreciated this separation, as they created an environment that gradually conformed more closely to contemporary Euro-American ideas of domesticity. The everyday functioning of the carefully managed existence of the foreigners, however, would prove to be disrupted by the pull of the factories on Chinese citizens both curious and angry, as well as by the pull of the hidden Chinese polis and its wealth-creating potential on the foreigners.

Violated Boundaries and the Factory as Fortress Tensions between foreigners (particularly British), the Chinese government, and local Cantonese periodically erupted into acts of violence over the first sixty years of the nineteenth century. During these disruptions, carefully regulated boundaries of 172. Paul S. Forbes Diary (Forbes Collection, Baker Library, Box 6, folder 65), entry for May 15, 1843.

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everyday life were crossed and buildings became targets for attack. The factories suffered periodic assaults by Cantonese protesters from at least the 1810s up until the Arrow War (1856). An examination of such events reveals that, while the causes of violent outbreaks may be cloudy, the meanings of actions are clearly communicated. The collective action in the vicinity of the factories was directed and intelligible as a form of non-verbal communication, pointedly sending a message of resistance to specific foreigners. Additionally, foreigners began to transform the factory environs as the perceived need for more security became a part of their shared psyches.

Turf Disputes The earliest riots appear to have been triggered by British encroachments on the square in front of the factories, to which some Cantonese apparently felt they had a claim. Bryant Tilden wrote of an instance of violence against buildings, apparently during the trading season of 1817. In a somewhat sketchy sequence, the initial action was rioting by commoners, perhaps including boat people, described by the supercargo Tilden as follows: But on returning at nine o’clock with a few friends from Mr. Ammidon’s where we had dined, we were assaulted with a shower of mud & stones & finally were driven inside Magee’s Hotel. . . . the blinds and window glass having been all smashed with stones. Finding ourselves strong as to numbers—our veteran friend, and Mandarin Captain of the “Flying Stars” surrounded by his trusty Malays—whom the coolies fear as much as their Quie—or evil spirit—sallied out at the head of about forty of us barbarians—armed only with canes, and we soon cleared our way through the rascally rabble as far as the chop, or guard house at the lower end of China Street. On stating our grievances, the soldier Mandarin on duty detached two police men, only two—armed with common whips and rattling chain each— who cracked about the fellows on their bare backs awhile & completely dispersed the whole gang. This formidable guard then triumphantly escorted us back to our delapidated quarters and were rewarded with a bottle of Samshu or gin & then left us with many chin-chins.173

Tilden and his fellow supercargoes staying at Magee’s Hotel were surprised by a riot of whose origins they were unsure. He believed the main constituents of the crowd to be common laborers and boat people, but his perception may not have done justice to the heterogeneity of the crowd. The attacks were perpetrated, with non-fatal intent, by the throwing of mud and stones. The crowd attacked the building’s windows and blinds, the easiest parts of the structure to destroy. The collective action was tentative. When Magee led his somehow intimidating Malay employees out at the head of a large group of captains with their walking sticks, token resistance was given but no serious 173. Tilden, Father’s Journals, Vol. 2 (second voyage), pp. 135–36.

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incidents occurred. Two policemen, holding significant legal power over the fates of those whom they might arrest, successfully dispersed the crowds and were given liquor presumably, both as thanks and as a down payment for additional aid in the future. The incident was not over though. In the evening, presumably under some cover of darkness, “the mob,” as Tilden calls them, returned. They “amused themselves by breaking more blinds and windows of nearly all, but particularly those at the new and elegantly finished British factories, the white walls of which they pelted with river mud and filth.”174 Here, there can be no doubt that the buildings are acting as surrogate, or symbolic, bodies—representing the foreign (particularly British) presence. The penalties and moral consequences for these sorts of attacks were notably less than for bodily assault, but yet the message of the nonverbal communication was pointed. Tilden notes, “It did not escape the notice of all foreigners that the mob first gathered in front of Magee’s factory hotel the resort of English country ship officers, and finally ended more furiously by an attack upon the Hon’ble Company factories—and garden ground newly finished along the river shore.”175 The violence, then, was specific in its goal. Though all the factories may have suffered some sort of minor damage during the events, it is clear that those traditionally housing the British bore the brunt of the assaults. Tilden recounted that he later found out the incident had apparently resulted from the attempt of the British to construct a garden wall surrounding their river frontage.176 In 1831, Chinese authorities and commoners united to oppose British “improvements” in the front of the New English Factory. The account of the incidents by the British East India Company, which was then at Macao, reveals a complex picture of what occurred. According to the Hon. Company’s inquiries, their gardens were actually destroyed on order of the fuyuan (district official): On our arrival in Canton this morning we found that the orders of the Fooyuen had been already put into execution and that the ground in front of the Company’s Factory was a scene of devastation. On the morning of the 13th [of May] Inst. workmen had commenced to pull down the Walls, uproot the Trees, and on the evening of the 15th the Stone Quay for the landing of our Cargoes was begun to be destroyed . . . Howqua informed us that on the morning of the 12th the Fooyuen proceeded to the Hon’ble Company’s Factory accompanied by the Hoppo; and quite unexpected by the Hong Merchants, while walking in the Gardens he ordered his attendants to uncover the late King’s picture, and seating himself before it, sent for the Linguists.177 174. Ibid., p. 136. 175. Ibid., pp. 136–37. English country ship officers were those in charge of independent vessels that sailed back and forth to India—i.e., they were not engaged with direct trade to Britain, which was a monopoly reserved for the East India Company. 176. Ibid., p. 137. 177. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), Vol. 4, p. 279.

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Both the linguists and the hong merchants had been threatened with severe punishment for allowing the construction of the gardens to proceed. High district officials therefore sanctioned the objection to and violence against the symbols of the British, both in terms of architecture and, to a lesser extent, in the unveiling of George IV’s portrait. Here, it is clear that the garden riots of 1831 featured both construction as their point of origin (a perceived encroachment on what was previously held by some locals to be common space) and intentional damage to buildings and barriers as their result, echoing the riot recorded by Tilden in 1817. Westerners also began to use symbolic violence to communicate in the several years leading up to the Opium War. James Inness, a notoriously hotheaded Scots independent merchant, caused the British establishment (i.e., the Honorable Company) some embarrassment in April 1833.178 Mr. Inness, occupant of No. 1 Creek Hong, was variously known as “old iron-toothed rat” to the Chinese and “the Laird” to the foreign community.179 His tenacious and tactlessly haughty behavior proves that his monikers were well deserved. Much annoyed by workmen chopping firewood by the customs house near his quarters, he marched up to complain to the customs officer.180 According to varying versions, on the first or second time he was either assaulted by a cooley or inserted himself into a physical altercation. He went to complain of the assault and the chopping to Howqua (chief hong merchant, Wu Bingjian), who did not act quickly enough for his tastes. Taking matters into his own hands, he threatened to set fire to the customs house. He barricaded himself in his factory residence, and, “from the foreign upper story, shot fire arrows, and burnt the lanterns at the Custom house, he also threw combustible tubes into the custom house, which the people all saw and at that moment extinguished them.”181 Only through the intervention of the higher-ups of the Honorable Company and the arrival of Howqua himself was Inness’s siege of the customs house put to an end. Inness went unchastised, the cooley that had assaulted him was clapped in a cangue, a heavy wooden collar for often-fatal public humiliation, and the Honorable Company lost more of its dignity on the eve of the abolition of its monopoly in China. For the purposes of this essay, though, the significance of the event is that at least one Westerner set about asserting his point of view with a non-verbal attack on a building. This pattern of the symbolic attacks on structures escalated a few years later, during the Opium War.

178. Accounts of this incident are in Hosea Ballou Morse, The East India Company Trading to China (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), pp. 352–54, and IOR, 1833–34 Canton Agency Consultations, G/12/252, pp. 17–19. 179. Auguste Borget, Sketches of China and the Chinese (London: Ackermann and Henry G. Bohn, 1842), p. 9, and Downs, The Golden Ghetto, p. 56. 180. Morse, The East India Company Trading to China, p. 352. 181. IOR, 1833-34 Canton Agency Consultations, G/12/252, pp. 17–19.

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Tensions Boil, Crowds Erupt In the winter of 1838–39, Chinese authorities sent a dramatic message to Westerners and Chinese involved in opium smuggling by executing Chinese involved in the drug trade in the factory square.182 Foreigners repeatedly attempted to intervene in these displays. Initially, they had some success in peacefully resolving the crisis, but in the end set off another riot. Crowds had gathered around the evolving dispute. At some point, perhaps at the assault by the British mariners, they became involved in the affray. The British Canton Agency Consultations assert: Throughout their proceedings, up to this point, the foreigners had carried with them the sympathies of the people, but then the intemperate conduct of a few individuals, soon after engaged them in a collision with the mob, which after a few broken heads, resulted in their retreating to their factories; a few native police made their appearance and attempted to keep the peace, but they were driven off the field, and the factories were reassailed for several hours, at first only with stones and brickbats, but as the mob grew more excited, they tore up the rails in front of the houses, applied the cross-beams as battering rams to the factory gates, and about 4 o’clock succeeded in breaking into the “Lung Shun” [i.e., Old English] Hong. Had they not at this moment checked themselves, and refrained from rushing in, blood would certainly have been spilt, but before any further violence could be committed, a party of soldiery came on the ground, which they cleared in a short space of time, and tranquility was restored.183

Hunter’s point of view during the events of that long afternoon came from inside the central block of factories. Hunter and other occupants of the Swedish Hong had strewn broken bottles around the entrance, to impede a partially barefoot crowd, and pushed large casks of coal up against their doors. 184 The desire of Chinese officials to maintain civic order apparently triumphed at the end with the dispersal of the crowd with troops. The events of the winter of 1838–39 had highly symbolic implications for both the Western and Chinese populace. The imperial authorities wanted to send a clear message that could be understood regardless of the language or dialect spoken by onlookers. The foreign merchants took affront at these actions as insults to and invasions of the square, their primary outdoor space of respite. The riot of the commoners on December 12, 1838, however, is more ambiguous than the symbolic dialogue between officials and foreigners. According to both the Agency Consultations and Nye’s recollections, the crowd did not at first oppose the 182. Primary sources for the incidents of 1838–39 include Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, pp. 32–33, 50–54; IOR, Canton Agency Consultations for 1838–39, G/12/262, pp. 34–35, 43; Canton Register extra edition for December 13, 1838, and February 27, 1839; Canton Press extra February 27, 1839; and, of course, Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, pp. 73–77. 183. IOR, Canton Agency Consultations for 1838–39, G/12/262, pp. 34–35. 184. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, p. 74.

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foreigners’ actions, and was even construed as slightly supportive. As in any riotous crowd, it was composed of individuals who might have had distinctly separate motives for participation.185 What seems to have triggered the collective action, however, was the assault by English sailors and perhaps other foreigners on the execution party. This action could have been interpreted any number of ways—an assault on order, an assault on a fellow Chinese, or an act outside of reasonable social norms. The retreat of the Westerners into the factories was the logical move for self-protection of a minority group. They retreated into the space over which they could claim the most official and personal ownership and which contained their belongings and their business affairs. The factories become fortresses, equipped with barricading and other defensive possibilities. They also become effective symbols and strategic targets for the crowd to attack. By breaking windows and battering doors, the crowd attacked a surrogate body.186 Notably absent from any accounts of the riot are actual physical injuries to Westerners. Throwing bricks and stones at a building did not risk the moral or legal implications of actual injury or death to a foreigner. These might have resulted in capital punishment, meted out by the authorities that the crowd had actually protected. This suspicion, if not initially in place, would have been confirmed by the appearance of the soldiers who cleared the factory square. The importance of symbolic behavior, and the rationality of the crowd, is further reinforced by the Agency Consultation’s note of the fact that the crowd had decided not to enter the Old English Factory after having broken down the door. The threat of being able to penetrate the factory was sufficient, while the abstention from such an act also communicated that, though the foreigners should beware their behavior, they were not considered mortal enemies. Unfortunately for the Chinese, this perception of their foreign guests as less-than-mortal enemies did not prove accurate, as military machines and global political maneuvering took control of a situation that had formerly been negotiated without massive loss of life. The Opium War (1839–42), including a massive siege of Guangzhou by the British, followed soon on the heels of this incident. The dominance of Britain’s “high-tech” military resulted in a string of Chinese military defeats and a considerable, if intentionally restrained, destructive impact on civilian parts of the city. In the absence of British troops, who were occupied with maneuvers downstream, the Cantonese were permitted, or perhaps encouraged, by the officials to loot the predominantly British factories on the eastern end of the site:

185. My thinking on riotous behavior has been influenced by Sam Wright, Crowds and Riots: A Study in Social Organization (London: Sage Publications, 1978), in particular, the summary of approaches to crowd behavior in the preface. 186. My thinking on this issue is partially derived from Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), Chapter Three, “Attacking Houses.”

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Enclave to Urbanity There was a reckless destruction of property which could not be removed, even after every article of furniture, as well as merchandise, had been carried away. Doors and windows were soon disposed of, and the very staircases and stone floorings were broken up and destroyed. In the old Company’s, or British Factory, the confusion was most terrible, because in it there remained a greater number of valuable objects to destroy. The beautiful chandeliers and fine looking-glasses were soon annihilated and carried off piecemeal, and the noble large marble statue which stood in the great hall served as an object of especial vengeance, as if it contained within itself the very germs or symbols of all the barbarian nations of the earth, and could communicate to them a portion of the insults now heaped upon it as it lay prostrate in the hall.187

Though several factories were damaged, the New English, Dutch, and Creek Factories bore the brunt of the attack, to the extent that they were almost in ruins.188 Frustrated Chinese, seeing their defenses crumble, offered what resistance they could by the symbolic demolition of some of the British factories. Once again, the symbolic destruction of windows and doors, the barriers to entry, communicated that the inhabitants of the city had the power to enter the merchant residences at will. This time, though, the abandoned factories were entered. Though no bodily harm was threatened to the foreigners themselves, fragile objects like the chandeliers and mirrors let forth viscerally satisfying crashes upon their destruction. Apparently, though, the most literal copy and surrogate of a Westerner, a statue, incited particular wrath. During the sacking of the eastern end factories, a curious symbolic reversal also took place. Some American citizens, viewing themselves as neutral parties in the conflict, attempted to conduct business as usual. American merchants Coolidge and Morss, and two clerks, were thus still in the factories. Morss made a clean getaway, but Coolidge and the clerks were captured. These men’s national status may have been somewhat clouded to the Chinese, as Coolidge was the agent for Heard & Co. and lived in the Dutch Hong surrounded by English companies. The status of Coolidge as an American, and hence citizen of a neutral power, was an important distinction that the Chinese recognized, as indicated by the fact that “when an Englishman gets into trouble there [Canton], he most commonly declares himself to be an American.”189 Coolidge was rescued from a mob that did not care for such distinctions by a “red button” (referring to hat ornament) Chinese official.190 Coolidge and his fellow prisoners were probably protected from torture, interrogation, or even execution by their citizenship, but they were, on the other hand, detained for two days in prison. When they were finally released, they were carried, probably still bound, “in chairs to the ruined Factories, where they were planted among the ruins just as if they had been 187. 188. 189. 190.

W. H. Hall and W. D. Bernard, The Nemesis in China (London: Henry Coburn, 1847), p. 171. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 149. Hall and Bernard, The Nemesis in China, p. 172. Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, p. 60.

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portions of the marble statue which had been destroyed.”191 Hence, the persons of foreigners were placed unharmed among the remains of structures and objects that had been destroyed in lieu of personal assault. The message of Chinese respect for the person over the object was succinctly displayed. This did not prevent the ultimate British victory in Guangzhou by complete military dominance of the city. In the immediate aftermath of the Opium War, some segments of the population were yet smoldering in resentment over their defeat by the British. On December 7, 1842, a scuffle between lascars (South Asian sailors) on shore leave and local fruit merchants triggered a conflict that would ultimately result in the complete destruction of the New British, Dutch, and Creek Factories.192 About three British firms had returned to repair and inhabit the eastern block of factories, as well as the American firm of Heard & Co., then handling Jardine & Matheson’s business and inhabiting the Dutch Hong. The sailors fled to a refuge in the otherwise uninhabited Creek Factory.193 The investigative report of British military commander Hugh Gough asserts that “the mob soon got the upper hand, drove off the Chinese soldiers who had arrived on the applications of the merchants to the local authorities, entered the factories, plundered the treasuries, and carrying out furniture, placed it around the British flagstaff, which was opposite to the old Company’s factory, and set fire to it.”194 This incident seems to have occurred in the early evening. The attack on the flagstaff was a destruction of what the Chinese had learned was held as a key symbol by the British: “a shout from the mob when it fell told their triumph.”195 What happened between the initial incident and the renewed rioting remains cloudy, except that according to the Canton Repository during this time period the brick wall on the western side of the British garden was pulled down, a symbolic restatement of events in 1817 and 1831.196 The account of John Heard omits the flagstaff incident, because he and “Uncle Augustine” had already fled from the Chowchow Factory, where they had been busy weighing teas, to the interior of their offices and residences in the Dutch Factory.197 Though American, the staff of Heard & Co. was now in the uncomfortable position of being between the now despised British Factory and the lascar-occupied Creek factory. The whole eastern block of factories came under sustained attack. Heard’s perspective from inside the Dutch Factory portrays the mechanics of the miniature siege from the foreign defenders’ point of view. The first order of business 191. Hall and Bernard, The Nemesis in China, p. 173. 192. Three sources for this riot are The Canton Repository, Vol. 11 (1842), pp. 687–88; John Heard Diary (Baker Library, FP-4), pp. 41–47, and British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch 71). 193. The Canton Repository, Vol. 11 (1842), p. 687 and John Heard Diary (PEM FP-4), p. 41. 194. British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch 71, inclosure 5). 195. The Canton Repository, Vol. 11 (1842), p. 687. 196. Ibid. This account, in contrast to others, places the commencement of rioting at 2 p.m. 197. John Heard Diary (PEM FP-4), p. 41.

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for the inhabitants of the factory, including Chinese employees, was to barricade the doors and find what arms they could, which apparently included three old flintlock rifles and a brace of pistols.198 These were previously banned in the foreign factories, but in the wake of the Opium War, they must have been viewed as convenient for the Americans’ personal security. The first order of business for Heard & Co. was an only partially successful attempt to save as much of the company’s books and the cash in the treasury, which including both theirs and Jardine & Matheson’s amounted to half a million dollars.199 The situation grew more desperate as the fire had been carried from around the flagpole to the British and Creek Factories. John Heard, then just a boy of eighteen, was placed with a few others at the Dutch Factory entrance with a musket. The foreigners would occasionally let loose with a volley apparently aimed for effect rather than deadliness, and the crowd would fall back, only to surge forth again to continue its efforts at dismantling the barricades.200 The crowd gradually succeeded in tearing down the barricade, but were prevented from further advance by some quick-thinking Chinese employees, as rendered in pidgin by John Heard: “The Hong coolies who were with us also made an excellent suggestion. They said ‘He no got shoe, no got stockings, suppose make broke bottley he no can walkee.’ This was very effectual in stopping their rushes.”201 After some time fighting the crowd on the one hand and the fires in adjacent factories on the other, Heard & Co. ultimately decided to abandon the factory, counting on the fact that the fire would protect the cash in the treasury vault from theft. Surrounded by “faithful coolies,” who incidentally were mostly enlisted from the Chowchow Factory, as many of Heard & Co.’s Chinese employees had already fled, the foreigners of the Dutch Factory made a dash for it out the less fully mobbed rear entrance of the factory and through adjacent back streets.202 The lascars in the Creek Factory, Heard records, did not manage to escape and were captured by the Cantonese rioters, though their fate after this is not mentioned.203 Another perspective on events during the riot was offered by the Governor General of the Two Guangs (i.e., Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces), Ke-kung, who himself arrived with fire engines and hoses sometime around nine in the evening in an attempt to extinguish the fires.204 His summary of events gives a very different perspective: [Of the fire] But being in the depth of night, and in a confined situation, it was impossible at once to extinguish it. And the people collected to put out the fire being very many, lawless ones mingled themselves among them, and took occasion 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204.

Ibid., p. 42. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid., pp. 44–45. Ibid. British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch 71, inclosure 11).

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to rob and plunder. The government troops were therefore ordered to fire on them, and to apprehend offenders. High civil and military officers were also deputed (the death-mandate having been reverently applied for) to repair to the spot, and suppress the riot. Upwards of ten plunderers were in consequence successively seized, when the rest of the lawless people fled and dispersed.205

The regional Chinese government had mobilized to help the factories, but initially their concern and understanding of the situation revolved more around the fire rather than the citizens who had undertaken the assault on the factories. This may in fact be because helpful people rather than rioters were first encountered from the streets to the walled city. Here, the officials and troops would have witnessed fewer of the rioters, by that point dominating the factory square, but rather the shopkeepers of Hog Lane and the owners and workers of nearby shops and warehouses who would be very concerned indeed about the buildings ablaze nearby. According to the Canton Repository account, “such fire-engines as arrived were ordered off by the mob.” Soon after the inhabitants of the Dutch Factory fled, around eleven in the evening, the whole block of factories was consumed by fire.206 Both the newspaper and British Foreign Office accounts agree that the rest of the foreign factories were saved from fire by the fact that the wind was from the west.207 They also agree that the rioters were satisfied with the destruction of the eastern block of factories and made no attempt to damage or plunder the other foreign factories.208 In the foreigners’ assessment, there were several indications of a premeditated attack. According to Heard, “The Company’s factory, as it was always called, was an object of hatred to the Cantonese, and had always been associated in their minds with all their quarrels with the English. For several days threats had been freely uttered by the populace that it should never be occupied again.”209 The presence of visible ringleaders and the fact that many of the rioters were armed with “short swords” (weapons implying forethought) suggested this as well.210 The preceding summaries reveal just how complex an event the riot of December 7, 1842, was. On the defensive, British firms and a closely allied American firm attempted to fight off the crowds with the help of loyal Cantonese employees. The fact that the cooleys hired by the Parsees of the Chowchow Hong stayed to help Heard & Co. longer than their own employees certainly hints that the foreigner/employee relationship was even more complex than may be recovered from the historical record. There were also the sailors from the Indian subcontinent, who, unaware of the tense atmosphere around them, unexpectedly triggered the event over a minor issue. Outside the 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210.

Ibid. The Canton Repository, Vol. 11 (1842), p. 687. Ibid., and British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch 71, inclosure 5). Ibid. Ibid., p. 41. British Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch 71, inclosure 5).

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factory walls, the assailing crowd was a heterogeneous bunch. Some of them were simply friends and supporters of the fruit merchant who had been injured in the initial dispute. Far more of the crowd appears to have been made up of everyday Cantonese resentful of the British attack on their city. Some of these locals were highly organized, perhaps martial arts–trained members of secret societies or peasant militias. Yet other rioters seem to have been simply opportunistic, tempted by the prospect of lifting some quick cash. There were the Chinese who attempted to come to the rescue. These included neighboring shopkeepers and merchants, who neither wanted a disruption in trade with the foreigners nor desired to see their premises go up in the spreading flames. Then there were the police, responsible for ensuring civil tranquility. Finally, there were the high government officials and their Manchu troops, who, having so recently seen humiliation as a result of British military action, had no desire to trigger foreign retaliation on the city for such an event. Despite these diversities, several assertions can be made about the meaning of this episode of urban violence. First and foremost, the New English (or as Heard says, “the Company’s”) Factory had acquired by this time such a profound, repressive association in the eyes of the Cantonese that its destruction could serve both as an emotional release from the humiliation the city had endured during the previous war and as a clear message for the British to “go home.” To the assault on the building was added the burning of the British flagpole in the square, which served to reinforce such meanings. On the other hand, it is notable that this event, though a new escalation in violence, featured few fatalities. During the riots themselves, it seems that no Westerners at all were killed, but five Chinese (it is unclear whether these were on the offensive or the defensive) lost their lives.211 The arrests of looters by the imperial authorities could well have resulted in more severe physical punishment or even deaths than the riots themselves. The fact that, even in the presence of swords and guns, violence was mainly halted when it threatened destruction of life rather than property still reveals urban conflicts were at this point articulated by loss of property rather than of life.

Defensible Space and Its Final Vanity In the aftermath of this incident, the American Garden was constructed, limiting traffic in the square, while the British spent several years on the project of constructing the New British Factories, channeling traffic into defensible corridors in the 1830s and early 1840s. In the summer of 1846, a belligerent English merchant’s despicable assaults on local vendors in and around Old China Street led to yet another riot.212 This took the form of an attack on the factory where the merchant was hiding, basically in 211. The Canton Repository, Vol. 11 (1842), p. 687. 212. The primary source for this is British Foreign Office, Papers Relating to the Riot at Canton in July 1846 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1847).

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conduct resembling the previous riots. Armed Westerners and neighboring Chinese merchants quelled this outbreak with the walled-in corridors that now regulated admittance to the factories. H. M. British Consul Macgregor and Dr. Parker assembled a group of volunteer foreigners, bearing firearms, in the walled American garden. These were mainly British and American merchants, but a German and several Parsees turned out as well.213 Initially, the foreign assembly was protected by the gate to the lane in front of the middle block of factories and the solid wall surrounding the garden. With orders not to fire on the crowd without direct orders from the consuls, the foreign militia burst from the gate and proceeded directly towards the crowd outside of Mingqua’s Hong.214 The crowd briefly rallied to turn on the foreigners with a volley of stones, but then broke and retreated along the architecturally controlled access routes to the factories.215 The rioters split into three groups. The smallest and perhaps cleverest group fled south on Old China Street towards the river, where they escaped without being pursued by foreigners.216 One set fled down the gated lane in front of the western block of factories. This group then proceeded to turn down New China Street, where they were trapped between the foreigners occupying the southern gate of the street and a barricade set up by the shopkeepers at the northern gate.217 One larger group made a stand at the southern entrance to Old China Street, only to be dispersed by some foreigners discharging firearms without orders from the consuls.218 Also of their own accord, the foreigners near the Danish Factory at the end of New China Street opened fire.219 The foreigners claimed to have fired in self-defense when the rioters turned to rally on them. The end result was three men dead and six wounded.220 Malice was probably not the intent of the foreigners, since they fired into the crowd in what were, by this time, fairly dark streets. Far from being simply vagabonds and rabble, the Chinese casualties were regularly employed citizens, though of more or less the laborer and lower-skilled tradesman class; they seem to have hailed from the surrounding districts as much as from the city itself.221 The foreigners, once they had established control over most of the streets around the factories, were not without mercy, and carried two of the wounded Chinese left at the entrance to Old China Street to Dr. Parker’s hospital in Hog Lane.222 The Chinese authorities responded to the riot, albeit after the fact, by stationing troops around the factories. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220. 221. 222.

Ibid., pp. 5, 64. Foreigners injured in the repression of the riot were a German and a Parsee. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., pp. 33, 35. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid. Ibid., p. 5.

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This last major civil disturbance before the Arrow War reveals the foreigners and even local shopkeepers had by this point developed mechanisms for responding to these riots. The foreigners had constructed barriers that defended their environment beyond the envelope of the walls of the factory buildings. Gates and, now, more confined street corridors controlled traffic, could be shut and even barricaded. Protection of property united foreign and Chinese merchants of the Western suburbs in their defensive stance. The Chinese authorities, while continuing in foreign eyes to be slow to respond to these emergencies (perhaps because troops had first to be mustered and then conveyed from the walled city), had an interest in maintaining civic harmony and keeping the foreigners content that they were honoring their treaties. It seems that the laborers and tradesmen, whose honest sense of justice and perhaps underlying fear of the foreigners had managed to escalate a minor event triggered by a bellicose Englishman into a major incident, could now be effectively quelled by the tentatively united propertied classes in a subtly fortified environment. After the construction of the new factories on the eastern end of the site, the effectively restricted access prevented any further major incidents of urban violence. British and French imperial aspirations, however, led to the Arrow War (1856–58). The factories were evacuated during this conflict, with a small British force looking after them while military operations were conducted elsewhere. Around eleven on the evening of December 14, 1856, the demise of the Thirteen Factories was set in motion. Some Chinese set fire to houses on Thirteen Factories Street immediately to the rear of the foreign residences.223 They were fired upon by the British guards, but not captured. The British believed that the fire was “preconcerted by the Chinese authorities.”224 The primary evidence for this was that firemen and engines were apparently on hand to stop the fire from spreading through the suburbs.225 Though the British had started to clear buildings from around the factories, they had only fully accomplished the removal of the booths from Hog Lane. The fire therefore proved unstoppable: Working parties were quickly on the spot, with engines and all available means for extinguishing fire; but owing to the inflammable materials of the houses and the scarcity of water—the tide being low—the flames soon reached Old China Street and the back premises of Messrs. Dent and Co. [at this time behind the American factory], whilst the sparks set fire to the matting over several of the houses in the contiguous hongs. The strong current of the wind up the vaulted passages, or hongs, over which the houses were constructed, caused the fire to spread with amazing rapidity and fierceness. Each hong became a furnace, and it was utterly impossible, from the extreme heat and the masses of burning material which were 223. British Foreign Office, Papers relating to the Proceedings of Her Majesty’s Naval Forces at Canton (London: Harrison and Sons for the Houses of Parliament, 1857), p. 144. Also, British Foreign Office, Further Papers Relative to the Proceedings of Her Majesty’s Naval Forces at Canton (London: Harrison and Sons, 1857), p. 1, and British Foreign Office China Correspondence (FO 17/253). 224. Further Papers Relative to the Proceedings of Her Majesty’s Naval Forces at Canton, p. 2. 225. Ibid.

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continually falling, to remain in the neighborhood of the fire. It was soon felt that all endeavours to save what were called the ‘Foreign Factories’ would be in vain, and that our only hope was in Hog Lane cutting off the fire from the British Factory. The corner house in the contiguous block being in a dangerous proximity, it was most successfully and completely blown down about noon on the 15th, which greatly raised our hopes of the ultimate safety of the remaining portion of the factories. By this time the flames had entirely consumed Old and New China Streets and the whole of Mingqua’s hong down to the river side, at the other end of the factories, and it was only by the most strenuous exertions that we were able to save the club-house, occupied as barracks and stores. About 3 o’clock P. M., flames burst out most suddenly and furiously from the ruins of the house which had been blown down, and though both officers and men vied with each other, for two hours, in their exertions to extinguish them, smoke was then seen to issue from the roof of the Oriental Bank, a large building surrounded by a wooden verandah, and situated in the middle of the British factory. All hopes of saving any portions of the factory were then abandoned, and after eighteen hours of remitting labour the people were withdrawn. The sick were embarked from the temporary hospital, as well as a portion of the force, guns, ammunition, & c.; and arrangements were made for holding the gardens during the night. The following morning a heap of ruins was all that remained of the factories, one house excepted.226

So ended the first era of foreign life in Guangzhou. The remaining merchants and consular staff removed to Macao for the rest of the trading season. The remaining house collapsed after a few days, leaving only the church and the boat/club house standing. A pencil sketch in the Peabody Essex Museum survives to illustrate the aftermath of the fire (Fig. 1.4). The little transplanted English parish church steeple, waving the Union Jack, pops up above the still intact pastoral gardens, while the walls and chimneys of the factory ruins punctuate the background. The ground behind the church had been transformed into a redoubt—the British military were not at this point willing to give up the traditional foreign foothold in the city’s commercial districts. This was not, as perhaps some Chinese officials had hoped, the end of the Arrow War in Guangzhou. It was, however, an action that transformed what had been traditionally symbolic assaults on the factories into a tactic of their complete annihilation, echoing foreign destruction of the forts along the river. Subsequent to the Arrow War, the allied British and French victory led to an extended foreign military occupation of the city. This was the end of the periodic cycles of violence around the foreign residences. As the military power brought to bear on cross-cultural conflict grew, the urban violence in Guangzhou became more dramatic, in the end rendering void the symbolic exchange that had been maintained and regulated in earlier incidents. The fear and disruption caused by the display of 226. Ibid.

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Fig. 1.4 View of English church and ruins of factories, c. 1857–58, anonymous British or American. Behind the still-extant garden and Anglican church (sporting the Union Jack) peek the charred remains of the Thirteen Factories, never to be rebuilt after this final destruction during the Arrow War. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (M9758.36b).

British military power during the Opium War created an environment where absolute destruction, not just defenestration, of the factories became a perceived option. Fire was introduced in the 1842 destruction of the British Factories and in the subsequent riots triggered by British assaults on fruit vendors. In the end, British violation of the city, which included destruction of the gates, triggered the response of setting fire to the factories, directly removing the physical presence of foreign merchants from the city. Beyond these architecturally destructive events, it must be acknowledged that the wars triggered dire humanitarian crises among the Cantonese. It is a testament to the regional pride and cosmopolitan broad-mindedness of the Cantonese as much as to the coercion of the foreigners that the Arrow War was not the end of peaceful foreign habitation in the city. In the end, however, the violence of the mid-century fundamentally changed the way that foreigners dwelt in the city. In many ways, the destruction of the factories marked the end of the most cross-culturally collaborative space constructed in China until the dawn of the twentieth century. The result of a traumatic history of mutual antagonism was a spatial and social separation that would last into the twentieth century. The history of the Thirteen Factories, however, is an initial demonstration of an important lesson: cross-cultural relations are spatial relations, and they can be read both in the buildings and exterior spaces the foreigner occupies.

Chapter 2 Westerners Draw Their Boundaries Insular Living and Its Exceptions

So it was a most startling revelation to find myself in a very smart, purely foreign settlement, as entirely isolated from the native city as though they were miles apart, instead of only being divided by a canal, which constitutes this peaceful green spot an island.1 —Mrs. Constance F. Gordon-Cumming, January 9, 1879

In the later nineteenth century, the bulk of the foreign community in Guangzhou was increasingly separated from the city proper and its population. The island of Honam (Mandarin Henan) on the south side of the river became an industrial enclave for foreign business, while the newly constructed island of Shamian became the center for foreign social life. Some foreigners continued to live outside of Shamian, notably a few merchants who were comfortable in the Honam quarters, a few American businesses that tried to rebuild on the old factory site, the British consul who maintained a yamen inside the walled city, and a range of foreign missionaries. Parts of the following discussion will chart the spatial and social isolation of the foreign community from the everyday life of the rest of the city, the development of building practices between Western patrons and Chinese contractors, and the shaping of missionary practice within the city. The spatial strategies of foreigners in Guangzhou in the later part of the century reveal an attempt to come to terms with more defined dialogues of identity and alienation.

Modest Living and Work South of the River: Honam In the immediate aftermath of the Arrow War, the foreign merchants faced the problem of how to go about their business, with long-standing factory residences no longer an option. Though many firms moved their headquarters to Hong Kong or Shanghai, over a century of practicing business in Guangzhou meant that even those firms who moved the base of their operations elsewhere still often felt the need for a branch office 1.

C. F. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886), p. 34.

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in the city. With the potential destructive power of the Cantonese populace now a substantial concern for most foreigners, the search for accommodation first centered on the large island of Honam (Mandarin Henan), directly opposite the old factory site on the south bank of the river. Honam actually means “south of the river.” Though most of the large island was fairly rural in nature well into the twentieth century, the northwestern tip was occupied by a village-like suburb that was essentially a less dense version of the western suburbs of the city on the other bank. Modest houses clustered around the inland lanes, while large hongs and pack-houses that had been used as temporary encampments for the allied troops during the war fronted directly on the river. This landscape was punctuated by the largest Buddhist monastery in the city’s environs and the substantial residence of the Howqua merchant family. The inhabitants of the southern suburb, besides being fewer in number, had the reputation of being milder and more hospitable than the Cantonese denizens of Guangzhou proper. The separation from the latter element, often blamed for destruction of foreign property, combined with large facilities already prepared for conducting the business of importing and exporting, made Honam a logical choice. The foreign community would take up residence on the river frontage of Honam initially around 1859; some firms would stay there for a couple of decades. Contemporary observers compiling a guide to the treaty ports of the Far East noted, “Honam frontage was rented by foreign firms who altered native buildings into sufficiently comfortable temporary dwelling houses.”2 The buildings that greeted them on the south bank were not unlike slightly smaller versions of the long, narrow, twostoried buildings interspersed with courtyards that composed the Thirteen Factories, albeit largely without the Westernized façades (Pl. 16). The enclosed first stories, the verandah-clad second stories, and the rows of side-gabled roofs echoed almost exactly the configuration of the Thirteen Factories, though there was a total lack of any space like the factory square. This, on the one hand, restricted recreational possibilities, but, on the other hand, also seemed to be prohibitive of the violent incidents that had so plagued the Thirteen Factories. An image of the interior of one of the foreign premises survives, apparently dating from around 1870 (Fig. 2.1). Representing Nye & Co.’s hong, the photograph from the Peabody Essex Museum’s collection depicts the long interior passageway in the center of the business premises used by Gideon Nye, an American merchant who had been a resident of the city since before the Opium War. The stone-and-brick-paved passage, flanked by the tall masonry piers and capped by the tile roofs that are hallmarks of Cantonese vernacular building must have recalled the interior of the Thirteen

2.

William Fredrick Mayers, N. B. Dennys, and Charles King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (Hong Kong: A. Shortrede and Co., 1867), p. 131.

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Fig. 2.1 Nye & Co.’s Hong on Honam, Canton (interior). This photograph captures the great central corridor of the Massachusetts firm’s godown and residence. It probably gives a rather accurate impression of what a view must have been like within one of the original Thirteen Factories. Nye continued to dwell on Honam even after most of the foreign population moved to Shamian. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (TR2015.3).

Factories.3 The striking, one-point perspective created by the lines of the corridor, rhythmically punctuated by atmospheric bands of light and shadow indicating the courtyards or skylights, brings to mind the description of the foreign factories having individual blocks articulated “like the distinct glasses in a telescope.”4 Westernized features of the building seem largely to be confined to the louvered shutters of the second story and a possibly imported and prefabricated front door with sidelights and transom. The latter element was very typical in American residences of the era, and here undoubtedly served the same purposes of allowing light into the entryway and providing the security measure of seeing who was at the door before opening it. 3.

4.

Some evidence indicates that the central passages of the Thirteen Factories were in fact articulated with semi-circular vaults—the post and lintel arrangement of Nye’s hong would be more typical of buildings of the city at large. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 214.

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Almost all the foreigners in the city would have dwelt in and conducted business in premises like these into the early 1860s. Though the British concession on newly developed Shamian Island started to draw away foreign firms after 1862, when residential construction there began in earnest, Honam continued to host the dwellings of some foreigners, especially those attached to both the liberties and frugalities of the previous era, and the business premises of a number of firms. In 1870, though many of the British firms had moved to the new concession, the American firms of Nye & Co. and Heard & Co. still remained on Honam, as well as a scattering of merchants from the Germanic states and a large number of Parsee business houses.5 The largely Cantonese-style buildings were comfortable enough for some of the foreigners. A substantial number of Parsee businesses were still on Honam even in 1886.6 The foreigners who decided to stay on Honam seem to have gradually followed the lead of the more showy residences on Shamian and adopted a more Westernized style of building. Gideon Nye, by now American vice-consul and a resident of Guangzhou for over four decades, while perhaps maintaining the property depicted above as business premises, described his place of residence in 1882: My present residence here, known as “Lam Kee Hong” . . . being a European-built detached house of brick and stone with open spaces in front and rear as well as on the East & bounded by a narrow street on the west, on which there is only a single Chinese one story shop opening on the canal, on which my house is situated. My premises are solely occupied by the Revd. Ernest Faber and myself and our respective servants.7

Nye wrote this description in a letter arguing for a lowering of his fire insurance rate. One of the benefits of a residence on Honam was a lower density of buildings, which lowered the chance of damage by catastrophic urban fires. The fact that this was a “European-built detached house” seems to contrast with his earlier premises, an urban Cantonese building type. Though foreign residence, with the exception of some missionary buildings to be discussed later, gradually declined in the northwestern region of Honam, the area continued as a place of business for foreign and Chinese firms into the twentieth century. A visitor in the 1870s noted, “all the English houses, or Hongs, with one exception alone, do their business in the settlement, but have to go to Honam to weigh their

5.

6. 7.

Morris & Co., Morris’s Directory for China, Japan, and the Phillipines, & c. (Hong Kong: Morris & Co., printed by Charles A. Saint, 1870), pp. 3D–5D. The business directories published out of Hong Kong in conjunction with various firms and newspaper offices are good sources for which firms are in residence in Guangzhou in this period. Robert Fraser-Smith, The Hong Kong Directory and Hong List for the Far East, for 1886 (Hong Kong: Robert Fraser-Smith at the Office of the “Hong Kong Telegraph,” 1886), pp. 209–10. Letter from Gideon Nye to Deacon & Co., agents for China Fire Insurance Company, dated December 16, 1882. Baker Library (Ms766 [1858–1898] N994—Vol. 3b). Harvard University.

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teas previous to shipment.”8 As such, the area bears witness to a trend of separation of the industrial spaces of business and manufacture from the spaces used for dwelling and administrative tasks. This trend was almost universally observable throughout the Western world during the second half of the nineteenth century, so the foreign firms in Guangzhou simply mirrored practices in their home countries. Chau T’au Street on Honam continued to be a primary location for foreign firms’ warehouses into the twentieth century.9 Also on the same street were Chinese businesses of interest to the Western firms, namely, a large reed-matting factory and Choy Song Tea Hong, the largest tea processors in the city.10 The industrial character of the area would have given a Cantonese vernacular impression of brick walls surmounted by tile roofs and punctuated with doorways sporting the regionally popular sliding wooden security bars. Scottish photographer John Thomson stated, “The native tea-firing establishments of Canton adjoin the river, or the banks of a creek, and a granite or wooden wharf is one of their most indispensable accessories.”11 Tea rolling, weighing, firing, and tasting were all-important parts of the process for preparing teas for exportation. Foreign tea dealers all possessed their own tasting rooms for the purposes of quality control and creating blends for foreign tastes. A photograph of one such room from the Peabody Essex Museum collections illustrates a typical tea office in Guangzhou from the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century (Fig.  2.2). The firm’s principal tea taster and a younger foreign assistant stand attended by local employees. Rows of canisters line the walls and trays and cups are lined up for sampling. The room is otherwise unadorned and, like most such industrial or trade-related spaces, equipped mainly for functionality. As the scale of shipping in the city increased around 1900, a new, larger type of warehouse facility appeared on the back reach of the Pearl River along the western banks of Honam. The British firm of Butterfield & Swire (in Chinese called Tai Gu, often spelled Tai Koo), a large shipping interest with commodity-producing factories (particularly sugar refineries) in other Chinese cities, opened its Guangzhou branch in 1892.12 By 1898, the company’s warehouse space on the north side of the river leased from the Imperial Maritime Customs Station was too confined, apparently resulting 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Walter William Mundy, Canton and the Bogue: The Narrative of an Eventful Six Months in China (London: Samuel Tinsley, 1875), p. 79. Dr. J. G. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 1904 edition), p. 46. Ibid. John Thomson, Illustrations of China and Its People (Reprinted, New York: Dover Publications, 1982— orig. 1873), Vol. 1, Plate 21. See also Mundy, Canton and the Bogue, p. 79. Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China (London: Lloyd’s Greater Britain Publishing Co., Ltd., 1908), p. 790. For a discussion of the firm’s organization and history (particularly in other treaty ports), see Sheila Marriner and Francis  E.  Hyde, The Senior John Samuel Swire, 1825–98: Management in Far Eastern Shipping Trades (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1967).

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Fig. 2.2 Tea tasters in tea office, Guangzhou (anonymous). The interior of a turn-of-the-century tea taster’s office can be compared to a similar setting half a century earlier as shown in Pl. 11. The room seems at once more solely functional and more systematized than its predecessor. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (TR2015.2).

in delays in shipping.13 During the years 1898 and 1899, the firm’s Guangzhou agent, J.  R.  Greaves, investigated and then purchased a tract in the area of Honam called Pak Hin Hok for new godown space. This area, on the periphery of the densely populated part of the island, was formerly dominated by a village of lime burners, but already had some warehouse facilities on it.14 Greaves sketched the site plan of the property he had originally scouted (Fig. 2.3).15 This sketch probably reveals the configuration of a typical late nineteenth-century warehouse complex. On a long narrow lot, it possessed a wharf and a walled compound behind it that from front to rear included a small “semi-foreign” brick house (probably an office); a spacious godown containing a small kitchen space; an open courtyard half surrounded by brick and tile work sheds; and, at the rear, brick “coolie” houses for the laborers. 13. 14. 15.

John Swire & Sons Papers ( JSS II 1/5 folder A23), School of Oriental and African Studies Archives, University of London, and Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 790. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, p. 46, and John Swire & Sons Papers ( JSS II 1/5 folder A23), SOAS Archives, University of London. John Swire & Sons Papers ( JSS II 1/5 folder A23), SOAS Archives, University of London.

Fig. 2.3 Plan, prospective godown property on Honam, c. 1898. This sketch reveals the layout of what was probably a typical godown complex in Canton in the late nineteenth century. Consisting of a landing, an office or house for the warehouse clerk, a large godown, open space for handling goods, and a barracks for the Chinese laborers. This complex on Honam reveals the removal of the physical aspects of business, and the Chinese staff associated with them, completely away from the foreigners’ dwellings. Used with the permission of John Swire & Sons, Ltd. (SOAS Archives, John Swire & Sons Papers, JSSII 1/5, folder A23).

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By early 1902, Greaves was able to acquire this and adjacent lots, registered in the British Consulate as the 196,000-square-foot extra concession lot 34, on perpetual lease from its owner, Cheung Kop.16 Between 1902 and 1908, improvements on the property were carried out to the order of eight godowns, four “built of iron” and four of bricks with tiled roofs.17 In addition to these buildings, the complex included three steel wharves, nine hardwood piers, two brick bungalows (presumably for lower-level foreign staff—like the “tallyman” in charge of enumerating cargo—as the managerial staff had a residence on Shamian) and “native quarters.”18 One of the wharves had a tramway installed to make the movement of heavier goods more convenient. Surviving, if not particularly detailed, photos from before 1908 reveal that the inexpensive property on Honam was used to construct long, low gable-ended warehouses that enabled goods to be stored without the bother of moving them onto upper stories. 19 These new types of warehouses were apparently found universally convenient, and Butterfield & Swire shipping prospered in Guangzhou: With these facilities the firm are [sic] able to deal very expeditiously with cargo, and, instead of it being necessary for the steamers sometimes to remain for upwards of a week, they are now generally ready to continue their journey a few hours after arrival. The godowns and wharves are under one roof, are excellently ventilated, and, as nearly as possible, fireproof. They are a great boon to shippers, and the Chinese are not slow to realise the advantages which the firm offer [sic].20

Continued expansion and improvement through the 1910s attested to the facility’s continued value.21 Though the popularity of Honam as a place of foreign residence waned by the 1880s, its generally peaceful atmosphere, long waterfront, low population density, and hence low property prices made it an ideal place for the unattractive aspects of foreign business, particularly the warehouses. The continued use of the island for renting and building workspace would allow the Shamian foreign concessions to develop as a neighborhood with a more leisurely and bucolic design than had been possible in the Thirteen Factories.

A New Era but a Separate Peace: Dwelling on Shamian The British-constructed island of Shamian (Fig. 2.4) would, in the wake of the destruction of the foreign factories during the Arrow War, become the center of foreign life in Guangzhou, enjoying this status into the 1920s. Shamian (literally “sand-face”) started 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

John Swire & Sons Papers ( JSS I 6/2, Swire Property Book, p. 27), SOAS Archives, University of London. Ibid. Ibid. From Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 790. Ibid. John Swire & Sons Papers ( JSS I 6/2, Swire Property Book, p. 27), SOAS Archives, University of London.

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Fig. 2.4 Aerial photograph of Shamian, c. 1930. Though considerably more built-up than in c. 1870, the leafy and rectilinear impression of early twentieth-century Shamian is still evident in this view. From Liang You Publishing Co., The New Canton.

its existence as a long, low sandbar in the bend of the front reach of the Pearl River, and supported small Chinese forts laid to ruin during the Sino-British wars. In April 1859, principals of British firms suggested the site for new factories to H. M. B. Consul Sir Rutherford Alcock, who pursued estimates for the construction of a granite sea wall around it and other site preparation.22 The site importantly offered protection from riots and fire. The decision to build was finalized in late May 1859, the imperial government leased the site on a quit-rent, and the construction was financed by $280,000 from war indemnities paid by China and $325,000 from the British and French governments.23 Reflecting the proportion of finances provided by each government, the British would possess four-fifths of the island and the French one-fifth. Two main avenues were laid out running east to west, with a third lane that would only later be turned into a wider street running the length of the northern end of the island. Five northsouth roads divided the island up into blocks. A “bund” walk ran along the top of the retaining wall along the riverfront. The area between the bund and Front Avenue, in the earliest era called Consular Road, was retained for public recreation. The blocks of the British concession were divided up into eighty-two lots. Six of these lots were retained for the British consular complex, and the nearly triangular lot at the western terminus of Front Avenue was reserved for a church and parsonage. The rest of the 22. 23.

British Library, MSS.EUR D754. Ibid., p. 8.

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lots were auctioned off in September 1861.24 The easternmost two blocks that formed the French concession were divided into twenty-four lots, but were not built upon for nearly thirty years after the island’s construction. A French doctor visiting Guangzhou during the period noted that there was nothing on the French concession but “a vast space, covered in bad grass, without signs of habitation.”25 Building on the rest of Shamian was at first also tentative. The first permanent buildings to be completed seem to have been Christ Church and its accompanying parsonage. These structures are likely the oldest foreign-designed edifices still extant in Guangzhou today. The British had obtained war indemnities from the Chinese government for the church on the old factory site to the order of $18,464.20, which they promptly organized a committee to spend.26 By early April 1862, the “Canton Church Society” had solicited and received now-lost plans and estimates for the church and parsonage.27 The architect of the church is recorded as a Mr. T. W. Kingsmill “of Hong Kong” and the designer of the parsonage as a Mr. Carl Brumstedt “of Canton.”28 Thomas W. Kingsmill (1837–1910) was a civil engineer and architect who had decided to move to China, later becoming a long-time resident of Shanghai. There, he became the designer of the first Royal Asiatic Society building in 1871, authored an article on the Daodejing, and, as late as 1900, was still running an architectural office.29 Unfortunately far less is known of Brumstedt, other than that he died before the project was fully underway.30 As a result, Kingsmill moved to Guangzhou briefly to oversee both projects.31 Initially, most of the church was to be finished by early January 1863, and the tower in March of that year, but it appears that the building was not completed until at least a year later.32 Stylistically, Christ Church displays a general neoclassical vocabulary, falling stylistically somewhere in between the parish churches of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London and a nineteenth-century adaptation of Renaissance Italian architecture (Fig. 2.5). A rectangular building, with triangular gables on its south (liturgically west) and north (liturgically east) ends and a three-tiered tower over the entrance, it has changed very little since the late nineteenth century. The primary 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

Ibid. Dr. Max Durand-Fardel, La Chine et Les Conditions Sanitaires des Ports (Paris: Librairie J. B. Baillière & Fils, 1877), p. 136. The doctor stated, “Quant à la concession française, ce n’est qu’un vaste espace, couvert de mauvaises herbes, sans vestiges d’occupation.” H. Staples Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938 (Self-published, 1938), p. 34. British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 101). Ibid. The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, Corea, . . . for the Year 1900 (Hong Kong: “Daily Press” Office, 1900), p. 195. He is also continuously found in previous directories from the later nineteenth century. On  Kingsmill in Shanghai, see http://www.earnshaw.com/shanghai-ed-india/tales/library/pott/pott08. htm. British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 101). Ibid. Ibid., and Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 35.

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Fig. 2.5 Christ Church, Shamian, late nineteenth century. The appearance of the church itself remains much the same today, although it is surrounded with a higher wall and is now across from a major hotel (the result of land reclamation and construction c. 1980). This photograph interestingly hints at a polychrome paint scheme. From Long, The New America and the Far East, p. 814.

changes appear to be the replacement of the apse end window, cosmetic alteration of ornament on the tower, the replacement of balustrades with solid panels, and on the first story the replacement of panels with scored rustication. The interior saw a succession of cooling technologies, from nineteenth-century punkahs to ceiling fans by 1938, but these are now gone. The exterior color of the building has also changed. Now a bright yellow with details picked out in white, it was originally “a stone colour in two shades.”33 Otherwise, the simple neoclassical details of the building remain much the same as when it was constructed. The church was estimated to be able to hold 120 people and, in its early years, hosted morning and afternoon services on Sundays and daily prayers at 8:30 a.m.34 From 1885 to the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Christ Church lost its chaplaincy, and ministers from various missionary societies conducted the services.35

33. 34. 35.

Mrs. J. H. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880), p. 5. Mayers, Dennys, and King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, p. 138. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 36.

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The parsonage, probably built a few years after the construction of the church, still survives, but is stripped of much original detail. The outside, originally painted in two shades of “stone” color, is now covered with a monotonous layer of stucco or cement. The main entrance faced the central avenue, with an elevation punctuated by arched windows and a slightly projecting central entrance bay. One benefit of the isolated situation of the parsonage lot was that the arched windows could be carried to all elevations of the building, allowing ample air circulation. The interior retains some of its original detail. The south entrance opens onto a mezzanine landing between a sunken ground floor and the story above. The broad, twelve-paneled south door remains, as do many simple molding details and a few mantles. An intimate description of the building was left by Mrs. Gray, wife of the first chaplain on Shamian, in her memoir, Fourteen Months in Canton: It is in the Italian style of architecture, built in two stories, with two deep verandahs at the back of the house, looking upon the river. You enter a good-sized hall, and on your left is the drawing-room with two windows opening to the ground at each end, and three windows running down the side of it. From the verandah you step on to a narrow piece of grass which separates us from the bund or walk on the river wall. From the front door you face the wide grass walk, which goes down the entire length of the settlement.36

At least the airy quality created by the windows, which caused Mrs. Gray to describe the situation of the house as much as its fabric, has survived to the current day. The two verandahs on the river side of the house simply referred to a two-storied verandah, and are now enclosed. Other buildings on Shamian emerged more slowly, and at first some lots were occupied by temporary structures. The island was described as it appeared in the mid-1860s: For the first two or three years after its completion, the only buildings undertaken were a Church and Parsonage (occupying the extreme western point of the site, and built from the indemnity allotted in compensation for those destroyed by the Chinese in 1856) and three substantial residences erected by as many firms. The remaining lots were for the most part occupied by temporary bungalows constructed of bamboo and matting, which, although delightfully cool as summer residences, were necessarily abandoned in winter for houses rented in Honam. Many of the merchants by whom the lots were purchased in 1861 have since withdrawn altogether from Canton, whilst others have hesitated to expend considerable sums in building while trade (so depressed) preferring to rent the Chinese buildings they occupied in Honam, notwithstanding the discomfort, inconvenience, and heat under which residents suffer (being deprived of southerly winds).37

36. 37.

Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 5. Mayers, Dennys, and King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, p. 133.

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The depressed conditions of trade and, for the Americans, a civil war, combined with the opportunities created by other treaty ports, had slowed the substantial architectural reestablishment of the foreign community. In 1865, only two companies, Moul & Co. and Reiss & Co., listed their offices in a business directory as being on Shamian.38 In the spring of 1866, Guangzhou possessed only around sixty European and American residents, including about a dozen missionaries and the employees of nine British, five American, and four German business houses.39 Besides the church and parsonage, the buildings of the earliest phase of construction on Shamian have been little documented. The British consular complex, constructed in 1865 and replaced with new buildings in the early twentieth century, originally had a complete set of plans, which have since been lost.40 From consular correspondence, however, it is possible to gather an impression of how it was. The initial design involved the same Carl Brumstedt who was the architect of the parsonage; it is plausible that Kingsmill completed supervision of the construction after Brumstedt’s death on this project as well.41 These men seem to have been working in close contact with Charles St. George Cleverly, the surveyor general of Hong Kong.42 The overall arrangement of the complex seems to have been buildings arranged around three sides of a courtyard and surrounded by a “substantial wall.”43 Brumstedt described each of the buildings in a letter to the consul. Of the consul and vice-consul’s residences, the forward two wings of the complex, he said: These two buildings are on the same plan with the difference of the treasury in the Vice-Consul’s residence. They comprise each on the ground floor, a drawing room, dining room, study or private office, storeroom and pantry, hall and staircases, and on the first floor, four bedrooms with two dressing and two bathrooms, the dressing and bathrooms for each of the front rooms to be partitioned off in the front verandah if necessary.44

The needs of the consul’s household had changed dramatically since the Thirteen Factories era, as these men now lived in detached dwellings capable of housing a domestic family unit and probably guests as well. Surviving, if poor-quality, snapshots 38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

The Chronicle and Directory for China, Japan, and the Philippines for 1865 (Hong Kong: “Daily Press” Office, 1865), pp. 166–69. Mayers, Dennys, and King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, p. 138. Ibid., pp. 133–34, and British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373). Reference to the plans was made in the foreign correspondence copybooks. The plans, if they survived into the twentieth century, were most likely burned in a 1948 attack on the second consular complex. Most of the land records for Shamian and other British citizens’ property in Guangzhou were destroyed in this event. British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 5). Mr. Boyce’s 1899/1900 reports to Secretary of Works on Legations and Consulates (WORKS 10-56/6, p. 77), The National Archives, Kew, UK. The attribution of the designs to Cleverly comes only from this source, written nearly forty years after construction. Mayers, Dennys, and King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, pp. 133–34. British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 5, inclosure 2).

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of these buildings from the south around 1900 show hipped-roof masonry buildings with wraparound, segmental, arched verandahs and some sparse neoclassical details.45 This style of dwelling would set the pattern for Shamian architecture for the next three to four decades. Brumstedt went on to note that the interpreter’s and assistant’s residence: constituting one building are also alike in plan, and contain each on the ground floor a drawing room and dining room with pantry on the verandah, hall, and staircases; and on the first floor two bedrooms and one dressing room, and two bathrooms in the north verandah.46

This building had a semi-detached or duplex plan, and was on one end of the back or north range of buildings. The center of the north range of buildings was probably occupied with the consular offices, which Brumstedt said “consist of five rooms, vizt. consul’s, vice consul’s , interpreter’s and assistant’s offices and a count room.”47 This building possessed an arcaded verandah and a triangular pediment over the central entrance.48 Bearing up the other corner of the north range was the new function, now that the British concession was self-governing, of the constable’s quarters, which comprise in the ground floor the lock-up with w.c. attached, storeroom and servant’s room, and room for the boatmen, hall and staircase, the first floor containing for the constable’s use, a bedroom, dining room and sitting room, with a bathroom in the verandah. Attached to the constable’s quarters on the south side is a room for the office coolie’s and a servants washing room and w.c.49

The constable had the least luxurious quarters of the British employees. When the complex was built in 1865, it is probable that the “office coolie” room was for the consulate’s most “professional” local employee, its linguist and packet agent, Ng Mun Ching. The other Cantonese employees were house servants, accommodated in a detached service building: “Each residence has the requisite outhouses for kitchen, servants’ rooms & c. & c. in a separate building for convenience and safe-guard against fire.”50 This spatial removal of domestic servants from the dwelling had profound social implications to be discussed later. The earliest known paintings of Shamian depict it as a newly constituted island, devoid of much vegetation beyond some newly planted trees.51 The first trees were 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Mr. Boyce’s 1899/1900 reports to Secretary of Works on Legations and Consulates (WORKS 10-56/6, p. 78). British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 5, inclosure 2). Ibid. Mr. Boyce’s 1899/1900 reports to Secretary of Works on Legations and Consulates (WORKS 10-56/6, p. 78). British Foreign Office, China Correspondence (FO 17/373, dispatch no. 5, inclosure 2). Ibid. From Patrick Conner, Chinese Views—Western Perspectives, 1770–1870: The Sze Yuan Tang Collection of China Coast Paintings and The Wallem Collection of China Coast Ship Portraits (Hong Kong: Asia House, 1997), plate 5.

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recorded planted on Shamian in spring of 1864, and in 1865 plans for plantings were increased: The belt of trees around Shameen was completed, the vacancies caused by the Typhoon and by acts of evil-disposed persons were filled up. At intervals of 25 feet trees were planted on each side of the Broad Road running East and West and of the cross roads, and in the North side of the Garden Road.52

What vandalism was conducted by “evil-disposed persons” is unknown. A gardener, A Ching (note “A” or “Ah” or “Ya” is a common familiar prefix to names sported by Guangdong tradesmen) was commissioned to plant seven different varieties of trees around the island, including willow, mango, and loquat, in addition to banyan.53 Interestingly, in the early paintings, the buildings between the church and the consular complex are portrayed as being very much in the vein of the Thirteen Factories or the factories on Honam, being in essence two-story, Cantonese vernacular, ranged buildings with side-gabled roofs. This is the only record of such building types on Shamian; it is probable that the buildings were short-lived. It may be that these were the facilities of the first handful of companies to locate on the concession. If some belonged to Reiss & Co. or Moul & Co., their short existence would make sense, given that the former company disappears from Guangzhou directory listings by 1870 and the latter by 1874. Views dating from the 1870s show that the hipped-roofed rectangular buildings of the consulate and parsonage were prototypes for later construction. A photo shows that out of the canopy of young trees protrude numerous blocky, hipped-roof buildings, some now along the central avenue in addition to the ones on the front avenue (Fig. 2.6). In the front row are the parsonage, church, commissioner of customs residence, the primary offices of Deacon & Co., the low-slung German consulate, and Augustine Heard & Co.’s premises. Deacon & Co.’s secondary “bungalow” is visible behind the parsonage. The mountains in the distance can only be imagined today, as modern Guangzhou’s dense urbanism blocks them out completely from the river. A second view dating from around 1870 takes the form of an engraving after a photograph by Scots photographer and writer John Thomson, and was published over a decade later in the British serial The Graphic (Fig. 2.7).54 Taken almost certainly from the top of a pawn shop tower located between the main steamer landing near the old factory site and Shamian, the engraving looks over the entire island facing almost due west. Rows of hipped and pyramidal tiled roofs stretch out in two rows along the front and main avenues. An apparent third row of buildings between the two mostly

52. 53. 54.

Trustees of the Canton Garden Fund, as quoted in Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 10. Ibid., pp. 10–11. The Graphic, September 22, 1883, pp. 292–93.

Fig. 2.6 View of Shamian, c. early 1870s (detail). This shows the front row from left to right, the parsonage, Christ Church (followed by a pair of buildings peeking in from the second row), the commissioner of customs residence, Deacon & Co.’s front office, the German consulate, and Heard  & Co. The buildings on the second row are more difficult to identify, but the one on the far left is undoubtedly Deacon & Co.’s bungalow. Photo from author’s collection.

Fig. 2.7 “Shamien, the Foreign Settlement” (after a photograph by John Thomson). The looming portrayal of the Chinese city in the foreground contrasts dramatically with the orderly European village on Shamian in this view intended for British popular consumption. The portrayal of cultural difference, or “otherness,” is sharply delineated. From The Graphic, September 22, 1883, in author’s collection, also with consent of the Illustrated London News Picture Library.

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in reality consisted of some offices of the foreign-staffed Imperial Maritime Customs (on the left, the nearest building after the unidentified modest hipped-roof structure) and the rear range of the British consulate (the three buildings next along that side of the central avenue), with some service buildings beyond. The ordered and open dwellings and offices of Shamian contrast strikingly with the dense and organic Cantonese neighborhood in the foreground. The defensive nature of the island becomes readily apparent, as the canal or moat removes foreigners from the city. The island is connected only with two small bridges on the east and north, carefully regulated by Chinese policemen in guardhouses.55 The conventions of the image, with dark and dense lines in the foreground and lighter and more gradual shading in the background, only serve to emphasize the separateness of the foreigners’ existence. This detachment from the city was frequently noted by visitors, among them Constance F. Gordon-Cummings, an intrepid world traveler of the Victorian era, when she stated, “Indescribable, however, is the contrast between the peace and calm which here reign and the crowds and dirt and bustle of the great Chinese city, from which it is only separated by a narrow canal bridged at two points.”56 The contrast is even more notable, and more Sinophobic, in the writings of another lady world traveler, Mrs. Brassey. She commented of Shamian, “From the quiet country park, full of large villas and pretty gardens, you emerge into a filthy city, full of a seething, dirty population, and where smells and sights of the most disgusting description meet you at every turn.”57 The contrast of the Western settlement with the adjacent western suburbs of Guangzhou was too pronounced not to be intentional. Though physical and security barriers, in addition to the open environment, served to keep much of the local traffic of the city out, residents of Shamian were always reminded of their surroundings, however, not only by the city across the canal, but also by the boat people, who frequently used the shelter of the island’s canals and who refused to be moved by the protests of the foreigners.58 The impression of Shamian during this era as a quiet, pastoral but orderly suburb was much voiced by contemporary inhabitants and visitors. Mrs. Archdeacon Gray, resident for over a year, noted in the spring of 1877: It is a small island, only a mile and a half in circumference. The bund encircling it is ornamented by a row of banyan trees, which look so green at this time of year. The houses in the settlement are very handsome and the whole of it is beautifully laid out. The walks are all bordered by the banyan-trees. I am much struck with the tropical plants I have seen in the gardens, especially with the palm-trees.59

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Mundy, Canton and the Bogue, p. 80. This source indicates the practice was well in place by the early 1870s. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 35. Mrs. Brassey, Around the World in the Yacht ‘Sunbeam’ (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1889), p. 353. Rev. J. MacGowan, Pictures of Southern China (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1897), p. 296. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 6.

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Annie Ward Spinney, wife of Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner William Spinney of Salem, Massachusetts, concurred with the assessment of the edenic appeal of the place. Mrs. Spinney came to China and lived in various cities as a result of her husband’s acquisition of various posts with the Chinese governmental customs department, run by foreigners as an immediate consequence of concessions made after the Arrow War. Upon taking up residence on Shamian in July 1887, she wrote to her mother, Mary Ward: The houses are in two rows, and we are on the best row, the outer, near the river, where we get a delightful breeze all day and night. The great tennis courts beautifully green lie between us and the water and they do look finely in the afternoon when lots of people are flying about and playing there The whole place is a garden. There are trees in long straight rows or scattered about here and there and there are flowers everywhere. We went round the whole island yesterday and did not see one really unsightly spot.60

The tennis courts were formally organized in the late 1870s, and have existed in various forms down to the current day on the same spot, in front of the block immediately east of the British consulate. The park-like landscape of the island even took on a slightly rural cast, as visitor Mrs. Brassey noted, “At the back there are compounds with kitchen gardens, and under the trees dairy cows are grazing. Every household appears to supply itself with garden and farm produce, and the whole scene has a most English, home-like appearance.”61 Even earlier than the arrival of the tennis courts, a public flower garden in front of the British consulate had appeared, as a British visitor of six months’ residence, Walter William Mundy, recounted in a passage that seems to imply that the utopian surroundings directly caused blissful social harmony: The settlement is so loved by all, that it is often called the Paradise, as everything is supposed to be nearly perfection, all the residents being regarded as fellow members of one large family, from which the backbiting and scandal so rife in small communities is supposed to be entirely banished. The roads are of grass, with beautiful avenues of trees; outside these are good paths of chunam. There is also a small flower garden, where the children play.62

The arrival of women and children, as indicated both by the informants and by the descriptions above, influenced the desire for public amenities and the atmosphere of a foreign community no longer strictly dominated by hard-drinking bachelors and husbands removed from their wives. Among the early recreational amenities other

60. 61. 62.

Annie Ward Spinney Letters, Box 1, Folder 4, letter dated July 4/6, 1887. Phillips Library of Peabody Essex Museum. Brassey, Around the World in the Yacht ‘Sunbeam’, pp. 352–53. Mundy, Canton and the Bogue, p. 82.

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than those already mentioned, but without much visual documentation, were a public hall with a stage and dance floor, a bowling alley, boathouses, and a club with billiards and reading rooms.63 The billiards tables were apparently staffed with “markers” who were “Chinese boys, many of whom play a good game.”64 All of the pleasant aspects of Shamian led to a further disengagement from the city proper. As Mrs. GordonCumming noted, “Here is transplanted an English social life so completely fulfilling that the majority of the inhabitants rarely enter the city!”65 There is also a hint that the pride with which the Shamian denizens beautified their island was rooted in the rivalry of the now-reduced Guangzhou foreign community with their peers in other treaty ports. It was observed of former US Secretary of State William H. Seward, upon his visit to Guangzhou at the end of 1870, that “he found the foreign settlement more spacious and elegant than the people of Shanghai and Hong Kong allow it to be.”66

Presenting a European Face: A Survey of Houses on Shamian, 1870–1900 Foreigners chose to articulate their cultural difference from the Cantonese of the surrounding city by building houses that reflected European identities, though many of the buildings were in fact constructed by local contractors. A small collection of images can serve to illustrate a good cross-section of the polished offices/residences. As already mentioned, most buildings on the island in this period had two stories and hipped or pyramidal roofs, and, as both Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Gordon-Cumming indicate, they were stylistically thought of as specimens of “Italian architecture.”67 There were no Italian designers, nor even Italian residents, engaged in the construction of Shamian’s dwellings. What this seems to have meant to the observant ladies was that the buildings were not only neoclassical, and drawing at least vaguely on Italian Renaissance architectural precedents, but also that most sported arcaded verandahs, presumably conjuring up images of Italian palaces, townhouses, and villas. In essence, that the buildings were classical and adapted to a warm climate seem to be the qualifications that warranted such a stylistic assignment. The building type, whose origins remain obscure but are possibly connected with British India, was new to Guangzhou but probably already in use in other treaty ports and, most notably and influentially for the region, in the colony of Hong Kong. Some of the first “close-up” documentation of the initial generation of foreign houses on Shamian was provided by a disaster that damaged and destroyed some

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Ibid, pp. 82–83. Ibid. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 34. Olive Risley Seward (ed.), William H. Seward’s Travels around the World (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), p. 235. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 5, and Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 34.

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of them, namely a waterspout accompanying the typhoon of April 7, 1878. In the United States consular correspondence for that year, a map of Shamian (Fig. 2.8) was included to show the path of the waterspout and its damage. The plan shows the locations of each residence existing on Shamian, including the US consulate, which had just moved from a building on the north side of the canal to a rented dwelling on the island.68 It indicates that about twenty-six different dwellings and offices stood upon on the island. Many of these buildings occupied adjacent front and back lots, one for the main residence and one for the support buildings behind. A photographic album in the British Library contains several images showing buildings after the hurricane, including some views of the much more devastating effects of the storm on the traditional Cantonese buildings in the western suburbs.69 The views, published by the China Mail out of Hong Kong, include two buildings in the direct

Fig. 2.8 Plan of Shamian with drawn path of waterspout, 1878. This map shows the individual lots of Shamian and the path of the waterspout’s devastation. Despatches from the United States Consuls in Canton, 1790–1906, United States National Archives and Records Administration.

68. 69.

Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform] (Washington, DC: National Archives, 1965). Photographic Album, India Office Collections (373/3), British Library.

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path of the waterspout. The first view (Fig. 2.9) shows the residence of Pustau & Co., located in the second row of buildings, on the corner of the Central Avenue (a.k.a. Parkes’ Avenue) and Bridge Road.70 The caption states that the west wall, between two and three feet thick, hence of load-bearing masonry, was detached from the rest of the building, and that the silk godowns and boundary walls, which seem to have been a standard feature of the commercial houses of the era, were completely destroyed. The second view (Fig. 2.10) shows a couple of buildings on the more densely builtupon Front Avenue (a.k.a. Consular Road).71 The building in the foreground with the large arched verandah bay is indicated by the caption as the German consulate, while the building on the other side of Bridge Road is identified by the map as Heard & Co.’s house. The apparently quite badly damaged building at the edge of the frame is Jardine, Matheson & Co.’s house. Here the walls or balustrade-clad railings that surrounded

Fig. 2.9 Pustau & Co. after typhoon/waterspout, 1878. Though falling within an overall typology, small stylistic touches gave each house its own distinct identity. The small, semicircular projection in the central bay perhaps acted to establish this firm’s identity. Copyright: The British Library Board (India Office Records, Photographic Album 337/3-35).

70. 71.

Ibid., image 35. Ibid., image 38.

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Fig. 2.10 German consulate, Heard & Co., and Jardine & Matheson after 1878 typhoon/waterspout. The original German consulate building on Shamian was distinguished by its broadly arched and bowed bays on its façade. Heard & Company on the other hand seems a rather utilitarian box, reflecting the fact that the firm’s headquarters had moved to Hong Kong by this point. Copyright: The British Library Board (India Office Records, Photographic Album 337/3-38).

Shamian lots during this era, enclosing yards and gardens, are clearly shown, if in a rather damaged state. These images of Shamian houses of the 1870s show a degree of uniformity of size and type, largely differentiated by stylistic features such as verandah shape and ornament. Hipped-roofed, white- or stone-colored, and verandahclad structures lined neatly in rows were undoubtedly the general impression of late nineteenth-century Shamian. Enclosed rooms on the second-story side verandahs of both Pustau & Co. and Heard & Co. seem to indicate that the practice of placing bathrooms on the verandah, as mentioned in the descriptions of the British consulate buildings, was quite common. Pustau & Co.’s classical pilasters, its stone or more probably ceramic porch balustrade, and its roof parapet, show considerable expense was invested in an elegant street appearance. The German consulate is somewhat more restrained, with segmental verandah arches linked by a running stringcourse, but also with a balustrade, displaying a functional concern with the depth and ample bowed front of its verandah. Heard & Co.’s house was perhaps one of the more economical houses of the era on Shamian, sporting only plain porch piers on the secondstory verandah, as well as prefabricated cast-iron railings.

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The commissioner for Guangzhou’s branch of the Imperial Maritime Customs lived in a stately house on the double lot across the “Parsonage Road” from the English church. It was almost certainly one of the first-generation buildings on the island. A photograph of the building in 1893 (Fig. 2.11) shows a four-bayed, arcaded verandah, an interesting tiled roof composed of multiple pyramids, and a rounded central bay on the side containing a secondary entrance.72 In addition to the curved side bay, the scrolled brackets supporting broken segmental arched pediments over the side windows lend the building a hint of generalized baroque-revival or “Second Empire” flavor. What is apparently a metal aviary pavilion sits in the front garden. The semi-detached house built for the customs deputy commissioners and/or married assistants is also recorded in a surviving photograph (Fig. 2.12). There was

Fig. 2.11 Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner’s residence, c. 1893 (Photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). The commissioner of the Western-run Chinese customs service enjoyed a privileged position across from Christ Church, with a whole house allocated for himself and his family. The large yard, complete with metal aviary, is notable. Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

72.

Anna Davis Drew Album C, Harvard-Yenching Library. Anna Drew, an American, was the wife of a deputy commissioner of customs.

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Fig. 2.12 Imperial Maritime Customs deputy commissioner and married assistants’ semi-detached house— with three-story, multiple-occupancy structure in the background, c. 1870 (not attributed). From author’s collection.

no indication of the building being a double residence, excepting the presence of two front doors. Overall, the building seems to obey the hierarchy of official rank, given that it possesses less exterior ornament than the commissioner’s residence. Notably, this photograph, as many others intended as souvenirs of foreigners’ time in Canton, hides any hint of the presence of a Chinese location or the local servants who served as household retainers. An early twentieth-century promotional publication illustrates a couple of other buildings of the 1870s and 1880s. The original building (Fig. 2.13, top) of the Arnhold, Karberg & Co. firm, a business based in Denmark and the German states but with many American and British employees and business connections, was constructed in 1872 and destroyed in the first decade of the twentieth century.73 This building was elaborate indeed, with front and side in antis pediment-capped porticos, round medallions in second-story arch spandrels and pediments, and first-story piers broken by a central molding supporting segmental arches revealing a hint of Victorian machine aesthetic. This building would have been just east of Heard & Co. and Jardine and 73.

See Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, pp. 788–90.

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Fig. 2.13 Arnhold, Karberg & Co. buildings on Shamian (1872, top; 1905 replacement, bottom). The Danishfounded import firm originally inhabited a house that combined neoclassical pediments with banding and segmental arches influenced by Victorian machine aesthetics. The 1905 building that replaced it was one of the first reinforced-concrete buildings on the China Coast (see Chapter 4). From Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, p. 789.

Matheson, so an accurate impression of Front Avenue during these decades starts to form. From the same source as that containing the Arnhold Karberg house comes an image of the original form of the Shewan Tomes & Co. office building (Fig. 2.14).74 This building was probably constructed in about 1881 as the new offices of the 74.

Ibid., p. 792.

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Fig. 2.14 Shewan Tomes & Co.’s offices (likely built as Russell & Co.’s Residence, c. 1881). The balustrades and arches of this building’s verandah are very typical of foreign architecture in Canton during the period. From Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 792.

American firm of Russell & Co., which had finally decided to move its offices onto Shamian. Shewan Tomes, a British firm, bought out the assets of Russell & Co. when it went out of business several years after the likely construction date of this building.75 In many respects a rather restrained arcaded structure, it sports circle medallions in arch spandrels like the Arnhold Karberg building, suggesting perhaps that its builders were affiliated more with the earlier period of construction than with the fin de siècle. This building still exists in a much altered form as a second story has been added and much detail has been lost in a twentieth-century re-stuccoing. A now vanished building that, with its narrowed end-bays, seems to have borne relation to the offices of Russell & Co. and Shewan Tomes & Co. can be firmly dated. In 1888, the Shameen Hotel (Fig. 2.15), the first hotel on the concession, was constructed facing the north canal as a double-hipped-roof block with a one-story western wing.76 The circular spandrel ornament and squat, plain piers bear a very firm resemblance to the Shewan Tomes & Co. building, though the rusticated two-story end piers give the hotel a slightly “dressier” appearance. A group of semi-detached or duplex-plan residences were also constructed in this period. The London Missionary Society residence was one of the first of this type 75. 76.

Another enclosed map in Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform] from a letter in1886 shows the lot currently occupied by the building as Russell & Co.’s. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, pp. 20, 22. Also, the photograph from an advertisement in R. C. Hurley, The Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macau (Hong Kong: Noronha & Co., 1895).

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Fig. 2.15 Shameen Hotel, c. 1895, by R. C. Hurley. The original Shameen Hotel, which faced the north canal and the western suburbs of the Chinese city, seems to have been two typical late nineteenth-century foreign houses butted together. From Hurley, The Tourist’s Guide to Canton the West River and Macao (advertisement).

to be built on Shamian. The property in old British concession lot number 56 was chosen and built upon in 1871 to house the supervisors for the group’s missions in Guangzhou.77 Though no visual existence exists for the structure as actually built, it probably bore close resemblance to the plans and elevations submitted by a contractor, “Aling,” who was later underbid by one of his peers (Pl. 17).78 The hipped roof and arcaded wraparound porch are recognizable as typical of the era on Shamian. The building is principally set apart by its double entry and stripped-down ornamentation. The greater significance here is that the elevation and plan by “Aling” illustrate the impact that Western patronage was having on Chinese building practice. Previous to this era, Chinese builders worked in modular fashion and from verbal instructions, but the necessity of cross-cultural transactions would demand the adoption of Western conventions of providing a plan, elevation, and, eventually, section. Other buildings and fragments of buildings still exist from this period of Shamian’s construction. Another building of the duplex type was constructed for the mission supervisors of the British Wesleyan Methodist Mission in 1886, immediately to the 77.

78.

London Missionary Society, Council for World Missions, South China Missions. Incoming Correspondence (Box 7, Folder 1, Jackets B and D) and Reports (Box 1, Folder 6), SOAS, University of London. A plan for this building also existed but has since gone missing. Ibid. There were plans for the building as constructed, but they were in outgoing correspondence, a body of documents that has not survived.

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west of Russell & Co.’s new building.79 This building suffered a catastrophic fire but the façade remains (Fig. 2.16). The building is distinguished by the arches of its verandah being tied to the cornice by ornamental keystones, the fine dentils in the cornice, and the triangular pediments over its twin entrances. Another double house from this era or the decade after still exists in its entirety adjacent the old London Missionary Society house site, with a façade even more heavily decorated with columns, piers, and pediments. A pair of buildings facing south on Central Avenue in the second block from the western tip of the island (old lot numbers 43 and 44) could have been built as early as the 1870s. At least one, and perhaps both, buildings were associated with the German firm of Carlowitz & Co., and originally would have been stylistic twins. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the eastern building of the pair acquired the addition of a full third story and was firmly identified as the premises of Carlowitz & Co. (Fig. 2.17).80 An historical photograph of the rear of these buildings (right) and the adjacent Canton Club (left) shows that they were originally the same height and even seem to have shared service buildings in the rear of the lot (Fig. 2.18).81 The

Fig. 2.16 Wesleyan Methodist Mission residence. A  semi-detached house, this building would have had the entrances in middle bays of the two halves, rather than adjacent each other. The voussoirs, pilasters, and pediment suggest that various missionary societies could pursue whatever amount of architectural elaboration their budgets could support. Photo by author, 2002.

79. 80. 81.

Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, China Correspondence, Canton. Box 489. Letters dated May 12 and July 14, 1886. SOAS, University of London. See photograph in Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 794. This photograph is in the Peabody Essex Museum Collections (PH 34.45) and is labeled simply “Shameen from canal side, rear of some lots,” but the buildings are identifiable in profile, cornice details, and position with respect to Christ Church.

Fig. 2.17 Late nineteenth-century residence, inhabited by Carlowitz & Co. in 1908. This building originally had two stories and was the near double of its neighbor. The third story was likely added in the early twentieth century. Photo by author, 2002.

Fig. 2.18 “Shameen Island, occupied by foreigners,” 1885–87, by Afong Lai. This represents Shamian from the canal side (north). Here are the rear of lots for German firm residences (see Fig. 2.17), in their original state, on right and Canton Club on left. The German firms shared a two-story outbuilding, though only the eastern (left) one had another one-story building that, given its lack of a chimney, was likely a storehouse. The latter building also had what apparently was a kitchen garden surrounded by a hedge. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (PH34.45).

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two buildings share many features, including corner quoins, first-floor porch piers with geometrically patterned moldings, second-story Tuscan columns paired over the front entrances, and central passage plans. They also only have verandahs on their front elevations, a perhaps necessary economy of space as they seem to have been built on subdivided lots, the adjacent Canton Club owning the other half of the lot occupied by the eastern building. An unassuming building on the eastern corner of the westernmost block of Central Avenue might be fairly early. Its plain rectangular piers on lower and upper stories, which now have been in-filled but were originally supports for a wraparound balcony, recall the piers of Heard & Co.’s only slightly fancier building on Front Avenue. Apparently built as the house of the British firm Birley & Co., by the turn of the century it had been purchased as the final home of Deacon & Co., an active British tea and import-export firm that had occupied other sites on Shamian since the 1870s. 82 Another modest house (Pl. 18) of Dr. J. F. Wales, the medical officer for the Canton branch of the Imperial Maritime Customs from the mid-1880s through the mid-1890s, stands today as a fairly intact relic of the period. This house, with its naïve proportions and wide banded arches, with keystones that seem to recall an earlier architectural period, was, with the hotel, probably one of the first buildings to face the north canal. Starting in 1889, the French finally began to build upon their fifth of the island, and to allow other nationals to build upon it.83 In a photograph from the first decade of the twentieth century (Fig. 2.19), the Front Avenue row of buildings in the French concession appears behind the new gazebo in the French garden.84 On the far right (east) is the building of a French business, the next building was the original Banque de L’Indo-Chine building, and the next building to the left was the French consulate.85 All but the building on the far left survive today, but only the building on the far right retains much of its original detail. The main departure of these buildings from the precedents of previous decades is the consistent abandonment of verandahs on the sides of the buildings, presumably for economy of space. The French post office, in the southeastern curve of the island, dates from this era and survives in a remodeled, somewhat Art Deco mode. A striking, intact building from this period at the eastern end of the French concession survives in the form of a row of two-story townhouses once inhabited by South Asian traders (Fig. 2.20). It is still the initial sight the visitor confronts when crossing 82. 83. 84. 85.

See Robin Hutcheon, The Merchants of Shameen: The Story of Deacon & Co. (Hong Kong: Deacon & Co., 1990), pp. 45, 50–51. C. C. Wakefield, Future Trade in the Far East, (London: Wittaker & Co., 1896), p. 60. John D. Long, The New America and the Far East (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1907), Vol. 5, p. 1116. See Wang Tan, Ma Xiuzhi, et al., The Architectural Heritage of Modern China: Guangzhou (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongpu chubanshe, 1992), p. 47. Attributions from this book are not always accurate, but for these buildings I have few other sources, although the Banque d’Indochine attribution is verifiable in Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 792.

Fig. 2.19 Front row of French concession, c. 1900. This view illustrates the separate French garden with its gazebo, and the 1890s first generation of building on the far eastern end of Shamian. From Long, The New America and the Far East, facing p. 1116.

Fig. 2.20 Row house, built c. 1890. Increasing demand for space in the last decade of the nineteenth century led to the introduction of the row house typology into the architectural language of the foreign community, particularly with regards to the South Asian traders conducting business under British protection. Photo by author, 2006.

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the eastern bridge onto the island. These four row-houses present a tidy appearance with their lightly scored first-floor rustication and second-story Roman Doric colonnade. Another row-house complex, once known as Karanjia Terrace, also still exists perpendicular to the Central Avenue in the first block after the French concession. The introduction of the new building type was part of the larger trend at the fin de siècle to accommodate an increasing population on the island. Even before the French started construction on their end of Shamian, United States Consul Charles Seymour charted the increasing pressures on the island in 1886: The officials of the Chinese Maritime Customs (foreigners) are being transferred from dwellings in the Chinese portion of Canton to dwellings on Shamien with the foreign community as fast as desirable buildings can be bought, or hired for long leases. Several new commercial firms and establishments have been opened on Shamien the past two years. Thus, the demand for desirable and well located buildings on Shamien has nearly exhausted available sites and buildings; and unless some arrangement is made to secure one of the two or three desirable locations by a lease of five or ten years, the United States Consulate will be driven back to some inferior structure on one of the rear lots facing the canal, or sent across the canal into “Chinatown,” or across the river to Honam, away from the foreign community and business houses.86

The Americans routinely rented rather than owned their consulate, so such an influx of inhabitants on Shamian was obviously of great concern. At the beginning of the next century, the trend to increase the size of buildings on Shamian would escalate dramatically, but until that period the types of two-story dwellings illustrated above shaped the lives of most of the foreigners in the city.

Western Official and Commercial Buildings Outside Shamian The general trend of foreign dwelling during the 1860s and 70s was migration from Honam onto concession lots on Shamian. There were, however, several exceptions to this. The major commercial attempt to settle beyond the limits of Shamian was undertaken by the American commercial houses of Russell & Co. and Smith Archer & Co., which attempted to construct an “American concession” on part of the old factory site. The British and French governments maintained official residences in the form of yamen inside the wall of the “Old” or “Manchu” city. There are also a few recorded but poorly documented private residences outside of Shamian. It is worth noting that, well into the 1880s, Gideon Nye, who had begun his career in the Thirteen Factories era, was comfortable enough with his Cantonese neighbors to maintain his residence on Honam where a Portuguese-run hotel also existed. Some Imperial Maritime Customs 86.

Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 116) to Asst. Sec. of State James D. Porter from Consul Seymour, November 15, 1886.

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employees had residences in the city suburbs. Just on the other side of the eastern canal from Shamian, the main office and storage building of the Imperial Maritime Customs existed as a large framed building with a jerkinhead roof and cupola. Another official and primarily work-related facility was the British vice-consul’s residence, offices, constable’s quarters, and jail at Whampoa. This complex existed from 1864 to circa 1890, and is documented only by a site plan.87 The site was sold to the Imperial Maritime Customs in 1890, which replaced the earlier buildings with a plain, if functional, twostory combined office/residence, which still stands.88 While most of the buildings and complexes mentioned above were largely functional in their locations, some were motivated largely by the dynamics of identity and power. The “American concession” and the consular yamen specifically are worth examining in terms of how they made ideological statements with their placement within the city. The most notable business house outside of the British concession in the 1870s was a double house on a large lot, intended to be an “American concession.” Russell & Co. leased the site from the current scion of the Howqua merchant family in 1867, and then in 1879 they purchased it outright.89 Russell & Co. intended to develop the site, close by the main steamer landing, as the concession ground for many if not all of the American firms in Guangzhou. Only the Russell & Co.–Smith Archer house was ever built. Some plans exist for both the site and the Russell–Smith Archer building itself, but are currently too fragile to be reproduced.90 The initial plans for the site show a row of four double houses, of which the building photographed by John Thomson (Fig. 2.21) around 1870 was intended to be the second from the western end of the site.91 There also survives a later (1879) site plan (Pl. 19), which shows that this building was the only residence to be constructed there.92 The building itself is of the hippedroof, arcade-clad verandah type already discussed in conjunction with Shamian, with the exception of its ample dimensions. The front verandah was twelve bays wide. The construction of the American concession site and house was accompanied by building contracts with the contractor Aling, documents rare in the history of nineteenth-century Chinese building. The contracts, specifically between Russell & Co. and Aling, “Chinese Carpenter and Contractor” of the Feng or “Foong” firm were written out both in English and Chinese.93 Several contracts exist for different aspects of the building of the “American concession.” One contract was drawn up for the leveling and filling in of the site, for the wall around the site, and for Russell & Co.’s pack-house. One contract was drawn up for the sea wall that kept the river at bay in 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

WORKS 10-55/2, The National Archives, Kew, UK. Ibid. Perkins-Russell Papers, Folder 26b-8. Baker Library, Harvard University. Perkins-Russell Papers, Folder 26b-13. Baker Library, Harvard University. See Thomson, Illustrations of China and Its People, Vol. 1, Plate 16. Perkins-Russell Papers, Folder 26b-13. Baker Library, Harvard University. Perkins-Russell Papers, Folder 26b-7.

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Fig. 2.21 American concession, c. 1870 (photo by John Thomson). A photograph of the American concession as built, which only ever housed two firms. The compound was built on the former Thirteen Factories site, thus the enormous amount of cleared space around it, where poor Chinese presumably attracted by employment on the riverfront apparently built the illustrated shanties. From Thomson, China and Its People, Vol. 1, Plate XVI.

front of the site. The respective Russell & Co. and Smith Archer & Co. halves of the house actually had separated contracts, even though Russell was acting for the other firm in the construction. One reason for the piecing out of jobs into separate agreements may have been Aling’s apparent preference for being paid as the job progressed rather than all in one sum at the end. The Chinese and English contracts are in fact good translations; there is little or no variance between them, barring the problem of one word versus a description for certain objects. The contracts had been accompanied by plans drawn by Aling, or at least bearing his stamp, “Aling Canton.” The contracts also bore the stamp and Aling’s “chop.” The contracts are very specific with regard to materials and dimensions. The parties also agreed that the contractor would provide all materials, with the exception of, for the house, the iron grates and iron door to the treasury. The specificity of the contract is a testament to the thoroughness with which the Russell & Co. employees had now become accustomed to conducting business with local merchants and craftsmen—a clear agreement could head off future conflict. As for Aling, he was the most respected contractor among the Western community, and could readily produce plans and Western-style architectural drawings in plan, section, and elevation for his

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projects, such as those for the London Missionary Society house on Shamian (Pl. 17). Whether local builders’ ability to adopt Western design techniques was developed at the end of the Shisan Hang era or during the construction of Shamian, it difficult to say. What is certain is that, by the 1860s, Cantonese builders had learned, either from locally resident foreigners or professionals called in from Hong Kong, to meet all the design needs of the bulk of Guangzhou’s foreign community. They would continue to do so until the arrival of permanent Western-style architectural offices in the early twentieth century. The American concession was intended to lie within the precincts of the western suburbs. This may have reflected the greater comfort felt by American firms at being neighbors to the Cantonese populace, though it should be emphasized that the new American factory grounds were surrounded by a wall of at least six feet in height and a guardhouse by its south gate.94 Russell & Co. was, however, generally one of the foreign firms most respected by Cantonese traders. The loyalty of their local employees also reflected their positive reputation. The American firms may well have desired a separate site to emphasize their distance from aggressive British foreign policy, and therefore make themselves less likely to be a target of Cantonese riots. The development of the Old Factory site moreover reflected concerns over rights of residence.95 The Americans seem to have been very concerned about being bullied by the British administration should they move onto Shamian.96 The uneasy relations between the Americans and the British reached their high point when the Americans, particularly Russell & Co., requested a share of the Canton Garden fund, the indemnity paid by the Chinese for the destruction of the gardens in front of the Thirteen Factories, in order to plant the new “American concession” grounds.97 The Americans reasoned that they had heavily invested in the gardens that were destroyed and therefore were entitled to a share of the funds.98 The British, however, as the victorious power coming out of the Arrow War, had control of the indemnity and told the Americans that they were free to move to Shamian, as some German firms had already done, refusing to allow the Americans any share of it.99 With the exception of the traditionally Anglophile Augustine Heard & Co., the alienation of the American community from the British development on Shamian took a while to fade. The American consulate was in a building on the north side of the Shamian canal until the mid-1870s. It was not until about 1881, after Smith Archer left Guangzhou, that Russell & Co. gave up on its less-than-lively “American concession” and moved onto Shamian’s Central Avenue. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

Ibid. See Perkins-Russell Papers, Folder 26b-10, and Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859– 1938, pp. 11–14. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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The implications and powers of residence are even more clearly illustrated in the instance of the British and French consular yamen. During the occupation of Guangzhou during the Arrow War, British and French officials and troop detachments occupied several of the yamen, or residences and offices, of Chinese officials within the walled city. The British would keep possession of part of the yamen of the city’s head Manchu general as their consulate. The French set up a consulate in the “treasurer’s” yamen. The governor’s yamen (Ye’s former residence) in the “new” or southern part of the walled city, was claimed by the French for the Catholic Church, and would later be demolished to become the site of the Catholic cathedral. Given that the yamen had been primary targets during the siege of the city, repairs needed to be undertaken. British reporter G. Wingrove Cooke noted in February 1858 of the yamen of the Manchu general: It is rapidly returning to its former grandeur. In an incredibly short space of time the Chinese workmen, set in motion by barbarian dollars, have repapered all the walls, botched up all the holes, and, mowing ways through the bamboo jungle, have discovered little nooks with terraces and small bridges, and curious pavilions—gentle accessories to the mighty halls which are to form the quarters of the forces.100

The part of the Manchu general’s yamen that the British adopted as consular quarters is well documented. In some consular correspondence to the Department of Works from the 1880s, the British part of the complex is described: The grounds at the Yamun are divided into two enclosures each of which covers an extent of about four acres. The outer enclosure forms the deer park, the inner contains the dwelling houses and gardens most of which are in the Chinese style.101

A more detailed description of the consul’s city residence is offered by photographer John Thomson: The consular residence is entered by a round opening in the wall, through which we can catch a glimpse, as we approach, of a court adorned with rockeries, of gold fish in vases, and pots of rare shrubs set in ornamental china stands. The house itself consists of two flats, and is purely Chinese in its construction. The only other buildings of importance in the enclosure are a suite of apartments built in a row, and approached by granite steps, frequently used for the accommodation of visitors. . . . The photograph is taken from the steps of the row of buildings just noticed, showing a portion of the garden.102

100. George Wingrove Cooke, China: Being “The Times” Special Correspondence from China in the Years 1857–58 (London: G. Routledge & Co., 1858), p. 365. 101. Notice “Maintenance of the Yamen grounds at Canton,” 1883, WORKS 10-37/2. UK The National Archives, Kew, UK. 102. Thomson, Illustrations of China and Its People, Vol. 1, Plate 17.

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A photograph from around 1890 (Fig. 2.22) shows the architectural fragments in the garden at closer range, revealing the details of the elaborate stone stairs that are part and parcel of officially sanctioned, high-status Chinese architecture, with the ruin of a two-story building beyond. Architecturally, the British consul’s portion of the yamen was less impressive than the southern parts of the complex, still occupied by the Manchu general. The “two flats” occupied by the consul as his house were a simple, three-bay-wide, two-story garden pavilion.103 This pavilion is shown from the side in an 1893 photograph (Fig. 2.23). The entrance through the moon gate described above is visible, though to whom the sign inscribed in English, “PRIVATE,” by the entrance was directed is a mystery. The rows of plants in pots are typical of Guangdong, or Lingnan, gardening. By the turn of the century, a tennis court had been installed in the park.104 Though a few attempts had been made to make the complex amenable to the British consuls, the buildings were largely as they were upon rehabilitation after the Arrow War.

Fig. 2.22 British consular yamen (photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). The elaborate marble balustrade signals that this was previously the garden of a rather high-status Chinese building. Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

103. Some photographs of later date survive of parts of the complex. See, for example, photograph album 08-19B-(148-155) in Hong Kong Public Records Office. 104. Ibid.

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Fig. 2.23 British consular yamen, showing residence (photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). Another photo showing a section of a fairly extensive traditional Chinese courtyard complex, this also contains the hints of the work of a Cantonese gardener, with the flowerpots carefully lined up along the entrance walk. Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

The British consular yamen was, in fact, rented from the Chinese government to ensure right of entry into the city gates.105 Although some consuls lived in the yamen, or at least took an interest in it, the Department of Works files reveal that the complex would periodically fall into rather complete disrepair when the buildings and gardens were neglected.106 By 1908, the complex was of little interest to the consulate and it was in turn subleased to the British cadets of Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements for use as a residence when they were sent to Guangzhou to study the Chinese language.107 This use was also eventually abandoned, but the property was not returned to the Chinese until 1928.108 The primary function, then, of British occupation of portions of the Manchu general’s yamen involved relations with the imperial Chinese government. Rather than being primarily for the comfort and accommodation of the consul (remembering that a consul’s house was part of the Shamian government complex), the 105. 106. 107. 108.

WORKS 10-37/2. The National Archives, Kew, UK. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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building was maintained as insurance of entry into the city as well as a symbolic possession of seats of power within the walled city. The same could be said for the French consular yamen, as the French consulate staff before the 1890s was routinely small. The French consulate was sometimes staffed only with “acting” officers, and by the mid1880s had its own building in the British concession of Shamian. The French yamen was also in the garden part of its complex, and by the turn of the century had been given to the French government school, or École Pichon, run by Catholic clergy.109 While the “American concession” and the consular yamen were spaces that housed temporarily notable and important presences in the city, by the turn of the century, foreign private residence had been rather thoroughly consolidated onto Shamian. The importance of these sites lies in the fact that they are displays of power and identity within the city and suburbs. While Shamian’s physical removal from the city sent one message, the placement of these complexes within local neighborhoods had other purposes. With reflections of power and social motivations for choosing sites within the city having been studied, an examination of power within the western precincts is now warranted.

Domesticity and Division: Inside the Foreign House and Yard, 1865–1900 Despite the increasing separation of the foreign community from the everyday life of the traditional city, Westerners had dealings with substantial numbers of Chinese people both at home and at work. Although foreigners living on Shamian and their visitors might sometimes wish to give the impression that “No Chinese, save employees of the foreigners, may come within the reservation,” the reality of life inside and outside involved continual Sino-foreign interaction.110 Chinese not in the employ of foreigners entered Shamian fairly regularly, and, by the early twentieth century, the resident Chinese population on Shamian was approximately three times that of the Westerners.111 The foreign inhabitants and environments reveal a curious duality between denial of being surrounded by the Chinese metropolis and reliance on local employees to conduct both business and household affairs. The built environment also reveals shifting modes of domesticity, with the arrival of women and children, and social life, with the changing roles of and attitudes towards Chinese peers and employees also emerging. 109. See Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, p. 26. 110. Quote from John L. Stoddard, John L. Stoddard’s Lectures: Japan and China, Vol. 3 (Boston: Balch Brothers Co., 1897), p. 274. 111. Chinese traffic on the island, as viewed from official proceedings in 1923, seems to have always been present. See British Foreign Office Papers, Foreign Concession Dossier—Shameen (Canton) 1919–25, FO 228/3193 (dispatch no. 147). The National Archives, Kew, UK. Good census data for Shamian is not available until 1911, but then it shows a remarkable consistency in the proportion of resident Chinese to Westerners. See Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 22.

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Foreign houses in Guangzhou served either as simple residences or as combined residential and office quarters. Those houses serving dual purposes usually had offices on the first floor and dwelling spaces on the second. Houses usually possessed a rear yard dotted with outbuildings, a notable departure from previous company lots in Guangzhou. The foreign houses fell within certain basic parameters. They were one or two stories tall, and either detached single dwellings or double houses, with the exception of the late introduction of the row house, circa 1890, in the form of Karanjia Terrace and the other French concession terrace. Enough evidence exists for several foreign houses to make useful case studies of the spatial arrangement of the everyday world of foreigners and their employees. Two of the earliest buildings that can be discussed are two double houses, the Russell & Co.–Smith Archer & Co. “American concession” of 1867/68 and the proposed plans of the London Missionary Society dwelling on Shamian of 1870/71. The Russell & Co. scheme was widely documented (see Fig. 2.21, Pl. 19). A Thomson photograph shows the building and complex soon after its initial construction, while a site plan dates from nearly a decade later. The major difference between the two is the addition of a godown and a comprador’s house on the western end of the house and yard, which was the half associated with Russell & Co. There also exists an unattributed plan in the Heard & Co. papers with labeled rooms (Pl. 20) that shows the plan of half a double house, which in terms of its number of front and side bays, the entry bays, the enclosure of the rear corner porch bay, and the alignment of rear service buildings is almost identical to the eastern half of the house and yard in the Guangzhou site plan.112 The proportions and features of the building in this plan also match the specifications in the building contracts that still exist for the site.113 While it would be rather exceptional for the plans of Russell & Co.’s building to be in their competitor Heard & Co.’s papers, it is possible that at some point Heard acquired the plans as a result of some interest in potential offices in the “American concession.” A possible relationship also exists between the plan and the building, as the central stair hall is a design feature that was common in contemporary buildings on Shamian. At any rate, the plan indicates how the interior of the Russell & Co.–Smith Archer & Co. building was probably arranged. In this scheme, the first floor is largely dedicated to business. Upon entering the front door, the visitor is greeted by a substantial “hall,” which because of its proportions undoubtedly served as a waiting room in addition to a circulation space. This space led immediately into the office on one

112. This is misattributed in Yen P’ing Hao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 67. Hao says this is the Shanghai premises of Russell & Co., which it is not. Plan is in Heard & Co. Papers (EQ-6-1: Plans of Property in China and Japan). Baker Library, Harvard University. 113. Perkins-Russell Papers, V. 26b, folder 7. Baker Library, Harvard University.

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side and the stair hall immediately ahead. Behind the office was the centrally located comprador’s room, behind it the “boys’” room, and directly across from it a treasury with thick stone walls. The rear verandah possessed enclosed functional rooms for tea and other storage. Behind this was the kitchen and cook’s room, and behind that, the godown. The second story was dedicated to the living quarters of the Western employees, including, notably, the social space of parlor and dining room in the front and bedrooms and a pantry on the sides and rear, with enclosed bathing rooms on the rear verandah. This spatial arrangement shows some continuity with the old factories, while introducing a few innovations that point towards the houses of the following couple of decades. The placement of local employees’ quarters below and the Western staff ’s quarters above reflects fairly directly the spatial relationship of previous factories. The southern view towards the river of the social spaces mirrored the arrangement in the Shisan Hang. On the other hand, the godown, kitchen, and cook’s room have been moved outside of the house, though the kitchen building was connected to the main dwelling by a breezeway, no doubt to simplify the transportation of food in inclement weather. This spatial innovation seems to take advantage of the extra space the firms now had to remove potentially dirty, odorous, and dangerous (in terms of fire) functions from dwelling space. The continuities of spatial arrangement here result from continuities of business practice. The house seems to have accommodated an all-male foreign staff : two men in Smith Archer and three in Russell & Co.114 The comprador’s room and the boys’ rooms being inside the house reflects not only a continuing ease with being under the same roof as local employees, but also the role of the comprador as a house manager, although by this point he was often acquiring more duties as chief Chinese business manager.115 In the meantime, the “boys” also shifted in their roles, from acting as simple valets to taking on more messenger and house management roles. The appearance of a comprador’s house on the western, Russell & Co. side of the double house during the 1870s reflects something about the changing role of this employee. As he acquired more important responsibilities with regard to the largescale business of the house, he perhaps required the additional privacy of a separate house as terms of his employment. On the other hand, it may also represent the declining status of Chinese employees within the “household” of Western firms as well as newly segregationist attitudes. The London Missionary Society plans for a house on Shamian (Pl. 17) show many similarities to the Russell/Smith Archer building. The same local contractor, Aling, drew up the extant plans, although the missionaries had a restricted budget and 114. Morris’s Directory for China, Japan, and the Phillipines, 1870 lists A. B. Buckley and H. C. Low for Smith Archer’s house and John M. Forbers, Jr., silk inspector J. Dubost, and F. Jorge for Russell & Co.’s. (p. 5D). 115. See Hao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge between East and West, Chapter 4.

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actually adopted a cheaper, now lost plan for a building of reduced dimensions from Aling’s competitor Leung Poon.116 The arched verandah wraps around nearly threequarters of the building, with an enclosed service room on the last bay on the sides. The stairwell is again in the center of the building. This would continue to be the pattern in Guangzhou’s foreign dwellings. Presumably because since it is just circulation space, the stairwell is the area least requiring a window for harnessing a breeze during the steamy Guangzhou summer. Room uses are not, however, noted on the missionaries’ plan. The large room on the first floor of the building no doubt served a public or business function, and the enclosed rooms on the second-story verandah are surely bathing rooms opening from bed chambers. The rest of the room functions are difficult to infer from the plan. A certain level of privacy can be inferred, however, as all rooms seem to communicate only with the hallway, rather than directly between themselves. The servant’s buildings and kitchens that the missionaries requested are not indicated on the plan, but were likely in a similar arrangement to the “American concession” outbuildings.117 Whether any local employees had quarters inside the house is unknown. By the time of Annie Ward Spinney’s account of her domestic environment in the form of letters to her mother in 1887, there is a more total break with the shared quarters of the Old Factories and the “American concession” building. She and her family lived in the eastern half of the customs deputy commissioner and married assistants’ dwelling (Fig. 2.12). In her pencil sketch of the plan of the house and lot (Fig. 2.24) that she inhabited with her husband, an Imperial Maritime Customs officer, she indicates servants’ quarters now all removed to buildings in the rear. The house itself had a form that is fairly familiar by now. The plan shows half of a double house, with a full verandah across the front and rear and a partial verandah on the side.118 The entry was, unlike in the two plans discussed above, through the side, where it opened onto the hall. Actual entrance to and egress from the house was not limited, however, to the hall door. Mrs. Spinney noted, “Almost all of the windows in the house open like doors and it is hard to tell which are doors and which are windows.”119 The stairs were in the hall in the center of the house, and the public spaces, an ample parlor and dining room, are on either side of the entry, with a storeroom and small pantry wing rounding out the ground floor. Offices were now absent, partially to accommodate an entire family, and also specifically in this instance because the places of business for the customs service were in a nearby portion of the city.

116. London Missionary Society, Council for World Missions, Incoming Correspondence Box 7/Folder 1/ Jacket D, SOAS. 117. Ibid. and Box 7/Folder 1/Jacket B. 118. The plan is found in Annie Ward Spinney Letters, PEM. Originally attached to letter of October 20, 1887, but now in a separate folder. 119. Spinney Letters, Letter of July 23, 1887. PEM.

Fig. 2.24 Ground and floor plan of eastern half, Imperial Maritime Customs deputy commissioners’ residence, 1887, by Annie Ward Spinney. Though a rough pencil sketch, Mrs. Spinney’s plans are labeled and therefore important documents of the spatial usage of the foreign house in Canton in the late nineteenth century, as well as their more transient features (such as garden plantings). Used with the permission of the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum (Fam. Mss. 957).

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Fig. 2.25 Upstairs plan of eastern half, Imperial Maritime Customs deputy commissioners’ residence, 1887, by Annie Ward Spinney. This rare document shows rooms’ use, and the furnishings of the private realm of Mrs. Spinney’s upstairs. The small room off the hall to the right is a sewing room, a clear architectural sign of the presence of the late-nineteenth-century, upper-middle-class American housewife. Used with permission of the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum (Fam. Mss. 957).

In Mrs. Spinney’s sketch of the upper floor of the dwelling (Fig. 2.25), a very complete picture of Victorian domestic existence forms, as she even indicates the furniture in each room.120 The master bedroom and sitting room take advantage of the breeze from and view of the river. The verandah is furnished with a small table, armchairs, 120. Ibid., letter of July 23/24, 1887. Spinney sent the upper-floor plan to her mother earlier than the ground floor/site plan.

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and a couple of chaise longues for warm weather relaxation. Three bathing rooms interrupt the verandahs. A further touch of Victorian domesticity, explicitly connected with female inhabitants, is the small sewing room at one end of the hall. The two rooms that opened onto the back of the house were “Frank’s room,” a library or study, and the “spare room,” initially allocated to the couple’s children. In the warmest times of year, however, the children found it too hot in the rear of the house, where the lack of air circulation made it stuff y; in a much appreciated gesture, the Spinney’s neighbor in the double house, customs inspector Captain T. E. Cocker, set up small beds with mosquito netting on his side of the front verandah for them.121 Mrs. Spinney gave a rather full description of her domestic environment in 1887: The great wardrobe in Frank’s room and the wardrobe and linen press in the sewing room are of camphor wood. The spare room is furnished in lighter red wood similar to your dining room chair and sofa in color, and my bedroom has black furniture, both dressing tables and wardrobes have immense mirrors in them. The rooms look a little bare though the furniture fills them more than you would think from the drawing, by and by when it is cooler and I can put up curtains, etc. I think they will look very nice. There is a punkah over Frank’s desk and over my dressing table. The amah sits on the floor in the hall and pulls mine while I do my hair and I find it a great comfort when I have to dress to go out to dinner. My sitting room has every door and window protected by mosquito doors and here I always take refuge to write and here we sit in the evening when we have anything to do. More often we are lazy after our eight o’clock dinner and prefer a walk on the bund in the moonlight or a long chair on the veranda which looks very inviting with its dim lights, easy chairs, and plants and flowers all about. [D]oors and windows are open day and night. The windows have blinds outside that can be closed and the verandas are supplied with Venetian curtains so I can have the light regulated to suit me without stopping the breeze.122

One of the notable qualities of Mrs. Spinney’s descriptions is the importance of features that provide comfort in Guangzhou’s tropical environment. Coming to terms with heat and mosquitoes were minor obsessions in her correspondence. The architectural implications of these concerns were a proliferation of blinds, mosquito netting, and even “mosquito doors,” which seem to have been an early form of screen door. A few other Shamian house plans exist due to the renting of houses by the often financially strapped American consulate. The first plan in the series (Fig. 2.26) shows the one-story bungalow that the consulate rented between December 1882 and December 1886 from an absentee owner (probably an heiress), Mrs. Mary Thomas

121. Ibid., letter of July 13, 1887. 122. Ibid., letter of July 23, 1887.

Fig. 2.26 Plan of US consular bungalow, Shamian, 1885 (from Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton). This property, like all nineteenth-century United States consulates in Guangzhou, was rented, but the presence of the large front room that could be used for official events was clearly one of the attractions of this property. Despatches from the United States Consuls in Canton, 1790– 1906, United States National Archives and Records Administration.

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of London, England.123 The building was located on Front Avenue, immediately west of the German consular lot. The plan, one of the few records of Shamian’s early onestory buildings, shows a house well adapted for ventilation. In addition to the shelter of the wraparound “verandah with blinds,” the prevailing breezes could be harnessed by opening up the double doors between the front room (a “consul’s reception room, parlor, and business room”) and the rear hallway. When the breeze from the south was replaced by a breeze from the west, a side hall door could also be opened and a curtained bed niche at the other end of it provided comfortable repose. The room functions shown were labeled by the consulate, but the opening of the large (30’×41’) front public room onto the dining room through double doors was definitely intended for a social core of the house. The dining room was in turn served by the room for “ice boxes, crockery, & supplies” across the side hall behind it. Two bedrooms occupied most of the eastern side of the house. The room behind the northern bedroom was the office for the humbler aspects of consular business, namely the “Chinese interpreter’s, Chinese writer’s, and gen’l business office.” Household servants dwelt in a wing extending on the back west side that ended in the kitchens. As Shamian developed further, these functions were completely removed from the house to outbuildings. An outbuilding at the rear of the lot was occupied as a storeroom on one side and the “Chinese writers refreshment room” on the other side, indicating that these official employees held high enough status in the eyes of the consul to be granted their own retreat from the business of the consulate. The second plan (Fig. 2.27) in the consular correspondence shows the bungalow of Ernest Deacon, principal of the firm of Deacon & Co., who was then preparing to sail home to England.124 The Americans, about to be turned out of their former residence, which had been recently sold, were at the end of 1886 looking for a new location, and this building was viewed as a pleasant option. On lot number one at the very western tip of the British concession, it had, unusually, its main entrance on the western elevation. Its main passageway ran west to east, but the wraparound verandah with enclosed bathrooms on the rear and eastern elevations are by now familiar. No room designations are indicated, but it appears that the larger rooms on the north side of the house may have been the social rooms—another aberration for Shamian. By 1888, the US consulate had found a home in a smaller two-story building, probably located on the lot at the northwest corner of Central Avenue and the second

123. Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 92) to Asst. Sec. of State James  D. Porter from Consul Seymour of December 31, 1885, and Letter (No. 116) to Asst. Sec. of State James D. Porter from Consul Seymour, November 15, 1886. 124. Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 116) to Asst. Sec. of State James D. Porter from Consul Seymour, November 15, 1886.

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Fig. 2.27 Plan of Ernest Deacon’s bungalow (old lot 1), Shamian, 1886 (Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton). The east-west alignment of the passage and multiple windows in every room reveal a motive to maximize the cooling benefits of the breeze along the river, appropriate for a property on the westernmost tip of the island. Despatches from the United States Consuls in Canton, 1790–1906, United States National Archives and Records Administration.

north/south road from the west rented from Dent & Co.125 The plan (Fig. 2.28) reveals how the spaces were allotted in the late 1890s (previously, Consul Seymour, by whom the previous two sketch plans were drawn, apparently only used one of the front rooms as an “official” space).126 At the turn of the century, the business aspect of 125. Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 111) to Asst. Secretary of State David J. Hill from Vice Consul Hubbard Smith, June 30, 1899. See also Letter (no. 10) to Asst. Sec. of State David J. Hill from Consul Robert M. McWade, June 15, 1900. 126. Ibid.

Fig. 2.28 Plan of US consul’s residence, c. 1900 (Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton). This plan shows the demands of official functions on the first floor, while the second floor performed more private functions. Despatches from the United States Consuls in Canton, 1790–1906, United States National Archives and Records Administration.

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the consulate had taken over the first floor of the house, with a general office and consular office in the front and a reception room and Chinese writer’s office behind. The main entrance and stair hall opened onto the west elevation, but the front offices had French doors that allowed more immediate access to the offices.127 The second story held two bedrooms, a private parlor, and a dining room, an arrangement that would surely have been considered the bare minimum for a household on late nineteenthcentury Shamian. The servants occupied outbuilding service quarters and a kitchen not illustrated in the plan.128 These more confined spaces illustrate the impact at the turn of the century of demand for real estate on Shamian on the always somewhat cash-strapped US consular service. While the function of rooms inside these houses is sometimes illustrated in plans, the interior appearance of late nineteenth-century rooms is more elusive. The furnishing of the foreign house in Guangzhou was meant to provide maximum comfort and, increasingly, a “home-like” domestic feeling. Imported rather than locally produced furnishings seem to have become increasingly available. Mrs. Gray, more positively disposed to things Chinese than Mrs. Spinney, discussed setting up her housekeeping in the parsonage in a letter to her mother: We have visited many of the old chinaware shops, and have picked up, even in these two or three days, some good pieces of ancient blue china, so our drawingroom begins to look home-like. You must remember that the Chaplaincy is already furnished. We have purchased some small, square, Chinese carpets, some of which are yellow in the ground colour, with devices in blue; others white in the ground colour, with most curious patterns in serpents, ancient characters (such as Shau, meaning longevity), and various animals. In make they much resemble tapestry. We could, had we wished, have bought European carpets, as we saw some hanging up in the street where we made our purchases, and I believe that the houses in Shameen generally are carpeted with them; but we intend to embellish our house as much as possible in the Chinese style. On our arrival (which was somewhat unexpected) at the Chaplaincy, the whole house was in disorder, and the dining room floor was in the hands of a painter; but a very short time sufficed for the Chinese boys to arrange the furniture, and as the floors are painted in sittingrooms as well as the bedrooms, there is no need to lay down carpets, as with us in England.129

The Grays not only acquired Chinese decorative arts from the shops in the city, but were also visited by a local salesman bearing silks and tapestries, though how the salesman convinced the bridge guards to let him onto the island is not detailed.130

127. 128. 129. 130.

Ibid. Ibid. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, pp. 6–7. Ibid., pp. 217–19.

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Mrs. Gray’s enthusiasm for things Chinese would be disappointed just a few days later in 1877, when she visited some of the other houses on Shamian: We paid several calls on Wednesday, and found most of our friends at home. I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing the interior of the houses in our settlement. I was much struck with their English appearance, carpeted as they are with English carpets, many well-known engravings hanging on the walls. The black wood furniture and the large verandahs alone make one realise that one is in the East, when seated in one of these large drawing-rooms. I think when Europeans return to their native lands, they must feel very much disappointed with the contracted, cramped houses they have to live in.131

Mrs. Gray’s observations are not the only place where the tension between Western and Chinese furnishings can be felt. Photographs of what is probably the interior of the customs commissioner’s house (Fig. 2.11), circa 1893, survive in the album of Anna Davis Drew, wife of an American Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner.132 One photograph shows the hall and interior stairwell of the house (Fig. 2.29). Spare, classically derived piers frame a Western-style, turned baluster staircase. Renaissance Revival chairs flank the stairs, while Chinese stools and vases dot the periphery of the hallway and Chinese scroll paintings hang over one of the chairs and what is probably a Chinese-produced Rococo Revival–influenced hall table. A hanging lamp in the foreground is Western, while a Chinese lantern hangs in the stair hall. A photograph of what was probably the front parlor has a rather Western ambience (Fig. 2.30). Here is displayed one of the imported wall-to-wall carpets noted by Gray. Western chairs dot the room, while the shadow of a piano appears in the left foreground. A few small stools and tables are of Chinese manufacture, but the mirrored sideboard is almost certainly American or European. Framed foreign prints hang on the wall, and the curtains, while perhaps sewn of Chinese material, are in the Western mode. While most of the photographs show a Westernized house, one corner of the dwelling (Fig. 2.31) shows a hodge-podge of Chinese artifacts assembled in a mode reminiscent of orientalizing Aesthetic Movement interiors of the fin-de-siècle West. Besides the Eastlake-influenced gas light, only the pier glass over the mantle, the family photographs, and a print of an early nineteenth-century lady, and possibly a stool in the foreground, are decorations from the West. Chinese embroideries and silks are draped everywhere, though one tapestry on the left has been arranged by its owner in the form of a butterfly. Beside a lamp made from a porcelain vase, Chinese religious sculpture and incense burners crowd the mantle. Guardian lions protect the silk-clad stand for some of the family photographs. The decorative horror vacui that was an

131. Ibid., p. 17. 132. Anna Davis Drew Album C. Harvard-Yenching Library.

Fig. 2.29 Hall and interior stairs, presumed to be Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner’s residence (photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). While the architecture and many of the furnishings seem very Western, the entry hall contains large specimens of Chinese porcelain, highly carved furniture, a Chinese lantern, and a Chinese bird-and-flower scroll painting, perhaps symbolic of the wealth to be had in the China trade. Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

Fig. 2.30 Interior (probably front parlor), presumed to be Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner’s residence (photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). This room, in contrast to the entry hall, would qualify, as expressed by Mrs. Gray, as having an “English appearance.” Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

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Fig. 2.31 Interior (with Chinese “collection”), presumed to be Imperial Maritime Customs commissioner’s residence (photographic album compiled by Anna D. Drew, Canton, Aug. 24, 1893). Plentiful Chinese objects are here displayed, not in Chinese fashion, but to the somewhat cluttered taste of the contemporary Aesthetic Movement in the West. Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

integral part of the Victorian and, specifically, “Aesthetic Movement” design mentality here feeds the display of appropriated objects. There appears an irony in the collecting and displaying of goods in their city of origin along the mode of what was sanctioned by European and American designers and artists who had never been there. The objects themselves have been completely divorced from a context so very near at hand. The tensions between a home-like interior and one that takes advantage of the bustling Cantonese art and craft market is, however, a concern that would probably never have been raised if not for the arrival of women and families, an important occurrence only too obvious from the source of the writings and photographs discussed above. To return to Mrs. Spinney’s plan of her Guangzhou dwelling, the allotment of three-quarters of the ground floor to social space was no accident. While visiting was a prominent pastime in the Shisan Hang, the arrival of families on Shamian only enhanced the practice. As Mrs. Gray’s writings imply, social calls were a requirement of her husband’s position. They were even more important for Annie Spinney. A bit nervous at being “the only Customs lady here,” she found visits an important relief from what must have been a somewhat lonely existence.133 Not long after her arrival, she fondly recalled a dinner at the British Consulate: 133. Spinney Letters, Letter of July 4/6, 1887. PEM.

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Her letters frequently examined the social dynamics of the concession, and within four months of her arrival, she could assert, “we have dined at almost all the houses now.”135 Another typical fête attended by Spinney was a “severely classical” concert at the German consular residence that was “very late,” beginning at half-past nine and ending at eleven forty-five, preceded by dinner with some of the customs “bachelors.”136 Some consuls took their ability to entertain as a matter of national pride. The gregarious US consul of the 1880s, Charles Seymour, described his use of the consular bungalow residence in the middle of that decade in an attempt to impress upon the State Department the need to find an appropriate building for the consulate: During some turbulent scenes in Canton, Americans and other foreigners have gladly taken shelter, lodging, and meals, at this Consulate, to the extent of its capacity for entertainment; and on many social and festive occasions, parties numbering thirty, forty, fifty, and between sixty and seventy, have had good cheer and pleasant welcome at dinners, dances, and other festivities, which had a tendency to keep American colors at the front; and I shall sincerely regret being compelled to lower the character of the Consulate, after faithfully endeavoring to lift it out of the miserable condition in which I found it; when it had no standing socially or officially, either among natives or foreigners, in the most important city of the Empire.137

That Seymour was thoroughly dedicated to keeping up a prominent profile for the United States through grand entertainments is confirmed by a story in the Hong Kong newspaper, The China Mail. On the arrival of the American minister to China in April 1886, the consulate hosted a whole series of “magnificent banquets” to introduce the ambassador to all of the “important” American, European, and Chinese residents of Guangzhou, for which the foreign community “contracted a very large debt of gratitude to Consul Seymour.”138 While Seymour’s rented bungalow was probably the most modest consular residence on Shamian, it had enough space for lavish social events that could secure Americans a certain amount of status. Social occasions inside foreign houses were not the only times for the foreign community of Shamian to engage in genial interactions. Walks on the bund, tennis matches, plays put on by an amateur theater society at the club, and balls were all important parts of social life in late nineteenth-century Shamian. Photographs from 134. 135. 136. 137.

Ibid., letter of July 13, 1887. Ibid., letter of October 2, 1887. Ibid., letter of September 9, 1887. Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 116) to Asst. Sec. of State James D. Porter from Consul Seymour, November 15, 1886. 138. The China Mail (Hong Kong), April 27, 1886.

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costume balls punctuate Anna Drew’s photograph album. Visitor Walter William Mundy was immediately swept up into Guangzhou’s foreign social life: The first night I arrived, there happened to be a ball given by a resident before returning to England. As the night was wet, we had the chairs round after dinner to take us there. Outside the building there was quite a posse of chair-coolies, all in different costumes, holding lanterns with the names of their masters in Chinese and English. The whole looked fantastic and somewhat weird. The entrance was decorated with much taste, and everything was admirably got up. The great drawback was of course the scarcity of ladies, many having to dance with two or three gentlemen for one dance.139

Ladies were not yet common enough for an Englishman newly experiencing treaty port life, but they were now the center of social attention. This ball was a far cry from the ribald behavior recounted by supercargo Bryant Tilden in the earlier part of the century. Where men dancing together was then a great lark, it would have been scandalous on Shamian. The servants here were notably left outside. Exclusively European social life was the rule on Shamian, but some exceptions also existed. By and large, Western women came to Guangzhou with their husbands or as missionaries. For this reason, some men, for want of a domestic life now becoming the mainstream among the foreign community, and undoubtedly also for more personal reasons, courted local wives. The most explicit source for these relationships is the memoir of L. C. Arlington, an employee at different times of the Imperial Maritime Customs and the Chinese postal service (another Western-run Chinese government agency) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Speaking of inter-ethnic relationships of varying degrees of formalized status, among the customs staff in particular, he stated: Some of these “housekeepers” were, however, loyal to their foreigners, and absolutely refused to leave them. Such exceptions were well paid for their loyalty; they were literally covered with jewellery and costly silks and satins, and had the best of everything their masters could give them. Indeed, many of these men treated their Chinese partners and wives—for several were married—better than they would have treated women of their own country and class. These females ran the household arrangements, they controlled the servants.140

He then continued by saying that some women (perhaps missionaries?) married Chinese husbands, and did not fare as well under their husbands’ expectations of wifely duties. Later in the same chapter, Arlington states, “Ever since foreigners first visited Canton the Cantonese women have catered to their wants, so they, more than the women of other provinces, understand the foreigner best, and are on the whole 139. Mundy, Canton and the Bogue, p. 82. 140. L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon’s Eyes: Fifty Years’ Experiences of a Foreigner in the Chinese Government Service (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931), p. 153.

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more amenable to reason, which of course the white man appreciates.”141 Granted, it is unclear why Arlington, whose general tone is conventionally racist but not Sinophobic, discusses a topic generally avoided by other writers. Though included in his chapter on Guangzhou in the 1890s, the location and time of the following anecdote is also unclear: The Customs Chief Tidesurveyor was also married to a Chinese woman whose father was a cargo boatman. She, however, used to give herself great airs. One night at a largish dinner party, when ham was being served, she said to the guest sitting next to her, “My father, you know, used to boil his ham in champagne.”142

Here is the appearance of a Chinese wife at a notable social event, in a clearly still uncomfortable situation. Her presence alone is notable, but it almost certainly cannot date much before the turn of the century. Visits by Chinese officials to the tables of Shamian consulates were common enough. These visits were important for making affairs run smoothly between foreign interests and the regional Chinese government. While they were mostly business meetings, a certain level of hospitality was always expected. A US vice consul of the 1890s noted that “in conformity with a long established custom the Canton Consuls are expected to furnish light refreshments in the shape of wine, cakes, and sweetmeats to each Chinese Official who makes a formal call.”143 On special occasions, such as the visit of a dignitary from the home country or a national holiday, Chinese officials could be invited to banquets or other entertainments at Shamian consulates. One such occasion was July 4, 1898, at the American consulate: The “Glorious Fourth” was celebrated right royally at the American Consulate, which was elaborately and tastefully decorated for the occasion. Consul Beldoe was “at home” from 10 a.m. and received his guests in a reception room in which the American, Chinese, and British flags were conspicuously displayed. Amongst the callers were the foreign Consuls, the Commissioner of Customs, the Viceroy, the Governor of Kwangtung, the Hoppo, and the Commander of Manchu troops, many of the European merchants, Mr. Heung, R. Williams, Dr. Swan and Dr.  Hobson the heads of medical missionary establishments. One of the most interesting features of the decorations was a fine portrait of President McKinley and a very old copy of the Declaration of Independence with the autographs of the subscribers to that immortal document. The Doctor was in one of his brightest moods and made everybody feel quite at their ease, so that all was “merry as a marriage bell.”144

141. Ibid., p. 156. 142. Ibid., p. 157. 143. Despatches from United States Consuls in Canton [microform], Letter (No. 111) to Asst. Secretary of State David J. Hill from Vice Consul Hubbard Smith, June 30, 1899. 144. The Hong Kong Telegraph, July 18, 1898.

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After treating the Chinese viceroy and his attendants to tiffin (a light lunch), the US consul hosted a screening of “a cinematograph exhibition that was both interesting and instructive.”145 The modest confines of the consulate, through decoration, display, and technological spectacle, could still serve the United States’ interests by impressing Chinese official guests. Apart from official consular events, Archdeacon and Mrs. Gray were among the few that seem to have accommodated Chinese dinner guests at Shamian. Most Westerners during this period would not have conceived of Chinese, no matter how well off or important, as real friends or social peers, a trend reinforced by the language barrier. Archdeacon Gray, always more friendly with Guangzhou’s citizens than almost all his fellow foreigners, and fluent in Cantonese, was a good friend to the household descended from the principals of the great Howqua family firm of cohong days. Mrs. Gray hosted Chinese guests at the parsonage, prominently “Mr. and Mrs. Howqua,” at least twice. The Grays engaged in a series of exchanges of social visits with the Chinese merchant family. Mrs. Gray gave a rather detailed account of the events of one of the festivities. The arrival of the guests proceeded according to Chinese protocol, with the arrival first of gifts of exotic caged birds borne by household servants; and then of the Howqua women and children, attended by their amahs or maidservants; and finally of the men.146 The ladies, with elaborate makeup and resplendent clothes, were borne in their sedan chairs right into the entry hall.147 The first order of business, in parallel with the Grays’ visits to Guangzhou’s houses and gardens, was, as requested by the guests, a tour of the parsonage compound.148 The Grays had intended to serve a Western-style dinner, with men and ladies seated next to each other, but the shocked Chinese ladies, after initially saying they just came for a visit and did not require food, agreed to eat if they were served separately, before the men.149 The Grays complied. Dinner was, however, served with knives and forks, a fact that, combined with the strange-tasting, English-style food, caused some distress, although masked, to the Howqua ladies.150 They seemed more at ease when the meal came to an end, with desserts to indulge their Cantonese sweet tooths.151 After dinner, the ladies asked to see the Shamian gardens, then mainly in front of the consular compound. Mrs. Gray complied, although she was apparently rather self-conscious about taking her Chinese friends out in the segregated atmosphere of

145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151.

Ibid. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 163. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 165–66. Ibid., p. 166. Of Chinese styles of cuisine, Cantonese food embraces sweet flavors perhaps the most readily.

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the concession.152 The event became a bit of a spectacle, as the lady guests, with the interesting exception of the wife of the head of the family, all had bound feet; after initial attempts at walking to the garden, they had to be carried on the backs of their amahs.153 After the return to the parsonage, the ladies smoked tobacco pipes until the men emerged from their dinner, apparently much more appreciated and consumed.154 After many “chin-chins,” the ladies left in their chairs, followed after a pause by the men.155 Red visiting cards arrived later to signal the guests’ safe arrival home.156 Similar protocol was followed in other Chinese visits to the Grays, including one by a former “chief justice” of Sichuan Province.157 The Grays actively cultivated relationships with the merchants and officials of China. They viewed the invitation of Chinese guests to the parsonage as a polite and necessary response to the hospitality they enjoyed in several of Guangzhou’s prosperous Chinese households. They accepted and sometimes appreciated the practice of local etiquette on these visits, and how could they not when visits were generally accompanied with lavish gifts? The Grays’ engagement with and hospitality towards Chinese guests were, however, quite a rarity among the inhabitants of Shamian. The anxiety of Mrs. Gray in trying to accommodate her guests while also being conscious of the rarity of her and her husband’s social behavior on Shamian belies the emergent racist atmosphere of the concession. The Western master–Chinese servant relationship was more typical of Western relations with the Cantonese on late nineteenthcentury Shamian. After the construction of the concession island, the relationship of Chinese servants to their Western employers substantially changed. Now they were no longer protected by the cohong system with its intermediaries that had flourished in the Shisan Hang, and while obtained by the comprador they now served directly at the pleasure of the Western households. The arrival of Western women on the island was also important in this relationship, as they often assumed the institutionalized, nineteenth-century wifely role of supervising all of the inner workings of the household. It  is not surprising therefore that the accounts of household staff derive once again from the writings of the women of Shamian. Mrs. Gray commented on her servants: You will be amused to hear that we have a coolie whose duty is simply to rub the books to prevent the damp from spoiling them, and to see that the white ants are not attacking them. He is supposed to take down a certain number of books

152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157.

Ibid., p. 168. Ibid., pp. 167–68. Ibid., pp. 168–69. Ibid., p. 169. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 359–63 passim.

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daily, and to rub them each in turn. He is such a curious looking old fellow, and works deliberately with long pauses, and an occasional whiff of a pipe to lighten, I suppose, his arduous duties. Of course he is related to our chief servant. You will find in all houses that the compradore surrounds himself with his relations. The old man of whom I speak is Mak’s uncle, our second waiting-boy is Mak’s son, and one of our coolies is Mak’s cousin.158

This passage reveals, in addition to a luxurious quantity of inexpensive hired help by Western standards, that familial networks still played an important part in the hiring of servants in the late 1870s. Mrs. Gray then went on to explain the practice of paying “kumshaw,” whereby servants hired on the word of other servants would pay a commission to the recommender and, likewise, shopkeepers would pay servants for recommending their businesses to the foreigners.159 The Grays, perhaps because of the constraints of the parsonage lot, followed the somewhat anachronistic practice of having the servants’ room within the house.160 They had an informal relationship with their servants, even to the extent that the archdeacon engaged his servants in a practical joke on his wife, serving her rat, cat, and dog, which she had hitherto refused to eat.161 This frivolity and informality was, as with so many things about the Gray household, the exception rather than the rule. Chinese business practices seem to have flourished under the permissive roof of the Grays, but a decade later Annie Spinney’s relationships with her servants would take on a completely different form and tone. The Salem native inventoried her servants: The Customs furnishes us with gardener, watchman, house coolies, and two chaise-coolies so all we have to get are a boy, cook, and amah. So our expense will be much less here [than in] Peking though food is so much more expensive. The cook has been in the house for more than ten years, he is tip top. He likes the place for he would not go to the British Consulate when the Ohlmers were leaving.162

This passage reveals several important factors in the employer–servant relationship. The “standard issue” servants were employed directly by her husband’s office. The family employed more personal servants, those integrally involved with the internal functioning of the household. The latter operated independently, and in the case of particularly talented ones had a fair amount of freedom to find situations that suited them. The Spinney’s masterful cook was the object of competition with and of attempted hiring away by other households.163

158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163.

Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., pp. 77–78. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., pp. 106–7. Spinney Letters, letter of July 4/6, 1887. PEM. Ibid., see also letter of October 2, 1887.

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Annie Spinney’s tone when discussing servants besides her cook, though, was exasperated and judgmental. She disliked her first “boy,” a combination of butler and errand runner, to the point that she had him replaced; then, of the “new boy,” she said he was “neither good nor bad” but that “he has lived in America and it certainly has not improved his manners.”164 She worked closely with her gardener, but, though generally pleased with her yard on Shamian, could not escape an arrogant and racist attitude towards him: We have quite a big garden and a gardener who understands his work but has to be looked after a little or will do some essentially stupid and Chinese things, such as planting all his seeds at once so that everything comes up in a lump and is finished all at once.165

Hence the gardener, who had so far quite adequately tended the magnolia trees, flower beds, flowers in pots, ferns, and vegetable gardens indicated in Spinney’s plan and writings, was designated a dim member of an inferior race because he failed to keep the garden in a rather unobtainable perpetual bloom. Of the hardworking amah, who when not taking care of the children or dressing her mistress seems to have been condemned to operate the punkahs, Mrs. Spinney said very little, other than to recount with bemused condescension the maidservant’s tale of a dragon causing a typhoon.166 It is also telling that in her letters Spinney never once mentions her servants’ names. By the Spinneys’ time, the servants on Shamian were viewed as inferiors to be kept at arm’s length from their masters and mistresses. This is reflected in the architectural arrangements of the household. Annie Spinney’s site plan (Fig. 2.24) shows a long, narrow building attached to the house by a long, covered corridor with “asphalt” paving. Four servants’ rooms, a kitchen, and a separate servants’ kitchen occupied this building. Many servants’ quarters on Shamian were combined with kitchens, which were removed from the main house to avoid fire hazards, heat, and odor but paid little attention to the comfort of servants. An additional servants’ quarter was at the rear of the lot, along with a hen house and a building “intended for stable—used by gardener, watchman, and tailor.” Servants’ buildings could be one or two stories tall; examples can be seen in the rear view of the Canton Club and the Carlowitz & Co. dwelling (Fig. 2.18) and an extant building in the range in the rear of a French concession terrace row. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, foreigners had not only separated their settlement from the city but also their Chinese employees spatially from their household. Separate and inferior “other” spaces were created by the Westerners on Shamian for people they no longer conceived of as like themselves, that is, they were “others.” 164. Ibid., letter of October 20, 1887. 165. Ibid., letter of August 4, 1887. 166. Ibid., letter of September 9, 1887.

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A Problem of Translation: Missionaries Confront (and Inhabit) the City In the last decades of the nineteenth century, there was one foreign population that did not segregate itself from the populace: missionaries. The whole reason for this group’s presence in Guangzhou was to engage the populace, whether as evangelicals, “civilizers,” or simply helpers (i.e. doctors and educators). Though a few missionary enterprises had offices or residences on Shamian, most of the work of the missions was dispersed throughout the city suburbs. Missionary compounds, chapels, hospitals, and schools were locales of foreign interface with the city and, as such, shaped crosscultural interactions in the city. They were also, however, the foreign spaces most freely reinterpreted and shaped by the Cantonese populace. Missionary enterprise in early nineteenth-century China was generally confined to the area around the Thirteen Factories, where the missionaries had their residences. Even Dr. Parker’s hospital, sponsored by the non-denominational but largely Congregationalist-supported American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, served its large Chinese clientele from a large room in the Chowchow Hong, opening onto Hog Lane. With the increasing ability of foreigners to move throughout the city after the Opium War, however, some missionaries began to move into the city’s suburbs. Little information exists about the earliest mission stations in the city, but in 1853 Elder I. J. Roberts, a Baptist with the American Board, who was about to move to a mission in Shanghai, described the premises he had been inhabiting for a number of years in a neighborhood of Guangzhou’s southern suburbs called “Tung-shih-koh”: These premises have been a foreign residence since 1845, have proved healthy, have become well known as a preaching place among the people, were built up newly of brick in 1848, & a kitchen and a well added in 1853; they are conveniently located upon the river about two miles below the foreign factories at a point that can be reached by boats at all times during either high or low tide, and are located propitiously for the mission work in a family neighborhood.167

The description shows concerns that would become typical in the writings of missionaries of all stripes in the late nineteenth century. The compound is located in a place where it can be accessed by and visible to large numbers of local people, but is also in a good location for addressing the “right sort” of people, hence a “family neighborhood.” The location also needed to have the somewhat defensive measure of easy access to the main foreign neighborhoods. Roberts included a diagram of the site, which reveals the components and arrangement of the station, though unfortunately little about the appearance of the buildings. The diagram shows a long, narrow urban lot typical of the suburbs with river

167. Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (S. China) [microfilm], Annual Report, December 31, 1853.

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frontage. From the river, there was an open but walled space that provided access to the river, then a front road with a schoolhouse facing onto it. The compound also abutted a road perpendicular to the river that allowed independent access to its other parts. Between the schoolhouse and the next building, a two-story chapel, there was a walled “large garden” with a well. Next to the chapel, at the northernmost end of the compound, was the missionary residence, with a two-story dwelling, kitchen, and small garden. This shows that as early as the 1850s, the standard formula of residence, chapel, and schoolhouse (or, later, dispensary, depending on the missionary’s expertise) had been developed for missionary stations. In terms of numbers, the largest presence in Guangzhou in the late nineteenth century was that of the American Presbyterian Board, and the closely allied and in fact overlapping interdenominational Medical Missionary Society of China. These groups founded the Canton Hospital, largely a direct descendant of Dr. Parker’s hospital in the factories.168 The employees of these missionary societies were so numerous that even when American business with the city had all but temporarily disappeared during the last decade of the nineteenth century, an American presence in the city was still notable. Occupying temporary quarters between 1856 and 1865, the hospital and its associated missionary compound would find a permanent location and be constructed between 1865 and the 1880s.169 The complex was situated on the riverfront, on what was in Renjiqiao or Yan-tsai Street, in the southern suburb of Kuk Fau. This was a short distance across the eastern creek from the old factory site. A photograph, probably dating from the turn of the twentieth century, shows the complex in a fully developed state (Fig. 2.32).170 The front two buildings date to the second half of the 1860s, the one on the right being the doctors’ residence and perhaps their offices. The building on the left was initially a missionary residence, but later either shared its function or was converted to a girls’ or women’s school. A full catalogue of the hospital facilities was put forth by Reverend B. C. Henry in the early 1880s: A residence for the physician, extensive wards, dispensing room, and chapel were erected, to which additional buildings have been added from time to time, as the growing needs of the institution required, until there are now five successive lines of good, substantial buildings, four of which are devoted to the accommodation of patients. The rear line, which is built in two stories, contains wards for the better class of patients, who, by paying a small amount of rent, can be accommodated with separate rooms. The latest addition, in the way of architecture, is the large

168. See Harriet J. Noyes, History of the South China Mission of the American Presbyterian Church, 1845–1920 (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1927), pp. 48–50. 169. See Sara Tucker, “The Canton Hospital and Medicine in Nineteenth Century China 1835–1900,” (doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1982), particularly pp. 159–165 passim. 170. From (and courtesy of ) Council for World Missions, LMS, China, Photographs. Box 2, Folder 6, #C-38. SOAS. Labeled “Canton Hospital to the left can be seen the Girls’ and Women’s school of the American Presbyterian Mission.”

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and commodious structure on the site of the old chapel. It is in two stories, the upper and more spacious constituting the place of worship for the native church. It will seat over six hundred comfortably, and is said to be the finest Protestant church for the Chinese in the south of China. Underneath is a smaller chapel and reception room for out-patients, in which a daily service is held for those residing in the hospital, and special services on dispensing days for out-patients. Large, well-lighted operating-rooms, lecture-room, and laboratory occupy the remainder of the ground floor.171

The hospital would become a landmark in the city, both for the large size of the compound and for the good work it did, earning from the Cantonese the moniker “Hospital of Broad and Free Beneficence.”172 Architecturally, however, the verandahclad, two-storied, hipped-roof forms of the buildings were nothing new on the urban landscape.

Fig. 2.32 American Presbyterian Board–Medical Missionary Society of China compound, late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The hipped-roof houses are typologically very similar to buildings on Shamian. There is a chapel with a spire on the northern end of the compound. The towers in the distance are Cantonese pawn shops and secure storage. Used with the permission of the Council for World Missions and the SOAS, University of London (CWM/LMS/China/Photographs, Box 2, Folder 6, C38).

171. Rev. B. C. Henry, The Cross and the Dragon or Light in the Broad East (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph and Company, 1885), pp. 272–73. 172. Ibid., p. 273.

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Life in the American Presbyterian mission compound seems to have been generally placid, even in times when anti-foreign feeling caused problems for other mission stations. This was likely due to the proximity of the compound to the rest of the western community and also to the immense service the hospital provided to the Cantonese. By some accounts, by the 1920s the hospital, perhaps the first large Western-style hospital in China, had treated at least a million patients.173 Because of its size, interdenominational nature, and safety, this compound became a center for coordination and of community for the foreign missionaries. British Wesleyan missionary John A. Turner said of the site in the 1880s: On Sunday evenings an English service is conducted in the reception room of the large American Presbyterian Mission Hospital at Kok Fau. All the missionaries who are able to do so assemble here with their wives and families, numbering about forty or fifty persons, when each in turn (irrespective of denomination) occupies the pulpit, and on the first Sunday in the month administers the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to his brethren. The Canton missionaries are further accustomed to hold a Conference once a quarter to discuss questions affecting mission work; these meetings are also useful in promoting mutual acquaintances and brotherly love.174

By the early twentieth century, the compound had made it into the tourist guides, no doubt in part because Dr. J. G. Kerr, one of the hospital’s supervisors, wrote an early guide to the city during the late nineteenth century. At this time the compound was described as having eleven buildings, including a three-story medical college; the hospital had 300 beds.175 The only other mission compound of this scale was the architecturally grand French Catholic mission and cathedral (Fig. 2.33). This institution would not enjoy such felicitous relations with the local population. This was partly due to its site— in the wake of the Arrow War, Vatican and French agents produced documents claiming title to the site of Governor Ye’s official yamen: Whereupon, from among the numerous deeds of trust and conveyances of land forthcoming from the Vatican was one of the former purporting to prove that a plot of eighteen acres in the heart of Canton had once been possessed by agents of the Church. The Chinese authorities were naturally astonished at this, as the site in question had been occupied by the Government House from time immemorial, and they immediately entered their protest. But the French commander said, ‘If  you have no power to give it, I have power to take it’; and he proceeded to occupy the premises with a military force. Already reduced to a heap of ruins by the fortunes of war, all that remained of the Chinese structure soon disappeared, 173. Noyes, History of the South China Mission, p. 50. 174. John A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China (London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1894), pp. 38–39. 175. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, p. 36.

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and on this very spot arose in process of time a Roman Catholic Cathedral, towering in solitary state over the flat-roofed city. So far from being impressed with the beauty and sacred character of the edifice, the Chinese generally look upon it as a monument of robbery and a constant reminder of their duty to cherish the feelings of hatred and revenge.176

The ill feeling of much of the populace towards the cathedral was further accentuated during the Franco-Chinese War of the early 1880s. Its sharply pointed, approximately 150-foot tall spires, which were in early twentieth-century views the most visible edifices in the cityscape, were understood even by Western visitors as violating traditional feng shui principles.177 The controversial French and sometimes Vietnamese staff of the cathedral complex was somewhat isolated from the rest of the foreign community; as one chronicler noted, they “are apt to keep aloof from the Europeans, because the cathedral lies at some distance from the foreign concession, but they give their consul plenty of work.”178 Located in the “New City” or southern section inside the walls

Fig. 2.33 French Catholic cathedral, constructed 1860s–80s. Incongruously seeming to have been dropped into Canton’s city fabric from thirteenth-century France, the cathedral is a landmark of exported French academic design. Photo by author, 2002.

176. L. N. Wheeler, The Foreigner in China (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Company, 1881), pp. 238–39. 177. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 57. Mrs. Gordon-Cumming notably even uses the term feng shui in her discussion of the issue. 178. Prof. Edward H. Parker, as quoted in Rev. Bertram Wolferstan, The Catholic Church in China from 1860 to 1907 (London: Sands & Company, 1909), p. 305.

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Fig. 2.34 French cathedral, detail. This view shows a “Chinese gargoyle.” These waterspouts seem to be the primary place where the Chinese congregants saw their ethnic identity represented in the building, otherwise a nearly archaeological exercise in the French High Gothic style. Photo by author, 2002.

on modern day Yide Street, the Sacre Coeur or Cathedral of the Sacred Heart slowly rose above the city between the 1860s and 1880s.179 Built of limestone, the edifice is almost an archaeological essay in the revived French Gothic style, with the exception of gargoyles that bear a close kinship with Chinese Buddhist iconography of guardian lions (Fig. 2.34). French architect Achille-Antoine Hermitte, freshly emerged from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, came to China after winning the competition for the Hong Kong City Hall, and then went to work in French Indochina, where he designed the governor general’s palace in Saigon.180 The enablers of Hermitte’s vision were ethnic Hakka stonemasons from Wuhua in eastern Guangdong.181 Besides being skilled, these men were likely chosen because of the Hakkas’ reputation for being more positive towards Christianity and foreigners than the “bendi” Cantonese. Besides the cathedral, the French Catholic complex hosted a range of missionary enterprises, including a school and an orphanage, which by the first decade of the twentieth century hosted 467 Chinese children.182 These efforts, combined with the factors that some people in the region had been Catholic since perhaps the seventeenth century, ensured a flourishing number of constituents for the cathedral. 179. Graham E. Johnson and Glen D. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Guangzhou (Canton) and Guangdong (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1999), p. 29. 180. “Cathedrales d’Asie,” in Le Monde Colonial Illustre, No. 128, April 1934, pp. 56–57. Thanks to Prof. Lily Chi of Cornell University for providing this reference. 181. Johnson and Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Guangzhou (Canton) and Guangdong, p. 29. 182. Wolferstan, The Catholic Church in China from 1860 to 1907, p. 447.

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The smaller Protestant missions in Guangzhou faced more of a challenge in gaining converts. While the ritual and sensuality of Catholicism made gaining converts in China comparatively easy, the Protestant effort relied on conveying an understanding of belief and doctrine that depended on the verbal translation of abstract ideas. The evangelical strategies and environments created by the smaller Protestant missions can be charted in the activities of the British groups, the London Missionary Society (LMS, largely a project of the English Congregationalists) and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. Both of these groups, it will be noted, maintained central offices on Shamian, while their activities were spread throughout the city and the province of Guangdong. Beginning in the early 1860s, the genial and practical Rev. John Chalmers developed the material and organizational infrastructure for the London Missionary Society’s Guangzhou efforts. By 1870, Chalmers oversaw the construction of the society’s double house on Shamian, previously mentioned. By 1873, he hired and supervised a Chinese builder in constructing a chapel in Shakee, in the western suburbs not far from Shamian. Chalmers’ recounting of the opening of the Shakee Chapel shows that the building was of interest to more than just the congregation he and his peers had managed to attract: A beautiful and commodious place of worship has been built and the opening services now being held are I feel convinced the occasion of a general revival. The churches of our mission in Canton, Fatshan, and Hong Kong, and those of other missions have vied with each other in their endeavours to adorn the place with elegantly carved mottoes and inscriptions, and other friends, as well as the builder of the chapel, who are not Christians, have made similar contributions. The congratulations of the other churches are generally accompanied with regrets that ours should still be the only one which has made any considerable effort towards self-support.183

Though no record has yet surfaced of the building itself, it was Chinese-built and -decorated. Though the focus within the chapel was the preaching of Christianity, the building was also, arguably, viewed in terms of a Chinese religious building, that is, as a handsome neighborhood social center, hence the broad interest in the community. The mention of congregational “self support” is also noteworthy. To the foreign missionaries, this was one of the greatest indications of success, and meant that they had created a church that functioned like the ones at home. Though strong bonds and mutual support existed between Chinese Christians of different cities, this goal frequently proved elusive. The London Missionary Society had a smaller, plainer, and less successful chapel or “preaching hall” in the eighth ward of the city. Both chapels were staffed by preachers Leung Alo and Au Fungchi; in 1875, Chalmers pointed out, “To them has been left 183. London Missionary Society, CWM, South China, Reports. Box 1 (folder 8) 1873. SOAS.

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in great measure the public preaching to the heathen.”184 Although Chalmers did on occasion preach himself, the hands-off approach of the LMS seems to have made their Cantonese congregations fairly independent and resourceful. This left Chalmers free to pursue, besides overall management, endeavors such as compiling a Cantonese dictionary for the use of missionaries.185 Just after Chalmers departed to manage the entire LMS regional efforts from Hong Kong, records show that, even in the anti-foreign atmosphere of 1884, the Shakee Chapel regularly had between 300 and 500 at services, while the Eighth Ward Chapel had only about 150.186 Rev. T.  W. Pearce arrived to take Chalmers’s position in 1881, but due to the anti-foreign riots of the early 1880s little new was accomplished immediately. In 1886, Pearce oversaw a change of venue for the smaller chapel—in a move based purely on the desire to search for more fertile evangelical grounds, the Eighth Ward Chapel was closed and a new chapel was opened on Honam.187 The Shakee Chapel continued to play a dominant role in the evangelical endeavors of the LMS for several decades. It had the advantage of being in both a heavily trafficked area and a neighborhood where the inhabitants were generally tolerant of Westerners. It received a further boost in 1888 or 1889, with the construction of a book room, apparently both a library and store.188 In attempts to perhaps literally “sell” religion, the appearance of the chapel from the street would be transformed: We are about to build at the Sha Ki Chapel a book room. The space between the street boundary wall and the Chapel front on both sides will then be turned to good account. Instead of a brick wall in front with a wooden entrance gate the Sha Ki Chapel building will when the book room is completed resemble a shop & will have a front almost entirely of glass protected by wire netting.189

The LMS missionaries were definitely finding a way to get the Cantonese inside their doors, but they may not have been doing much towards their goal of converting heathen souls. Even before the book room opened, the missionaries were finding that their spaces had been appropriated for purposes that suited the Cantonese: In Canton we can always preach to a crowd. Congregations come in to while away an idle half-hour, to be amused, to hear a story, to look at the maps & pictures on the walls, or to ask questions about foreign countries & foreign goods (specimens are sometimes brought & shown), to talk with in a good humoured way [or] banter the foreigner.190

184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190.

Ibid. Box 1 (folder 10) 1875. Ibid. Box 1 (folder 12) 1877. Ibid. Box 1 (folder 19) 1884. Ibid. Box 1 (folder 21) 1886. Ibid. Box 2 (folder 23) 1888. Ibid. Ibid.

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The report goes on to say that it was the missionaries’ impression that it was a challenge to make the Chinese understand that what they preached “has repercussions for actual life.” 191 In 1891, the mission report states of the book room, “Anything with pictures or English in it sells” and that religious texts did not.192 The missionaries had made a space in form of a chapel and book room available to the Cantonese community, which in turn used it to their own purposes, namely to indulge their curiosity about the West. In 1891, the earnest if frustrated and high-strung Rev. Pearce, “who was unable to do much work on account of nervous debility, and who was ordered by the doctor to get complete rest for a year or two,” was replaced by more aggressively businessminded missionaries.193 They brought with them new ideas about how the Guangzhou mission should be run. The Honam chapel was sold, as the area was now well covered by American and other missionaries, and a new one was opened up in an area of the city less frequented by foreigners, the sixth ward near one of the northern gates: The importance attached to our opening in this place by one antagonist is seen from the fact that the Confucianists immediately rented a shop on the opposite side of the way & only a few doors removed for the preaching of the Sacred Edict.194

The decision was made in 1899 to abandon the Shakee Chapel and open a new, larger one not far away on Tsung Kwai San Kai Street. This was based on the need for more space, but also on proximity to the bulk of their most successful congregation and yet far enough away not to attract the “unruly mob” of the curious who popped into the Shakee Chapel from the major thoroughfare.195 The new chapel in the western suburbs took two years to complete, with a native preacher, supervised by one of the missionaries, as general contractor, operating on a foreign architect’s plans.196 It was one of the few missionary neighborhood chapels of Guangzhou with a visual record in the form of interior photographs (Fig. 2.35).197 Construction of the Tsung Kwai San Kai Chapel was interrupted by a scandalous incident. In late July 1900, the roof in the pulpit end of the chapel collapsed.198 This resulted in the dismissal of the local preacher, who had been left on his own to supervise construction.199 Within a few weeks, the missionaries had called in architect John Lemm, of 64 Queens Road, Hong Kong, and who may or may not have been 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197.

Ibid. Ibid. Box 2 (folder 26) 1891. Ibid. Ibid. Box 3 (folder 33) 1898. Ibid. Box 3 (folder 34) 1899. Ibid. Box 3 (folder 36) 1901. London Missionary Society, CWM, China, Photographs. Box 3, folder 9, no. 3. Labeled “New LMS Native Church, Canton.” SOAS. 198. London Missionary Society, CWM, South China, Incoming Correspondence. Box 14 (folder 5, jacket A) 1900. SOAS. 199. Ibid.

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Fig. 2.35 “New LMS Native Church, Canton,” showing the interior of the London Missionary Society preaching chapel, western suburbs of Guangzhou, c. 1901. Though the basic architectural form of the chapel is typical of many a small Protestant church, and has such period touches as the faux-painted iron columns running down the center, Chinese touches such as the calligraphy scrolls and traceried manzhou windows show the investment of the Cantonese congregants. Used with the permission of the Council for World Missions and the SOAS, University of London (CWM/LMS/China/ Photographs, Box 3, Folder 9, C72).

the architect whose plans were used, to investigate the cause of the collapse.200 The verdict he presented was that the collapse had three causes: the inferior quality of the Cantonese “blue” bricks used for the building; the use of iron straps that were too thin and the mixing of hardwood with less reliable Chinese fir in the construction of the king post trusses; and the small size of the masonry wall plate that supported the trusses.201 The photograph (Fig. 2.35) shows these formidable Western-style trusses, now supported by thick masonry buttresses inserted to correct the problems that caused the collapse. The mixing of traditional Cantonese building techniques with what was for the builders a rather experimental Western roof technology was at the root of the collapse, and suggests that the preacher/amateur contractor should not have been wholly to blame for factors undoubtedly outside his sphere of knowledge. 200. Ibid. Box 14 (folder 5, jacket D). 201. Ibid.

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The photograph of the chapel as finished shows a large rectilinear space with a peaked ceiling. A skylight occupies the center of the ceiling. Marbleized columns of cast iron or wood run down the center of the sanctuary, supporting the previously problematic king post trusses, now also reinforced with curvilinear metal brackets. Between the columns running down the center of the space is a beaded board wooden screen with carved triangular and segmental arched details on the top, carved with Chinese vine patterns. The partition seems to have been put in place for separation of the genders during the service. It had not been uncommon in the preceding decades for missionary services to be held at different times for men and women, but with this new large chapel permitting joint services, gender separation was apparently continued spatially, likely in this instance from Chinese rather than missionary preference. Two  doors surmounted by fanlights at the entrance and pulpit ends continued the two-part scheme, as did the two pulpit end tracery windows. These, in floral and geometric patterns, may have had colored panes, as was then becoming common in the western suburb (xiguan), which still prides itself on the continued presence of many colored and wood-traceried “manzhou” and threshold windows. Chinese vegetal patterns on the ornamental chair rail and painted underneath the wall molding, as well as flower carvings on the buttress capitols, also display the contributions of local craftsmen. Finally, the calligraphy scrolls bedecking the walls make this environment a true blend of East and West, though perhaps not to the extent of the old Shakee Chapel. The pattern created by the basic form of the LMS chapel had a fairly long life. Another, if late, example known through surviving plans is the United Brethren’s Honam Chapel, constructed in 1919 by the Cantonese contractors, Shing On Company.202 Essentially a long, narrow box with a hipped roof and Western roof trusses, the plain rectangular structure was probably never even as elaborate as the LMS chapel, and reveals the form that the missionaries thought of as functional. With the construction of the new LMS chapel in the western suburbs, the missionaries also decided to follow a trend, perhaps initiated by the American Presbyterians, and open an English-language school. The school, in place by 1900, was adjacent the new chapel and the Chinese preacher’s house.203 The decision to start the school was put forth as a way of attracting new people to the London Mission, due to the increasing popularity of Western education among the upper and middle classes of Guangzhou. As the mission report states, “The demand for an English education at Canton is very great and we felt that the school might soon be self-supporting.”204 The school, private and charging tuition, did in fact attract a substantial number of students, but they came mostly to learn English and Western disciplines rather than to study Christianity; the LMS made few converts through the institution. Though 202. United Brethren Foreign Missions papers (2279-5-1:02). United Methodist Archives, Drew University. 203. Ibid. Box 14 (folder 5, jacket B). 204. Ibid. Reports. Box 2 (folder 31). 1896.

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the school was moderately prosperous, by 1902, competition was felt with the opening of two large, free, and secular (two factors with obvious appeal) English schools under the Ellis Kadoorie Foundation.205 Once again, little visual record exists of the buildings, apart from a group photograph showing the class of the LMS Canton or “City of Rams” School, probably in 1901, as judged from the number of students, standing in the side yard of a Western-style building that is partially visible behind a tree.206 This could be the school “with vestry and anteroom below,” or alternatively the “preacher’s dwelling with bible school and women’s waiting room below” mentioned in the 1900 LMS building inventory.207 The building had an arched and balustraded verandah in front, followed by two side window bays and a side entrance, followed by another window bay—perhaps indicating a building with the central passage–side hall plan seen in other foreign buildings of the era. The importance of the building here, however, is not necessarily its form, but rather its location and institutional function. The evolution of the British Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society paralleled that of the London Missionary Society. Possessing a somewhat larger staff from the beginning, their efforts proceeded a bit more quickly. These included churches in both the western and eastern suburbs of the city, where their missionaries were more frequently the preachers than in the case of the LMS. By 1886, the Wesleyans also had a book room, a boys’ school in the city’s tenth ward, and a high school on Honam.208 They used their offices on Shamian as headquarters for a larger provincial missionary effort, which included preachers, teachers, and doctors in other cities in Guangdong by the turn of the century. Unfortunately, little record survives of the Wesleyans’ building projects in Guangzhou. By the turn of the century, a number of new missionary groups had arrived in Guangzhou, including the Berlin Missionary Society, the American Southern Baptist Convention, and the Church of England Missionary Society. The missionaries from the American denomination with Germanic heritage, the United Brethren in Christ, arrived in 1889, but lodged with other American missionaries until they constructed their own missionary compound in 1898.209 A few photographs survive of the Brethren’s Beth Eden Compound (Fig. 2.36), whose construction on the very northwestern tip of Honam was supervised by Dr. H. K. Shumaker.210 Images show the three-story 205. Ibid. Box 3 (folder 37). 1902. 206. London Missionary Society, CWM, China, Photographs. Box 3, folder 11, no. 9. Labeled “London Missionary Society Boys’ School, Canton” and ibid. Reports. Box 3 (folders 36). 1901. 207. Ibid. Reports. Box 3 (folder 35). 1900. 208. The Seventy Third Report of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (London: Wesleyan Missionary Society, 1887), pp. 176–80, passim. 209. J. Bruce Behney and Paul H. Eller, The History of the Evangelical United Brethren Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), p. 238, and A. W. Drury, History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (Dayton, OH: Otterbein Press, 1953), pp. 603–4. 210. Ibid., and “Map of Canton and Environs Showing United Brethren Territory in South China.” United Brethren Foreign Missions collection. United Methodist Church Archives. GCAH. Images from UBC

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Fig. 2.36 United Brethren’s Beth Eden missionary compound on Honam. In this aerial view, one can see the masonry physician’s house with its hipped roof, which was rather shallower than most of its contemporary buildings in Guangzhou, apparently a variant of the Midwestern American I-house. The balloon frame building beyond, possibly holding a clinic or school rooms, also reveals the impact of American vernacular architecture on this particular compound—one wonders whether it was in fact assembled from prefabricated elements shipped from abroad. From Mathews and Hough, The Call of China and the Islands, facing p. 33.

physician’s residence and a one-and-a-half-story frame building with a recessed porch, probably a school building, and a yard, all surrounded by a wall. The masonry walls, arched verandahs, and hipped roof of the physician’s residence are familiar in the language of foreign dwelling in Guangzhou. The three stories, single structural bay depth, and what appears would have been an “I-house” plan borrowed from the vernacular of the American Midwest and Upper South are innovations, undoubtedly due to the supervision of Dr. Shumaker. The second building is altogether a departure, given its frame construction and recessed porch. Outside the Beth Eden compound, by 1905 the Brethren had a street chapel on Honam, a number of day schools, two medical dispensaries, and a girls’ boarding school or “seminary.”211 Two years later, the denomination would add a foundling home across the river at Huadi, but discussion of this facility belongs in a later chapter. Foreign buildings had, by the turn of the century, been scattered throughout various parts of the city owing largely to missionary efforts. While some of these buildings were solely religious, missionary-sponsored schools and other institutions became sought after for Cantonese with a “modernizing” ethic. Although firm in their desire to convert the largely uninterested Cantonese to Christianity, the missionaries were, in part unintentionally, the group of foreigners that would lead the way in desegregating the foreign and Cantonese worlds. Archives, United Methodist Church Archives. GCAH. and G. M. Mathews and S. S. Hough, The Call of China and the Islands (Dayton, OH: Foreign Missionary Society, UBC, 1911), facing p. 33. 211. Behney and Eller, The History of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 238.

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Neighboring Sparks, Local Flames: Violence and Space in the 1880s While the 1860s and 1870s saw peace between foreigners and Chinese people, tensions began to mount around 1880 between Guangzhou’s vast populace and its small Western community. While certain segments of the Cantonese painfully remembered the city’s humiliations during the Arrow War, of which the British and French consular yamen and the Catholic cathedral were continuing symbols, the immediate cause of rising anti-foreign sentiment was French expansionism. The French had rapidly expanded their control in Southeast Asia from an initial mid-nineteenth-century base in Cochin-China (modern southern Vietnam) and Cambodia northwards. By 1882, they occupied Hanoi, and the Nguyen dynasty rulers of Annam, a traditional tributary state of China, had requested Chinese intervention. By 1884, the French and the Chinese were at war, though no actual part of the official conflict directly touched Guangzhou. Unlike some earlier instances of Cantonese-foreign conflict, all Westerners tended to be subsumed by broader anti-foreign sentiment in the early 1880s. Against this backdrop, local sparks set off notable disruption between Cantonese and foreigners in the late nineteenth century, and buildings once again became targets. On September 15, 1880, a minor incident signaled rising tensions. A fire broke out in the sheds occupied by ethnic Hakka stonemasons working on the French cathedral that was subsequently extinguished by the ethnic Cantonese.212 In the words of the British consular correspondence, “The Hakkas had shown themselves ungrateful for the service thus rendered, and the firemen left the spot without thanks, but without shew [sic] of retaliation. The bystanders took the matter up.”213 The Hakkas and later some of the resident French and local Catholics, dragged members of the gathering Cantonese crowd inside the cathedral precincts, which obviously excited the situation further.214 A group of Cantonese had assembled in protest outside the cathedral, or as then British Vice-Consul E. H. Parker (one of the main sources on the incident) nonchalantly recalled, “I had just finished ‘tiffin,’ sent off my guests, and was drinking my coffee alone, when a note from Père Béal was placed in my hands: it was to the effect that an attack on the cathedral was threatening.”215 Parker’s view of the incident was largely from behind a desk. As the British head consul and the French consul were at that moment both away, he found himself in charge of the situation. Dispatches flew back and forth among Parker and the Chinese viceroy, various missionaries, and the two “Viceroy’s gunboats” in the river.216 These boats were in fact manned by foreigners, one set of British and one of French, and seemed to await Parker’s command at

212. 213. 214. 215. 216.

Enclosure 1 of dispatch number 27 (9/23/1880). British Consular Correspondence, FO 17/837. Ibid. Ibid. E. H. Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others (New York and London: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1902), p. 96. Ibid., pp. 96–99.

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least as much as they did that of Chinese officials.217 The Chinese head guard of the Shamian bridges had them fully manned, and the viceroy, who sallied forth to attend to the situation and had his sedan attacked by the rioters, reportedly had 2,000 troops installed around the cathedral complex, thus stemming further escalation.218 While the long-standing ethnic tensions between Hakka and Cantonese may have been the origin of the disturbance, the cathedral itself was the lightning rod for conflict. In the end, however, the French properties avoided severe damage, but the Protestant missionaries were in fact a bit upset because “no one . . . had given them a thought.”219 Though this incident caused little real damage, it was followed nearly three years later on September 10, 1883, by a far more damaging riot, on an occasion when “the mob had a fairly good excuse,” as Parker put it.220 Though the event must be seen against the backdrop of the pending Sino-French conflict, the immediate cause was the death of a nineteen-year-old Cantonese man. The young man, alternately said to be an employee of the Chinese postal service or a runner for a Chinese businessman, was pushed or “kicked” off the steamer packet Hankow by a Westerner, said either to be a Portuguese watchman or “a drunken Englishman named Logan.”221 Apparently, a total of three people were pushed overboard, but the other two were rescued.222 The ship shoved off, away from the gathering and angered crowd. Upon learning that the agent for the ship was Russell & Co., now installed on Shamian rather than the “old factory site,” the crowd veered towards the concession island with intent to confront the company.223 Some discretion and goal-oriented behavior was initially present in the crowd, as they passed by the customs office, a Western building full of foreign employees though in the service of the Chinese government. Upon achieving Shamian, however, the crowd apparently completely lost control. Foreign houses on the eastern end of the island were indiscriminately attacked and not a few set on fire. The total number of buildings damaged was recorded with some variance, but it seems that five residences, including the recently repaired house of Pustau & Co. (Fig. 2.9) as well as the assembly and theater building called “Concordia Hall,” were destroyed beyond repair.224 Other buildings were looted but not destroyed, including the London Missionary Society double house, where it was reported, “Most of the moveable articles of value have been carried off except our books which remain nearly intact.”225 The crowd had even begun battering down the gates of the British consulate 217. 218. 219. 220. 221. 222. 223. 224. 225.

Ibid., see also Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, the Philippines & c. (1882), p. 305. Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others, pp. 97–99. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid. China Mail, Serious Disturbance at Canton: Houses on Shameen Burnt and Looted [pamphlet] (Hong Kong: China Mail, 1883), pp. 1, 2, 6, and Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others, pp. 99–100. China Mail, Serious Disturbance at Canton: Houses on Shameen Burnt and Looted, p. 7. Ibid., p. 2. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shamian, 1859–1938, p. 19. London Missionary Society, CWM, China Correspondence. Box 9 (1880–1883), Folder 4. SOAS.

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complex when “someone in authority called out ‘Not that house, not that house’” and they “turned aside.”226 This action by the Cantonese crowd fell largely into the pattern of many mid-century riots, when houses were attacked as surrogates and symbols of Western presence but foreign people themselves were not directly attacked with intent to injure. A correspondent to the China Mail even noted, “The mob evidently were not so much bent upon murder as plunder and destruction, or they could have taken our lives easily.”227 There were no foreign casualties. Furthermore, the locals who lived with or near the foreigners acted in their defense. When houses across the rear canal were attacked, foreigners who lived there were concealed by Cantonese people in the neighborhood, who also fought off some of the rioters.228 When segments of the rioters finally reached Russell & Co.’s house in the middle of the island, they were met with resistance from fellow Cantonese: “the servants of the hong fought with might and main, driving the rioters off three times.”229 Another assault by the rioters was then driven away by the startling appearance of some foreigners who had armed themselves and began to fight back: “To see five or six men sweeping down on the rioters at Russell & Co.’s accompanied with an Indian war whoop, and the consequent dispersal of the mob at that point, is a little comical to look back upon.”230 The rioters finally left the island when a full battalion of Chinese troops arrived, displaying a flag, “which after being held up in front of the mob authorizes the military to fire upon rioters.”231 The underlying source of anger here is unknown. Sino-French tensions may have been universalized to all foreigners. Alternatively, there may have been pent up resentment at the park-like privilege of Shamian itself. A letter of Rev. Pearce of the London Missionary Society perhaps suggests the latter, though the main impression he leaves is of the riot’s results and some bafflement at the incident: Charred timbers & heaps of bricks lie where scarcely more than a week ago white houses stood out from among the trees making a scene suggestive in the highest degree of tranquility & comfort & if one judged from the size & beauty of the dwellings, of the financial prosperity of the foreigners; we were living on a volcano though that fact was only partially known, & to some was not evident at all. The volcano has been active & we see the revolution in the destruction of more than one third of the foreign households.232

The killing of a young Cantonese man, while tragic in itself, released some simmering sentiment amongst a segment of the local populace, which still restrained itself 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232.

Dispatch number 19 (9/11/1883), British Consular Correspondence FO17/933. China Mail, Serious Disturbance at Canton: Houses on Shameen Burnt and Looted, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 6, 7. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 3. London Missionary Society, CWM, China Correspondence. Box 9 (1880–1883), Folder 4. SOAS.

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to acting against the symbol of foreign high-handed separateness, Shamian. This was really the last riot against the foreign presence that had as its models the incidents of the Opium War era. In outlying areas beyond the city, some mission stations would be attacked during the Sino-French War, but it was the end of direct violence towards foreigners and their property in the city proper during the nineteenth century. The riot did accomplish one lasting result in the lack of enthusiasm the British and French consuls now had for dwelling in their city yamen: Since the riotous years of 1883 and 1884 the British and French Consuls have not found it pleasant to reside at the large garden consulates of their governments in the vicinity of the high Chinese officials in the northern part of the City of Canton, or to pass through the streets in exciting times. As recently as October 1884 the British Consul had his sedan-chair surrounded and his chair-bearers jostled aside by a rude crowd of natives; and the French Consul in that year was compelled to invoke the protection of the Chinese authorities on the streets of Canton, and had Chinese soldiers continually at the French Yamen for protection of the Consulate of France. Both British and French Consuls now reside on Shamian.233

The fragile boundary between the foreigners and the city had been crossed, with great psychological impact. The reaction, however, was retrenchment. Foreign interests in the later 1880s became more invested in a segregated Shamian, and apart from missionaries would remain separate from the city for almost a quarter of a century.

The Later Nineteenth Century and the Two Worlds of Guangzhou The threat of Western military domination in the wake of the Arrow War, the foreign fear of Cantonese riots, and the arrival of Western women and families all profoundly shaped cross-cultural spatial relations in Guangzhou. Shamian was an island designed to be a separate, Western world, away from continuous interaction with the Cantonese and their city, which had previously been a daily necessity. The models for settlement were the tree-lined avenues of prestigious neighborhoods in large European and American cities. With the arrival of foreign women and families, business functions became spatially separated from domestic ones, and were sometimes (for instance, in terms of the Imperial Maritime Customs dwellings) moved outside of the house altogether. Likewise, the local household servants were increasingly distanced from the Euro-American households both in spatial and social terms. They had become subordinates rather than independent employees, and at least one of Shamian’s women considered it her duty to look make sure servants she considered racially inferior did not cause mischief. Assumptions about Western racial or cultural superiority, manifest

233. Letter No. 116 of November 15, 1886. Despatches, United States Consuls in Canton. [microform]

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in the foreign partitioning of spaces, had replaced the feeling of communal enterprise that had been the rule in the Thirteen Factories era. Although Guangzhou always operated as a fully autonomous Chinese city, unlike for instance Shanghai, the late nineteenth century produced several architectural symbols of Western power and potential domination. The construction of Shamian, with its immense retaining walls, guarded bridges, and quick access to transportation on the Pearl River, was itself an assertion of Western, and particularly British, strength. The Americans, receiving this message clearly, sought briefly their own, separate space within the city out of fear of potential British coercion. The appropriation of official yamen within the walled city by British and French consuls sent an indisputable message of domination. In a move both humiliating to the Cantonese populace and violating of Chinese tradition and belief, the construction of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on the site of Ye’s yamen would broadcast across the city skyline what Western powers were capable of doing. Yet for many Cantonese and foreigners, ill feeling did not necessarily prevail. The consuls’ love of display and conspicuous consumption, while couched in national pride, found an outlet in festivities designed to unite important members of the various foreign communities and Chinese officials. Rare foreigners, like the Grays, were curious about and even affectionate towards the Cantonese and their city, and found their efforts at cross-cultural interaction returned in kind. Even servants, a prominent instance being Annie Spinney’s cook, could develop a certain prestige among the foreigners if they did their job well, and some had enthusiasm for their work. The real surprise, in an era otherwise dominated by cultural distance, was discovered by the missionaries, the only group of foreigners that lived in or routinely moved through the city. Though at times targets of anti-foreign aggression, it was their business to relate to the Cantonese at a one-on-one level. What they found was not, as hoped, large numbers of religious converts. Rather, they found a large segment of the Cantonese populace eager to learn more about the West and to adopt, selectively, Western goods, knowledge, and practices and make them their own. The hospitals, schools, and book rooms dispersed around the city by the missions would have a larger impact on Guangzhou than any coercive symbol erected or appropriated by the foreign powers. Though the exclusive nature of Shamian would remain for some years, the dawn of the century would find Chinese and Western worlds once again merging, both spatially and socially.

Chapter 3 Dining, Shopping, Bombarding, and Touring Foreigners in the Traditional City

Canton is a sphinx, serenely indulging in calm recollections, and seeming to smile with equal contentment on time and change. We have interrogated it. How shall we be able to record its responses.1 —Olive Risley Seward, 1873

Guangzhou never became a colony per se. Foreigners only ever controlled the city for a few years after the Arrow War. Thus should nineteenth-century Westerners have chosen to wander outside the narrow confines of their residential enclaves, they would have been confronted with an entirely Chinese, or more specifically Cantonese, city to explore. The records of foreigners touring parts of the city thus take on a rather different cast from similar writings by contemporary Westerners in wholly occupied or controlled cities, whether they were in distant India or nearby Hong Kong. Several overlapping phases of “tourist” experience illustrate consecutive ways of seeing the urban spaces of Guangzhou. During the Shisan Hang era, foreigners’ explorations of the city were limited to venues where they had either been invited for a special occasion or where they had acquired standing invitations. This time period is most marked by visits to places to engage in activities such as walking, eating, and buying, necessary relief from the monotony of long work hours in sometimes cramped quarters. The time span from the Opium Wars to roughly the mid-1870s is characterized by “mapping.”2 Here the meaning is from Michel de Certeau’s use of the word, as the mental placement of static sites in contrast to “touring,” a more active engagement with the place. During this period, foreigners, after having forced open its gates through war and negotiation, explored the city and located sites of interest, formulating observations onto a static spatial order in attempts to know “the Chinese.” The ability of tourists to move through the city was mediated by the ability of the Cantonese populace to control foreigners’ movements by surveillance and what can be termed the “press” of the crowd. The last quarter of the nineteenth century is marked by the acceptance of conventional 1. 2.

Seward, William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World, p. 236. The term “mapping” is here used in generally the same sense utilized by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

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itineraries, codified and reinforced by a budding, Cantonese-run guide service. This fully developed state of tourist practice, possibly both in Western and East Asian terms, is marked by the evolution of sites into “famous” buildings and locations known for their supposed uniqueness. Sites became dissolved in their own representation, in the end becoming items on an itinerary to be checked off rather than experienced.3

Guests and Customers: “Invited” Foreigners in the Early Nineteenth Century The trading community’s quest for some form of recreation outside of walking around the factory square characterized the early years of foreign presence in Guangzhou. They succeeded in such explorations to a limited extent. Their main trips beyond the factories focused on visits to a couple of specially permitted scenic sites, dinner parties at the residences of their cohong merchant trading partners, and shopping in Old and New China Streets and the artisan and mercantile neighborhoods just to the north of their residences. These explorations were mostly on the semi-rural edge of the city suburbs, with the exception of shopping at the artisan streets, which was within a rather dense building fabric, if still suburban.4 From at least 1819, Chinese imperial edicts spelled out that foreigners were allowed on certain days to frequent the Ocean Banner Buddhist monastery near the western tip of Honam Island and the flower gardens at Huadi (in Cantonese, Fati), literally “flower ground,” southwest across the back or Macao reach of the Pearl River from the western suburbs.5 These two sites, while later codified into conventionalized tourist sites, not the least because of their association with the early China traders, were recorded and remembered in the early nineteenth century as places of active recreation. Both functioned primarily as destinations for a row on the river and places to walk without having to pace back and forth in the square. The choice of these two sites by Chinese officials and foreigners probably resulted from their status as two of the city’s largest and most clearly bounded sites unrelated to governmental functions.

Visiting a Buddhist Monastery One of the earliest in-depth descriptions of the Ocean Banner Monastery was inserted in Notices Concerning China and the Port of Canton, published by the Mission Press 3. 4.

5.

John Frow, “Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia,” October 57 (Summer 1991): 128–30. It is important to note that the southern and western suburbs of Guangzhou before the twentieth century were actually more built up than the city center within the walls. The reason for this is that they contained the active commercial functions of the city, while inside the walls, and particularly inside the “old town” or northern walled city, were located only official functions largely dedicated to the Qing (Manchu) occupation of the city—palaces or yamen, and barracks. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton, pp. 28–29.

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in Malacca in 1823.6 The Mission Press was part of a larger missionary institution, the Anglo-Chinese College, founded in what is now Malaysia, where possibly the first school to teach Westerners the Chinese language was located. As a product of such a place, much of the work relies heavily on Chinese historical documents translated by an unnamed foreign expert. As far as the monastery is concerned, it therefore mainly recounts the legend of the founding of the monastery, as it was described in an historical text. In this work there is also a Chinese diagram of the complex (Fig. 3.1) to which

Fig. 3.1 Plan of Ocean Banner Monastery, 1823. This schematic plan is accompanied by Arabic numbers cued to one of the first “tour guides” intended for Westerners. From Notices Concerning China and the Port of Canton, p. 9.

6.

Notices Concerning China and the Port of Canton (Malacca: The Mission Press, 1823), pp. 6–11.

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is appended a numbered explanation of the plan in English. This contains both simple translations from the diagram as well as observations on how the spaces of the monastery were used in contemporary practice. The map and explanation indicates both that the authorities and the monks allowed foreigners to explore the temple rather thoroughly and that foreigners closely observed, if not always comprehended, religious and other activities within the temple. As early to mid-nineteenth-century foreign visitors strolled through the temple grounds, they made observations that can be characterized as marveling, aesthetic, and “pre-ethnographic.” The marveling observations were the result of a perceived uniqueness or exceptionality. The size of the “vast” temple itself was deemed remarkable, as Osmond Tiffany asserted, “This establishment is one of the largest in the empire, second only, perhaps, to the great Potala.” 7 William C. Hunter was more cautious and probably more accurate in his assessment, calling it only “one of the largest and finest in the southern provinces.”8 The Buddhist images were also deemed outstanding, though not always in a positive way. Fitch Taylor, an ordained chaplain generally hostile to the idea of Chinese religion, remarked, “The immense statues at the portals are huge monsters of beings, neither divine nor human, and convey no positive sentiment save that of power and anger, which is the result of their hugeness and paint.”9 Also, never escaping the foreigner’s notice in terms of the “marvelous” were the “sacred pigs” resident in a pen in the monastery. These were notable not only in terms of their presence in a sacred space, but also in terms of their accommodation, “a stone pen, roofed in, and as clean as the temples,” and of their size, which “would have thrown a Cincinnati pork packer into ecstasies; they were of so portentous a girth, that they could neither walk, stand, or see.”10 The perceived extraordinary quality of parts of the monastery always made up an important part of early descriptions. While this aspect of the monastery was generally an object of enjoyment for its own sake in the secular or at least rationalist minds of Tiffany and Hunter, Western clergymen generally interpreted the marvelous aspects as somehow grotesque. Hunter’s brief description of the Ocean Banner Monastery dwells on the aesthetic in particular: The series of large beautiful halls, or distinct temples, stand on stone platforms, ascended by broad granite steps, and are surrounded by low stone railings, divided by granite columns which support the overhanging roofs. The varied colors of the buildings, the quantity of gilt scrolls hanging on pillars within and without, present a cheerful, brilliant aspect, to the foreign visitor particularly.11

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 184. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 176. Taylor, A Voyage around the World, p. 159. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 190. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 176.

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As a long-term resident, and even a friendly acquaintance of the “chief priest,” Hunter viewed the complex as primarily a treat for the senses. Many accounts share his liking for the variety of the temple architecture, which was sometimes compared to the relative uniformity of Cantonese vernacular. The aesthetic observation of the temple, like the Chinese garden to be discussed later, sometimes has an additional significance, such as when Osmond Tiffany noted windows “decorated with all conceits of Chinese taste.”12 The seemingly self-evident identification of examples of “Chinese taste” echoes a conception from the chinoiserie architectural and garden literature of eighteenth-century Europe. While the consideration of “Chinese taste” may be an assessment according to criteria from inherited notions, these descriptions do not seem to be a judgement of “authenticity” in a modern sense.13 Rather, the assessments seem to be rooted in a point of view deriving from classical Western education, a sort of Aristotelian recognition of something dwelling in its “natural” state. Finally, the “pre-ethnographic” observations of Cantonese activities were based on what the visitors saw local people doing inside the temple grounds. Overall attitudes towards the Chinese and, more specifically, Buddhism (understood by none but the most sophisticated visitors) predictably influenced the visitors’ comments. Lewis Bentham Bowring, a British official who was part of the broad machinery of empire and who had little good to say of the Chinese or, to some extent, any nonBritish people, recorded his haughty observations and subsequent conclusions: The finest temple in Canton is that of Honam on the south side of the river, from which a flagged pathway leads to the building, which, though large, is not pretty, the colossal images in the shrine and the painted statues in the approaches being devoid of beauty. The Chinese are singularly irreverent in their temples, in which they smoke, chatter, and transact their business as did the Jews once in the precincts of a more sacred space. It is hard to say whether the egregious vanity of a Chinaman destroys his reverence, but he appears to be outwardly less religious than other orientals, his idea of material existence being confined to material pleasure.14

Analogy was a practice in observation that would have a long life in Westerners’ views of Guangzhou, even among more diligent observers. Osmond Tiffany observed the rituals of the Buddhist monks and recorded his thoughts: The priests were dressed very much like Catholic clergymen, in long cassocks, and some with a surplice of yellow silk. Their heads were all shaved and they stood ranged on each side of the altar. Their voices were united in a sort of chaunt, and

12. 13. 14.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 190. See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Shocken Books, 1976), Chapter 5, passim and p. 122. Lewis Bentham Bowring, “A Memoir of Service in India” (c. early 1850s), MSS Eur. G91, British Library, p. 71.

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From here, Tiffany went on to elaborate extensively on the analogous practices he saw between Buddhist monks and Catholic monks and priests. Watching the Chinese in order to characterize their behaviors was a Western travelers’ practice that is substantially present even into the twentieth century. At this stage of the early to midnineteenth century, what is notable is the heavy reliance on analogies and the very personal, opinionated or speculative voices of the authors when they interpret their observations. This vanished at some point in the later nineteenth century when a more “factual” tone came to be used.

Flower Grounds Such conflicted and complex observations were not made on the other “across the river” location of respite, the flower gardens, in reality a working plant nursery, named Fati (in Mandarin, Huadi). Observations on this site could be as simple as “Mary Ann & myself have been this forenoon in company with Mr. French to visit some flower gardens at the West of the city, they were quite extensive and filled with many kinds of rare & pretty flowers & shrubs.”16 The not-always-so enthusiastic missionary Dr. B. L. Ball echoes this generally favorable impression: The grounds are extensive, and regularly laid out. Long rows of plants and flowers stretch across, with rows of crockery vases full of variously trained plants, and shrubs border the paths. In the season of bloom it must be a pretty sight; but it now presents little of interest. The Chinese in attendance were very civil and polite to us.17 15. 16. 17.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, pp. 187–88. Augustus Ward Loomis Papers, Cornell University Archives (2474). Letter of October 23, 1849. Loomis was a missionary from Cazenovia, New York. B. L. Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia (Boston: James French and Co., 1855), p. 105.

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Even when anti-foreign sentiment was high, it seems that the attendants at Fati were always very pleasant to their Western visitors. This could have been variously because of the foreigners’ status as potential customers, since the flowers grown here had been known to bedeck the tables and verandahs of the factories, or because the foreigners shared a mutual interest in botany with the Chinese attendants. Osmond Tiffany recorded: The gardeners were evidently men who thoroughly understood their vocation, and were stimulated by enthusiasm at the same time. They were polite and anxious to show us their plants, and did not withhold any information we asked for. They were different from the generality of the people, who are very shy in their answers.18

The Cantonese gardeners’ high degree of hospitality allowed for much flexibility, as Tiffany recorded, “They are open all day, and foreigners are permitted to visit them at any moment.”19 Furthermore, during the Chinese New Year holiday, Fati would be the site of picnics both for well-to-do Cantonese and for groups of up to thirty foreigners from the factories, in what would seem to be a local Western adoption of a Chinese festivity.20 Tiffany’s account of the gardens, one of the most informative, is extensive and difficult to pare down. He stated that there were actually two gardens divided by a creek, and that at a certain time of year one could witness the blooming of ten thousand japonicas.21 He further describes that the entrance was via a gardeners’ lodge, and storehouse for tools and equipment, that there were thousands of flowerpots, glass bells for seedlings, porcelain seats and chairs for furnishing gardens, bonsai, and topiary.22 A rare photograph, circa 1900, shows what must be part of the exterior of the gardeners’ lodge in front of which are displayed flower pots, scholars’ rocks, and a trained bamboo (Fig. 3.2). Tiffany’s admiration of Fati and its Cantonese caretakers glows in the account—the men and the skills on display here impressed him to an extent that stands out even in a generally Sinophilic book. The commercial aspect of the gardens is also evident in this description, as Tiffany mentioned “any of the plants” was available at “reasonable prices.”23 He discussed his purchase of an orange and a japonica, which made it back to his Baltimore home, where “several Baltimore florists obtained cuttings of them, which grew very well in their green-houses, and on which they bestowed unqualified approbation.”24 This place where dedicated people grew interesting and beautiful plants was mutually culturally intelligible. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 163. Ibid., p. 159. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 7. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 159. Ibid., 160–62. Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., pp. 162–63.

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Fig. 3.2 Vignette of the Huadi (Fati) Gardens, c. 1900. This photograph illustrates not only the botanical specimens, but scholars’ rocks and flowerpots that still populate what is one of the largest flower markets in China. From Scidmore, China the Long-Lived Empire, p. 449.

Invitation to a Chop-stick Dinner The cohong merchant’s dwelling, or more particularly his garden villa, offered the next notable setting for the Western merchants to visit and absorb a more elaborate specimen of the Cantonese-built environment. This was initially the result, particularly in the years before the Opium War when the great merchants still maintained government-granted monopolies, of formal invitations to banquets (or as more than one trader dubbed them, “chop-stick” dinners). These banquets were in some ways the most personally gratifying cross-cultural social gatherings that the foreign merchants enjoyed in the earlier days of British and American trade in China. As the turmoil surrounding the Opium and Arrow Wars reached its climax, such invitations dropped off drastically, but, generally speaking, visitors still had ready access to the monopolists’ gardens.25 The practice of viewing Howqua’s and Paunkeiqua’s gardens survived as part 25.

During the late nineteenth century, the great monopolist families were to some extent in decline. The Howqua family held on to its villa for some time after the death of the patriarch Wu Chongyao in 1863. Archdeacon and Mrs. Gray, always popular among an interesting cross-section of Chinese society, were attendees at a banquet at the Howqua family villa as late as May 1877. See Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, pp. 121–29.

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of the foreigners’ tour of Guangzhou well into the late nineteenth century, although without the expectation that the hosts themselves would be present. Predictably, therefore, the Western experience of the garden villa in Guangzhou changed noticeably from the first decades of the nineteenth century to the aftermath of the Arrow War. Among the more detailed of several surviving descriptions by foreigners of “chop-stick” dinners are Bryant Tilden’s visit to Paunkeiqua’s villa, Edward King’s visit, in the company of William C. Hunter, to Tingqua’s country house, and Robert Bennet Forbes’s attendance at a grand banquet at Mingqua’s residence.26 Tilden’s account, actually recording two separate visits, took place in the 1819 trading season and stands out as both the earliest and most personal. Paunkeiqua was, alternately with Howqua, the head of the cohong association, and probably had the highest status on account of his success at the imperial examinations.27 After having carried on substantial business transactions with the merchant, Tilden received an invitation to come alone to Paunkeiqua’s garden villa on Honam, though apparently not to the more famous family garden, the Lixiang Yuan, which was west of the city. This informal visit began with a tour of the house and gardens—which Tilden already keenly compared with a previous visit to Howqua’s villa: He then showed me some parts of his houses and suites of elegantly furnished halls and rooms which I had never before seen, where every thing is more in true ancient Chinese style than I have seen at Houqua’s establishment, without a mixture of foreign appendages, excepting the fascinating cut glass and large framed picture prints. His numerous larger and small fish ponds are connected & crossed by airy and fairy-like short stone bridges, also ponderous artificially made rocks around which seats of naturally-formed yellow shining, single stones, all of which are shaded by grotesquely made to grow palm, orange, and other fruit trees.28

Tilden, who veered towards the practical, was less an aesthetic connoisseur than some other foreigners, but he made a judgment about the “authenticity” of the house and gardens. After being introduced to children and grandchildren (males and younger females—mature women at this time period being sequestered from outside guests in 26.

27.

28.

See Col. Lawrence Waters Jenkins (ed.), Bryant Parrott Tilden of Salem at a Chinese Dinner Party, Canton: 1819 (Princeton: Princeton University Press for The Newcomen Society, 1944); Ethel King Russell (ed.), Journal and Letters of Edward King, 1835–1844 (New York: 1934), pp. 99–100; and Kerr, Letters from China, pp. 79–83. Jenkins, Bryant Parrott Tilden of Salem at a Chinese Dinner Party, Canton: 1819, pp. 11–12. This is in contrast to Howqua, who, while usually considered the wealthiest, was a lower level degree holder who had failed the jinshi examination four times (see Johnson and Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Guanghzou (Canton) and Guangdong, p. 51). There were three hong merchants referred to as Paunkeiqua, a father, son, and nephew of the surname Pan—and this is probably the second of the line. An interesting bit of trivia is that this merchant was made a member of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society in the same year as Tilden’s visit. See Jenkins above, p. 10. Jenkins, Bryant Parrott Tilden of Salem at a Chinese Dinner Party, Canton: 1819, p. 12.

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upper-class Chinese households), Tilden and Paunkeiqua proceeded to a substantial midday meal of “hashed fowls, birds, and rice, sweetmeats, and choice tea” that though not elaborate enough to qualify as a banquet was satisfying nonetheless.29 The host and guest then proceeded up to the library or study on the second story of one of the villa’s chambers.30 Tilden’s notice of the second story is significant, as multi-level garden buildings are much more typical of gardens of the Lingnan (Guangdong) tradition than Chinese gardens elsewhere. To the supercargo’s credit, he recorded the substance of the interesting Pidgin English conversations he had with the monopolist in much greater detail than his experience of the spaces. After this apparently mutually enjoyable social occasion, Tilden frequently chatted with Paunkeiqua and made several large purchases of his silk and tea stock, and the monopolist decided to give a banquet in his honor.31 Tilden was told to invite seven or nine Americans to come with him to the villa, and the account of the “chop-stick” dinner that followed sets the pattern for later accounts.32 Arriving by boats sent by Paunkeiqua, the Westerners arrived early in the afternoon, and were given the tour of the villa, as Tilden recounted: “We were kept amused in his curious museum and library rooms—and in various other ways, in and out doors, until three o’clock.”33 At that point, they proceeded to a large, round table in a “cool hall,” and were seated in relation to the host according to status and, to a lesser extent, age—the fifteen-yearold lad in the party being opposite the seats of honor.34 The event began with toasts all around (French and Madeira wines and English glassware were notably prized by the cohong elite) in what Tilden suspected was a cultural practice borrowed from the Western traders themselves.35 Then followed the long parade of courses, starting with soups among which was the always noted bird’s nest soup, estimated at about twenty in number and distributed over three hours.36 Another aspect of the feast noted by Tilden, later by others, was the placement of arranged flowers on the table, and the clearing of the table and subsequent strewing of flowers over it between courses.37 Dinner lasted until around eight o’clock in the evening, and the guests remained at the table chatting until around ten, when they finally left with their host’s blessing.38 This sort of festive event was for both hosts’ and guests’ enjoyment as well as a way to cement business relationships.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Ibid., pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Ibid., pp. 18–19. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., pp. 20, 22. Ibid., pp. 20–21. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., pp. 22–23.

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The account by Edward King, a resident partner of Russell & Co., of a banquet at Tingqua’s villa in 1835 follows much the same pattern as Tilden’s. The guests arrived in the early to mid-afternoon, and were given the tour: On our arrival we were conducted through the different apartments of his establishment which is of great extent. The buildings are numerous and of great variety of forms and sizes; the rooms were all well filled with furniture, some of which is quite pretty. The chairs are large and heavy and are mostly stationary. There are no sides to a great many of the rooms and you can walk out from them into the gardens and small squares where flowers are beautifully arranged. The grounds are principally covered by the different buildings but there are some small ponds with small boats for the amusement of the children. . . . In the dining-room were a great many glass lanterns of European manufacture, also clocks some of which must have cost a good deal of money.39

The description, which seems a quick inventory of the constituent parts of a Chinese garden, also notes the display of foreign objects, presumably as symbols of prestige. What follows is a description of the courses of the meal, once again noting the soup first, bird’s nest and shark’s fin, followed by dishes too numerous all to be sampled and of which King comments, “The substances are glutinous and I should think quite healthy.”40 The timespan of the dinner was from about half-past five in the evening to around nine, and left the guest a bit exhausted—“the eating of the rich Chinese consumes too much time for us Americans.”41 Robert Bennet Forbes, another partner of Russell & Co., described a banquet on December 30, 1838 at what was apparently Mingqua’s townhouse.42 Slightly different in focus from the previous two descriptions, the only space described by Forbes was the “large hall well lighted” where the event began.43 The event being “a Chinese chop stick dinner preserving the Chinese Etiquette” really formed the focus of Forbes’s account.44 Seating and procedure are initial concerns: seats were arranged for us one half on one side of the hall & the other half on the other the etiquette being for the most distinguished guest to sit in the left hand & the host at the extreme right, a small teapot on the right of each chair—after passing enquiries of health the tea was brought in the small porcelain cups with covers & stands which we sipped a la chinese without sugar or milk, in about five minutes the dinner was announced & we marched into the dining room, our hosts following—on either side of this hall were chinese chairs covered with scarlet cloth

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Russell, Journal and Letters of Edward King, 1835–1844, p. 99. Another description of a visit to Tingqua’s villa, albeit without a banquet, can be found in Taylor, A Voyage Around the World, pp. 143–46. Ibid. Ibid., p. 100. Kerr, Letters from China, pp. 79–83. Ibid., p. 79. Ibid.

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This event was definitely traditionally Chinese. Forbes carefully notes the correct manners to use. What follows is a detailed description of the twenty courses of the meal, the correct etiquette for using spoons and chopsticks, and carefully noted recordings of the movements of the hosts and servants.46 Forbes describes breaks in the eating to arise, walk around the room, and have pipes or cigars. 47 The lack of any account of garden space implies this was a townhouse. Flower arrangements were again noted and, just before the dessert courses, Forbes stated, “a  large waiter of beautiful flowers was brought to Mingqua, Jessamines, Roses &c which he took by the handful and promiscuously threw all over us & our tables filling the air with fragrance particularly of the Jessamine & pink or Carnation.”48 Dessert was followed by toasts, singing by the foreign guests (ending in “Auld Lang Syne”), and a very formal leave-taking at eleven o’clock, including shaking hands at the door to the dining room, again at the stairs, and yet again at the outer door of the dwelling.49 While the previous accounts of banquets at the Hong merchants’ houses were mostly concerned with the spectacles of sight and taste that these adventures entailed, Forbes was consistently studious in his observations of the proper protocol. This on the one hand reveals his keen desire to acquire good manners, which would serve to bolster relations with his trading partners, and on the other perhaps an extra effort put forth, by the Americans at least, to diffuse the rising tensions leading up to the Opium War. Following the first of the mid-nineteenth-century wars, the cohong merchants lost their monopolies, and subsequently perhaps the means and, to a lesser extent, the incentives to hold such elaborate banquets. The garden villas of Paunkeiqua and Howqua, however, would remain attractions to foreign residents and visitors alike. Paunkeiqua’s garden as discussed here was the Lixiang Yuan, the family’s principal villa and not the one visited by Tilden. From the 1840s to their respective demises, these gardens were part of the standard itinerary. Paunkeiqua’s garden was looted by the French in the Arrow War and became the site of a hospital in the 1870s, but Howqua’s existed into the twentieth century. In the mid-nineteenth century, foreign visitors to these sites would generally be led by a foreign resident adept at dealing with the locals, initially the Sinologue trader William C. Hunter and later missionaries like Dr. Parker, founder of the first missionary hospital. By mid-nineteenth century, visitors to the 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Ibid., pp. 79–80. Ibid., pp. 80–82. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid.

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villas were so common that the servants in charge of attending to them would simply let foreigners in to view the grounds as a matter of course. Osmond Tiffany noted that, upon his mid-1840s visit to Paunkeiqua’s garden, “A little lodge stood on one side of the gate occupied by a servant, who bowed obsequiously as we entered.”50 By the late 1840s, Paunkeiqua’s garden was already suffering from some neglect, as the senior trader had died and the principal heir was in jail for debt.51 The touring missionary, Dr. B. L. Ball, recounted his observations of the garden: The grounds were large, laid out in good taste. Narrow walks, hedged with vases of flowers, extended in various directions. Artificial hills were covered with plants, shrubbery, and trees, intermingled with rocks; and among these were smaller paths winding and leading to the highest parts. Underneath were subterranean passages, so constructed as to represent grottoes, and wild, rocky places washed by the sea. The house was built upon stone posts, and situated in the center of an artificial fish-pond. Railed walks, raised on piles above the water, led to it from two sides. Arched bridges, as if made for ornament, but probably to allow boats to pass under, connected some of the walks. The house was unoccupied, and from neglect, fast becoming dilapidated. We looked into the windows, and saw some of the unique furniture still remaining around the rooms. Paintings and pictures still hung on the walls, and a few carved ornaments were yet observable. The house was one story, designed and constructed purely in the Chinese style.52

Besides the typically Western inventory of parts, two things are notable in this description. One is the almost voyeuristic quality of the visitors’ behavior, particularly peeking through windows. This, however, seemed to have been accepted as a matter of course; no evidence of protest from the family, or for that matter the Howqua family at their residence, seems to have been recorded. The other notable comment is the assessment of the villa as being “purely in the Chinese style.” The latter comment, oddly self-evident, is a common one among nineteenthcentury foreigners’ accounts. Ball’s comment is echoed by other visitors to Paunkeiqua’s gardens, including Osmond Tiffany—“Everything was queer, different from anything we had ever seen before, and perfectly Chinese”—and missionary A. B. Smith—“It is a house done off in splendid Chinese style.”53 The foreigners’ claim to expertise on what was or was not the “Chinese style” is a problematic one. These statements may be interpreted as praise for the garden as an exemplar of whatever “Chinese” aesthetics was assumed to be. In a somewhat related way, they could be judgments based on an idea of “Chinese” taste deriving from the English landscape garden/chinoiserie criteria produced in the eighteenth century as a particular, historicist trajectory. This assumes 50. 51. 52. 53.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 166. Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, p. 122. Ibid., p. 123. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 167, and A. B. Smith, Diary. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions records. Harvard University Archives. ABC 18.5.5, vol. 2, entry for January 13, 1846.

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a certain level of aesthetic education among the observers, and may be borne out by the fact that some observers seemed to lack such concerns, like Paul S. Forbes of Russell & Co., who had little interest in the gardens per se, but rather found their avian denizens more interesting.54 The “Chinese” quality of Paunkeiqua’s villa may also be in some ways in dialogue with Howqua’s garden, which in the mid-nineteenth century was both better maintained and a more hybrid environment, as indicated above in Tilden’s implication that Howqua’s villa had “foreign appendages.”55 One anonymous passenger of the ship Eureka, visiting Howqua’s villa in 1854, even went so far as to state that it was “furnished in considerable style though I should hardly think in a true Chinese manner.”56 Howqua’s villa had, due to its longer life, more surviving representations to be disseminated in the West. A gouache in the Peabody Essex collection illustrates the garden as it was in the mid-nineteenth century, complete with a gnarled tree in the foreground, flowers in pots in typical Lingnan style, the pond, and bridges and pavilions (Pl. 21). The garden survived into the early twentieth century, and similar views can be found in postcards. Dr. Ball, who had gained entrance by tipping the doorman, described the well-maintained garden quite enthusiastically: The view which broke on us was the most beautiful of anything which we had seen or could have imagined in this region. Before the unique Chinese buildings spread out an expanse of green shrubbery, broken here and there by glistening mirrors of water, long walks, and hedges intersecting at right angles, and forming squares and oblongs; and long lines of flowers, in green-glazed vases, lined pretty little avenues, through which it was delightful to walk. The artificial arched bridge of wood, the small ponds teeming with fish, and the broad-leafed lotus plants floating, all added to the beauty and variety of the scene.57

The use of water in Howqua’s garden emerges in this description as a departure from Western expectations. As previously mentioned, the other quality noticed by foreigners on visits to Howqua’s residences was the presence of objects from many places, particularly the West. Of one of the hong merchants’ houses, which may or may not be the garden villa, upstate New Yorker Augustus Ward Loomis noted in 1849: The rooms are spacious & elegant, richly & tastefully furnished with the richest & rarest of all native & foreign furniture & ornaments. America has not its equal. It has a piano but so sadly out of tune Mary Anne [his wife] could not get a tune out of it, but there was an organ, a splendid affair, turned by a crank & imitated all the instruments of a full band.58 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Paul S. Forbes Diary, Forbes Collection, Box 6, Folder 65. Baker Library, Harvard University. Entry for May 15, 1843. Jenkins, Bryant Parrott Tilden of Salem at a Chinese Dinner Party, Canton: 1819, p. 12. Passenger Journal. Eureka, Ship. Peabody Essex Museum. LOG 1854 E3 (B19), entry for April 11. Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, pp. 123–24. Augustus Ward Loomis Papers, Cornell Archives. #2474. Letter of October 23, 1849.

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On a visit to Tingqua’s garden residence nine years before, Scots missionary Howard Malcolm admired the gardens but was less pleased with a similar, more carefully enumerated, global mix in the merchant’s rooms: The style of the rooms pleased me less. They were numerous, but all furnished in the same manner, and most of them small. Besides gorgeous Chinese lanterns, hung Dutch, English, and Chinese chandeliers, of every size and pattern. Italian oil paintings, Chinese hangings, French clocks, Geneva boxes, British plate, &c, &c, adorned the same rooms, strewed with natural curiosities, wax fruits, models, and costly trifles, from every part of the world.59

For these Chinese merchants, imported objects displayed status and connections with global trade just as the pictures of the Thirteen Factories, specimens of porcelain, and other decorative arts did in the houses of Boston or London merchants. The Howqua family’s hospitality was unfailing, so that even in the immediate aftermath of the Arrow War, a British army officer could visit and note that the family was “very gentlemanly and civil” and that “The house was furnished with great taste, and scrupulously clean.”60 It helped that the aforementioned officer was in the company of Archdeacon Gray, who became ever more closely a friend of the Howqua family, so that in the late 1870s he and his new wife were often invited to dine at the Howqua residences. Mrs. Gray’s accounts are the last of banquets for foreigners at the villas of the former cohong merchants; in some respects, they differ little from Tilden’s accounts of the beginning of the century.61 The locally hosted banquet gradually faded from the foreigners’ experience, excepting the state banquets provided on the visit of the former president of the United States, General Ulysses S. Grant, in the late 1870s.62 This event, the first visit of a foreign former head of state to China, was a highly unusual one, and the ceremony surrounding Grant’s arrival and the elaborate nature of the banquet were rather outside everyday practice in the city. The practice of visiting the private garden villas of Guangzhou’s wealthy would outlive the “invitations to a chop stick dinner” by almost forty years. The experience of visitors was fundamentally transformed by the lack of social engagement with the denizens, the increasing rarity of such residences, and, finally, by the foreign way of looking at the sites of Guangzhou. The garden visits were not the only touring practice that started in the early years of foreign residence that managed to outlive the wars of the mid-century. Shopping was just such another. 59. 60. 61. 62.

Howard Malcolm, Travels in South-Eastern Asia: Embracing Hindustan, Malaya, Siam, and China (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1853), p. 341. Major-General G. Allgood, China War 1860: Letters and Journal (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901), p. 24. See Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, Letters 10, 15, 18, 25, and 37. Notable in Mrs. Gray’s discussions were the attempts by the men of the Howqua family to emulate Western manners. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, Vol. II, Part 2 (New York: 1879), pp. 322–45, passim.

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The Impulse to Buy Foreign residents and visitors had knowledge of the western suburb of the city because of its proximity to the Thirteen Factories. This area was a bustling artisan and merchant neighborhood where shops lined the streets, selling both raw materials and highly finished art and craft objects, or, as contemporaries called them, “fancy goods.” Even short-term visitors would venture forth into the shops lining Old and New China Streets, the gated passages that provided access to the factories from the city. Those with more experience would venture further into the suburbs in search of better bargains. These streets created an image of the city in the West that would dominate foreign understanding of Guangzhou’s urban fabric. The shops were vernacular building types that evolved to accommodate efficiently the needs of vending to foreign and domestic shoppers. They housed cross-cultural activities that became, and remained, one of the primary foreign points of contact with the traditional city. The general impression given by these streets of the western suburb was of narrow lanes, bustling with activity and curiosities. Fitch Taylor, on a voyage around the world with an American military squadron in 1840, recounted a general impression that was fairly typical among foreigners: Toward evening I took a stroll with Dr. Parker, passing up old China-street, one of the widest streets in the city, and composed of respectable shops on either side; and in a short time, we had wandered through a number of streets, presenting at once the variety of this extensive mart of the East. The streets are narrow, serving only for foot-passengers, flagged with quarried granite. The shops are open in front; and as you look down these streets you see a range of perpendicular tablets, designating the different establishments in the picturesque character of the Chinese, and generally in red letters. The scene is unique; and as you look still further on, the narrowing perspective converges until your sight is entirely obstructed by these gorgeous signs on either side.63

Taylor goes on to list the various types of shops he saw, a practice which became a convention among visitors. A seasonal adaptation was noted by Bryant Tilden: “During the summer thin boards are spaced across the streets from the roofs of buildings to intercept the sun’s rays.”64 Photographer John Thomson’s well-known view down “Physic Street” best caught this impression in the 1870s; this view was constantly reproduced and imitated by photographers and illustrators into the twentieth century as somehow typical of Guangzhou. While the narrow lanes of the suburb were later exoticized in travelers’ accounts, at this point the accounts are actually notably matterof-fact in their description. Some foreigners actually praised the streets as “well paved,”

63. 64.

Taylor, A Voyage Around the World, p. 140. Tilden Journal. PEM. Voyage 1, Vol. 1, p. 80.

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particularly those who, like Americans, were accustomed to muddy roads in their home countries.65 The individual shops varied somewhat in their layout, and can be found portrayed in a number of different sets of Chinese export watercolors purchased by foreign visitors from approximately the 1820s through mid-century.66 As Osmond Tiffany observed, “The shops are all built upon a line, principally of wood, sometimes the lower story is of blue brick, and with the doors raised a single step from the street.”67 The two-story buildings contained the main commercial space below, and the second story might contain living space, restaurant space, storage, or workshop space.68 The shutters, partitions, and other woodwork dividing the shop space from the street and organizing the interior were commonly painted green or black, or sometimes kept in the color of the wood used.69 Tiffany gave a good impression of the interior of one type of shop: They [the shops] are lighted from the top, and are two stories in height; though the second floor sometimes has latticed windows. The skylight is of glass, with an outer covering formed of the laminae of oyster shells, both coverings being managed by cords within reach of the shopman. The second floor is only partially laid, and has a gallery running around it, which overlooks the shop. In this story the walls are usually panelled with wood, decorated with carvings and painted monsters. In the lower story the goods are displayed on shelves or in glass cases on two sides and behind the shopman, who has his counter opposite to the door. There sits in state the little despot of his trade, and scrutinizes with skillful eye all who approach.70

In a close view of one of these shops on Old China Street (Pl. 22), a Parsee customer arrives in a shop that caters to the visiting souvenir hunter.71 While many shops traded in only one particular type of good, this one, located on the main “tourist” thoroughfare, has shelves stocked with matting, hats, umbrellas, teas, baskets, bamboo furniture, and so on. A feather fan vendor is walking in front of the shop, which hints at the fact that there were always a fair number of street vendors at work in and around the Thirteen Factories. The shopping experience of foreigners was, to some extent, predicated on the degree to which they penetrated the suburbs. The tawdriest goods were to be found 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

See, for example, Samuel R. Corwen (sailing master), Log of Ship, Golden West, 1858/1859. PEM. Two collections of interest are in the Peabody Essex Museum, accession numbers E 80607.23 and E82.546-549. The album in the former is featured in H. A. Crosby Forbes, Shopping in China: The Artisan Community at Canton, 1825–30 (Baltimore: Garamond/Pridemark Press, 1979). The author of this catalogue has carefully analyzed the contents and activities represented in these shop pictures. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 59. See Crossman, The China Trade, pp. 105–7. Besides the paintings, descriptions of the shops tend to agree on this point. See W. S. W. Ruschenberger, A Voyage Around the World (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1838), p. 398. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 61. See Forbes, Shopping in China: The Artisan Community at Canton, 1825–30, no. 40.

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in Hog Lane, which catered to sailors granted a very brief shore leave, and where the business premises were little more than temporary wooden stalls (see Chapter 1). By the mid-nineteenth century, the shops of Old and New China Streets catered almost exclusively to the tourist market, as observed by Dr. Yvan Melchior: I never saw anything in China so stupidly dull as these two insipid passages and their trade. During three parts of the day there is not a soul to be seen; but as soon as a European heel resounds on the granite, every door exhibits a Chinaman with a naked head and a flat face, lighted up with an assumed smile, which is intended to tempt a customer into his shop. . . . Old China Street and New China Street form really, a part of the European ghetto; never does a Chinaman venture into them, especially if he wants to purchase anything. A native will no more go and be taken in by the traders there, than a Parisian will visit certain shops into which provincials and foreigners plunge.72

The notion of a strip of overpriced tourist shops is still familiar, both in China and the West. Not everyone had such a negative view of the streets bordering the factories. They were inhabited by merchants who generally spoke Pidgin English very competently. Osmond Tiffany, who knew no Chinese, actually recounts acting as an interpreter between a shopkeeper and a Frenchman, who knew no English, resolving a problematic situation—“the Frenchman had thundered forth in his native tongue, as if speaking in the tribune of the National Assembly, and the puzzled Chinaman gave utterence to a ‘Hi Yah’” (the latter word a Cantonese “yes,” often used to indicate attentiveness).73 Shop signs in these streets were written in Chinese and English. Sometimes this was a bit puzzling as well, Tiffany recounting one shop sign that read “Tychong eaney think and steaks,” meaning that Tychong’s shop sold an assortment of goods and especially walking sticks.74 At any rate, the attempt at communication in the name of commerce was always made with enthusiasm. The procedures upon entering the shop were remarkably consistent, if the similarities across different accounts are to be used as evidence. Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenberger provided a concise summary of typical commercial transactions in the mid-1830s: On entering one of these shops, you are welcomed with ‘Chin, chin,’ and a door which separates the shop from a small vestibule in the front, is closed to shut out intruders, and prevent the gathering of a curious crowd in the street. . . . A counter six feet long and one and a half wide, covered with oil-cloth, stands a little in front of the shelves. Before it is a table, on each side of which are seats for the purchasers, that they may examine the goods at ease.75 72. 73. 74. 75.

Yvan, Inside Canton, pp. 51–52. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, pp. 63–64. Ibid., p. 61. Ruschenberger, A Voyage Around the World, pp. 398–99. Ruschenberger, a US Navy surgeon and member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, was an excellent observer of the more technical aspects of Chinese industry and exchange.

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Osmond Tiffany also noted the closing of the doors, which he additionally attributes to local practice—“there seems also in Canton to be a jealousy between customers, and one does not like to make a bargain while his neighbor knows exactly what he is buying, and what he pays.”76 The observant American also noted that the commercial transactions’ component of cross-cultural interaction had qualities that he rather enjoyed: The intercourse with the shopkeepers I found much more pleasant than I anticipated. I do not remember to have been cheated in any article I bought, but I would have been willing to loose a trifle occasionally in preference to being debarred from the pleasure of converse with the funny dealers. I found so much to laugh at as well as to admire; their queer ways of saying and doing things were a source of constant amusement; and their industry and ingenuity never ceased to excite my wonder.77

The relaxed attitude, while it never let go of inherent cultural prejudice, and the general feeling of collaborative good will paralleled other forms of social interaction between foreigners and Cantonese during the pre–Arrow War era. Venturing beyond Old and New China Streets required a bit more preparation. Some areas, like the relatively close “Carpenter’s Square,” a favorite venue for visiting ship captains to buy boxes and furniture as souvenirs, had consistent enough foreign traffic that commerce was conducted smoothly and regularly.78 Beyond Thirteen Factories Street, shopping required some specialized knowledge, since tradesmen in the suburbs were generally grouped by professions or materials, and had little if any knowledge of English.79 For traveling further into the suburbs, visitors generally preferred to take with them one of the few “old China hands” who actually spoke a version of Chinese and had familiarity with local cultural practice. William Hunter of Russell & Co. and the missionary surgeon Dr. Parker were particular favorites. The trips beyond Old and New China Streets by visitors became more frequent in the era around the Opium Wars. Between the Opium and the Arrow Wars, foreign women were not generally resident but could visit Guangzhou. In 1856, Caroline Stoddard, daughter of the captain of the American clipper Kathay, recorded one account of a trip into the suburbs led by Dr. Parker. Selections of her account are as follows: About ten o’clock this morning Mr. Parker came for us to go shopping.  .  .  . So getting into our chairs we started. We first went to Old China Street, which to speak within bounds, is not over, or much over, ten feet wide. We first went to a jewelers store, to see what they had got. He had some very pretty things, but not 76. 77. 78. 79.

Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, p. 65. Ibid., pp. 64–65. Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 72. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China, pp. 291–92. He particularly notes the trailing off of English-language proficiency further away from the “China” streets.

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Once again in this account, descriptions of the urban fabric and the shops’ wares are foci. Additionally noted are aspects of street life and the reaction of the Cantonese to the visiting Westerners. These themes become more and more common in later travel writings. Miss Stoddard’s sensitive nose is also an issue here. Most male commentators of the Thirteen Factories period did not note smells as part of the experience, but in the later nineteenth century the debate over the cleanliness of the city became tied to ideas about race and civilization in accounts that do not have the same, fairly straightforward empirical focus. The wars of the mid-century and the new ideological questions that accompanied them would transform Western experiences of Guangzhou.

The City Question: Entry and Mapping in the Third Quarter of the Nineteenth Century The Opium and Arrow Wars loosened and then eliminated official controls on Western movement throughout Guangzhou. While before the wars long-resident merchants sometimes disobeyed official restrictions on their movements, penetrating deeper 80.

Caroline A. Stoddard, Journal for 1856, LOG 1856 K (clipper ship Kathay) B41 F4. PEM. Entry for August 11, 1856.

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into the suburbs to visit a few temples, their adventures were tolerated as long as they did not try to go within the walls of the city.81 The demands of the British, and later the French, for concessions both during and after the Opium and Arrow Wars would fundamentally change all that. The imperialist ideologies that supported the foreign military actions would color later views of the Cantonese and their urban environment. In order to conceptualize the city, foreigners came up with new methods of describing it in which maps and guides became increasingly important. The Cantonese, having lost a path of official resistance to foreigners wandering through their city, developed other ways to control their movements. British resentment at the many ways the Chinese regulated trade with the outside world triggered the Opium War. The landing of troops around the city forcibly introduced foreigners to parts of the city suburbs to which they had previously had little access.82 The British encampments above the city, combined with warships in the Pearl River, placed the city under siege. Targeting certain structures of the city, notably the city walls, and threatening the local landmark of the Zhenhai Lou (Fig. 4.18), previously unmentioned in Western accounts, sent a message of military supremacy to the Chinese authorities. They also made clear a desire for access to the walled city. Dr. Cree, a naval surgeon who painted a watercolor featuring the Zhenhai Lou, noted: “The red five-storeyed temple opposite is much venerated by the Chinese and the authorities have begged us not to injure it. However, a couple of shells had gone through the roof.”83 The Zhenhai Lou, constructed in 1380 by a local “marquis,” was not a temple at all but rather a guard tower for military surveillance, a feng shui talisman against negative influences from the north, and a symbol of local power and independence.84 The Chinese arguably viewed warfare in highly symbolic terms. Although the city officials had to pay a high ransom and retreat with the Manchu troops sixty miles distant from the city within a week, they managed at least somewhat to save face by leaving the walls unbreached and the Zhenhai Lou more or less intact. The British troops’ proximity to the tower, while determined by the strategic benefits of its heights, encouraged the city officials to parley. The Treaty of Nanjing ended the first Opium War on August 29, 1842. The treaty, besides establishing peace, gave the British a series of concessions. These included many millions of dollars in indemnities, the abolition of the cohong monopoly, the 81. 82.

83. 84.

See Hunter, Bits of Old China, pp. 63–68, 107, 194, 199–200. For general lax attitudes towards the resident traders, see also pp. 1–3. See Edward H. Cree, Naval Surgeon: The Voyages of Dr. Edward H. Cree, Royal Navy, as Related in His Private Journals, 1837–1856, edited by Michael Levien (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982), and Duncan McPherson, The War in China: Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its Formation in April 1840 to the Treaty of Peace in August, 1842 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1843), Chapters 14 and 15, and Hall and Bernard, The Nemesis in China, passim. Cree, Naval Surgeon: The Voyages of Dr. Edward H. Cree, p. 86. Wu Qingzhou, Guangzhou jianzhu (Guangzhou: Guangdong sheng ditu chubanshe, 2000), pp. 64–66.

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release of British prisoners, and amnesty for Chinese who had helped the British.85 The terms of Article Two of the treaty implied that foreign residence, including that of females, would be allowed in five “treaty ports,” of which Guangzhou was one. To the British, this implied the ability to enter the walls of the city as well. This “right of entry” to the city would be a key point of foreign-Chinese conflict over the next decade and a half. In the wake of the Treaty of Nanjing, the Americans and the French also negotiated treaties that followed some of the basic structure of British rights of trade and residence against the context of coerced legal protection, equality, or perhaps advantage that contentions now played out. Progress trying to convince the Chinese authorities to allow greater foreign access to the city was slow. Frustrated by the pace, the British sent an expeditionary force up to the factory sites from Hong Kong in 1847. This intimidated the serving Chinese administrators of the city, who made several concessions.86 These included the right to dwell and use warehouses outside of factory grounds, particularly on the island of Honam on the other side of the river. The foreigners were permitted to roam more freely around the city’s environs, though entrance into the walled city was still an issue that remained a point of friction between the British and the Chinese administration, which was, among other things, concerned about the potential reaction of the Cantonese populace to such foreign activity. The conciliatory Chinese governor, Keying, was replaced in 1848 by new and more instinctually anti-foreign officials, Commissioner Xu and Governor Ye. In 1849, Xu officially refused the British assertion of right of entry into the walled city.87 What followed was the Arrow War. The right of entry into the city was a key demand of British and French allied forces.88 The British resumed bombardment of the city, aimed at highly symbolic targets like Governor Ye’s yamen and a huge bell in the “Temple of the Five Genii” (Wu Xian Guan) that British intelligence indicated a local belief that if it was rung, it would spell catastrophe for the city.89 A cannon was leveled towards it and actually succeeded in striking the bell. This indicates an increasing foreign knowledge of the city that was gathered for military purposes through many reconnaissance missions.90 The British and French troops then charged and occupied the city walls, demolished the city gates, and planned the occupation of the city.91 Upon entry, troops appropriated key governmental and symbolic sites within 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Discussions of the Treaty of Nanjing are too numerous to list here. A succinct account can be found in Spence, The Search for Modern China, p. 164. British Foreign Office Correspondence (PRO 17/127). Despatches no. 104, 107, et al. Jules Davids (ed.), American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, Series 1, Vol. 3 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1973), p. xx. For other reasons behind the Arrow War, see Spence, The Search for Modern China, pp. 179–80. Garrett, Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away, pp. 104–5. Cooke, China, Chapter 25. This gives several examples of such expeditions. Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan (Reprint, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), pp. 95–99, and Cooke, China, Chapters 25 and 26.

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the city walls, including official yamen and the Zhenhai Lou.92 Looting by foreign, particularly French, troops whose discipline had broken down damaged several sites, including the garden villa of the Paunkeiqua merchant family and temples where statues were overturned to find the precious metals ritually secreted in some of their cavities.93 Foreign domination of the city was complete, but the occupying powers realized that they lacked the ability to govern such a vast population. With the concessions the foreigners demanded firmly in place, the Chinese gradually resumed control of Guangzhou.94 The events of the Opium and Arrow Wars fundamentally changed the relationship of foreigners to the city. The most obvious was unrestricted access to the city in its entirety. Indeed, some of the first foreigners to see sights within the city walls were military men, who published their observations, although they did not really research, frame, or digest these newly exposed places for in-depth Western comprehension.95 The soldiers who wrote about the city in their memoirs were frequently concerned with observations having to do with defense and government of the city, from the heights of the walls to the hierarchy of Chinese regional government. A second product of access to the city and the military presence, was the production of accurate maps of the city. These included the 1840 Bramston map during the Opium War (Fig. 1.1) and campaign maps that showed important sites within the walls (Fig. 3.3) during the Arrow War. It took surprisingly little time for some Cantonese to respond commercially to the opening of the city to the foreigners; painter Lee Mun Une produced an engraved and watercolored map (surviving in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum) for the foreign tourist trade as early as the year immediately following the end of the Arrow War, when foreign troops were still stationed in the city.96 The map, labeled in English, shows diagrams of buildings of interest, and indicates recommended tour routes with dotted lines. This map appears to be the direct ancestor of the inserts in later tourist guides to the city produced by Westerners, including Dr. Kerr’s A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton and R. C. Hurley’s The Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macao (Fig. 3.4).97

92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97.

Cooke, China, Chapter 26. Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan, pp. 120–22; Lt. Col. C. B. Fisher, Personal Narrative of Three Years’ Service in China (London: Richard Bentley, 1863), pp. 9–10; and Garrett, Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away, p. 107. Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan, pp. 121–22. This passage recounts the realization that governing the city by themselves was beyond the means of the allied foreigners. See Cooke, China, and Fisher, Personal Narrative of Five Years’ Service in China. PEM Accession No. E78602. The date assigned in museum files is 1858. J. G. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, original edition 1870s, multiple reprints—I have access to the 1904 edition), and R. C. Hurley, The Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macau (Hong Kong: Noronha & Co., 1895).

Fig. 3.3 Plan of the attack and bombardment of Canton, 1857–58 (C. Wingrove Cooke). The first highly accurate maps of the city to circulate in the West were the result of military necessity in the eras of the Opium and Arrow Wars. From Cooke, China.

Fig. 3.4 “Canton: Plan of the City and its Suburbs,” c. 1895 (R. C. Hurley). This map offers a simplified, if rather legible, version of the city and its sites, including some recent Western contributions like the cathedral. From Hurley, Tourist’s Guide to Canton the West River and Macao.

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New maps were temporally and sometimes physically accompanied by new textual descriptions. Guidebooks that attempt to record and assess the historic significance of sites within the city begin regular production by the 1870s. The process of mapping was not accomplished only in literal terms, but also as an overall way of viewing the city. “Mapping” as the mental articulation of an immobile spatial order, contrasting with the earlier view of selected parts of the city as scenes for activity, was introduced into the standard foreigners’ experience.98 This change was a gradual one, and individual experience left room for differing interpretations, but the pattern seems to hold. One account of a visit in 1858–59 shares much with the earlier Western writings in its emphasis on activity: We went through all the principal streets and basars [sic], made several purchases—visited all the principal buildings, pagodas, temples & c. & c.—ascended one of the pagodas as far as it was considered safe (as it was much out of repair) went upon magazine hill and walked part way round the wall.99

Notable in this account is the ascension up a pagoda, a practice, which though common for modern tourists, was not typical in the nineteenth century except immediately after the Arrow War.100 Going up pagodas, city walls, and other taller buildings to obtain a view seems to have been particularly characteristic of this brief era, when it served to give some way of conceptualizing the city before guidebooks delivered a summary in pre-digested form. The above description in a ship’s log contrasts sharply with later travel accounts, which spend much time describing places in architectural or historical terms. The first great foreign textual “map” of the city was produced by the Ven. John Henry Gray, then the British consular chaplain in Guangzhou and later the Archdeacon of Hong Kong. His Walks in the City of Canton (1875) contained 695 pages of text and an appendix of seven itineraries for foreign visitors.101 Gray had been resident in Guangzhou from the eve of the Arrow War, and remained until the late 1870s. Baron de Hübner, globe-trotter of the 1870s, discussed Rev. Gray: The Rev. John Henry Gray was born on the Scotch border. He is, I should think, about fifty, and has exercised his ministry here for nineteen years. The most busy time of his life coincided with the occupation of Canton by the English, when war and sickness, even more than Chinese balls, cut short so many young lives. It was then that the Cantonese became accustomed to see this good man in his cylindrical hat, white cravat, and long black greatcoat, rushing from hospital to hospital, and from port to port, tending the sick, consoling the dying, and burying the dead. It was from that moment that dates the reverend gentleman’s great 98. De Certeau, The Practice of Everday Life, Chapter 9, “Spatial Stories.” 99. Samuel R. Corwen, Log of Ship Golden West, 1858/59. PEM. 100. Another notable account of going up a pagoda for a view is in Hannah Legge Diary, Legge Family Papers. SOAS. Entry for June 25, 1860. 101. John Henry Gray, Walks in the City of Canton (Hong Kong: De Souza & Co., 1875).

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popularity. A fine and noble face, an intelligent look, whiskers white as the driven snow, a tall figure, square shoulders, vigorous arms—the ensemble thoroughly sympathetic.102

Gray had earned Cantonese respect as a humanitarian during the Arrow War and practiced a vocation (as consular chaplain rather than field missionary) that apparently gave him plentiful spare time. This made the local population quite comfortable with him, and enabled him to acquire a good command of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese as well as an extensive knowledge of the city. This made him a much soughtafter tour guide. He was the guide of former US Secretary of State William H. Seward and his party when they toured the city.103 Baron de Hübner gave impressions of a tour with Gray: Every two minutes my guide stops, jumps out of his chair, draws close to mine, and explains in a stentorian voice the objects most worthy of my attention. Everywhere the archdeacon makes himself at home: he goes in and comes out without paying the slightest attention to the shopkeepers. They all smile when he comes in, and let him do what he likes.104

At one point on the tour, Gray even stopped a Buddhist monk, who without any verbal exchange assented to having his head used in explanation of the vows symbolized by the burned spots arranged on it.105 Apparently, Gray was such an appreciated public figure in both Cantonese and Western communities that his eccentricities were tolerated and even indulged. Gray’s guide to the city is encyclopedic, pointing out many places and buildings that receive scarce if any mention in later publications. His entries for such buildings, inserted in a sort of spatial order in a running text and then indexed in the itineraries, are very in-depth. The “Chong Choy Tchu Miu Or Temple in honour of the Inventor of Letters and the Inventor of the Art of Printing” is not alone in receiving considerable attention, with the index entry reading: Brief Historical sketch of Tchong-Kit, the Inventor of Letters. Vide pages 185, 186, 187, 188, 189. Board on which are recorded sixteen sacred precepts. Vide pages 189, 190, 191, 192. Pagoda shaped furnaces in which scraps of paper containing Chinese characters are burned. Vide page 192. Well at the gates of the temple. Vide page 193, 194.106 102. Baron de Hübner ( Joseph Alexander), A Ramble Round the World, 1871 (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1874), p. 584. 103. Seward, William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World, Chapters 15, 16, passim. 104. De Hübner, A Ramble Round the World, 1871, pp. 585, 586. 105. Ibid., p. 586. 106. Gray, Walks in the City of Canton, p. xv.

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The discussion of this lesser known temple (miao) is brief for Rev. Gray, but illustrates his typical compositional method, combining a description of the temple and its contents with a discussion of the Chinese history related to it, interpretations of practices within the temple, and translations of inscriptions in it. The attention to detail is such that, in his description of the temple that foreigners often called the Temple of Five Hundred Genii, which Gray correctly calls the Temple of Five Hundred Lohans (disciples of the Buddha), he actually lists phonetic spellings of the names of all five hundred.107 Obviously, few Western tourists would have much use for this information. So why did Gray compile such a thorough account of the city? The archdeacon inserts no preface or other commentary detailing his intentions. The overall factual voice and detailed recording of places is little modified by pronouncements about Guangzhou or “the Chinese.” All that can be presumed is an intense personal desire on the part of Gray to master knowledge of the city. Baron de Hübner asserted of Gray, “His museum is Canton.”108 Gray’s overall humanity and intense intellectual interest seems to pervade Walks in the City of Canton. The work, however, provided a baseline of information that was used in diverse ways, including prominently published travel accounts reinterpreting the city with specific concerns and biases, and the proliferation of guidebooks and institutionalized tourist practices.

Tourism at the Sunset of Imperial Guangzhou: Institutions, Ideologies, and Power In the late nineteenth century, Guangzhou became a standard part of globally oriented tourists’ itineraries, in part because it was considered a preeminent example of a Chinese city. According to one source, it was “the typical city of China in its domestic and foreign relations, and in all that makes up the peculiarities of Chinese town-life.”109 According to another source, it was “the strangest of all strange cities, and perhaps the most representative one in China.” 110 Yet it was not far from the comforts of British Hong Kong. The increasingly large group of Victorian-era globe-trotters supported a flourishing tourist industry, producing tourist guidebooks, a small group of professional Cantonese tour guides and sedan-chair bearers, and some attempts by the city’s inhabitants to keep the tourist traffic controlled. The group produced a literature of their own, which consistently utilized the information generated by foreign inhabitants such as Rev. Gray to bolster their own preexisting notions of how Guangzhou, and indeed China, fit into the world order. 107. Ibid., pp. 208–17. 108. De Hübner, A Ramble Round the World, 1871, p. 586. 109. Samuel Mossman, China: A Brief Account of the Country, Its Inhabitants, and Their Institutions (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1867), p. 151. 110. Maturin M. Ballou, Due West or Round the World in Ten Months (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1884), p. 93.

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The most popular tourist guide was Dr. J. G. Kerr’s A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, which was continuously reprinted from the 1870s into the first decade of the twentieth century.111 Dr. Kerr, a close contemporary of Rev. Gray, arrived in 1854 as a physician for the American Presbyterian Mission, in many ways the successor to Dr. Parker.112 Like Gray, Kerr lived in the city for several decades, was appreciated by the Cantonese for his humanitarian efforts, and was, after the Archdeacon, a favorite tour guide for visitors into the 1870s.113 Kerr’s guide, though not nearly as detailed as Gray’s, was at less than a hundred pages in length “tourist friendly,” with general information about accommodations, communications, and conveniences. Additionally, it contained a foldout map of the city with place names in both English and Chinese. The text is divided into geographic regions: Shamian, Western Suburbs, New City, Old City, Northern Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs, Honam, and Fati (Huadi). To this, Kerr also added seven potential “excursions” into the surrounding countryside. Each site within each geographical division is relegated to one paragraph explaining its significance. For even more rapid reference, lists are appended at the end of the guide. One is “Chief Places to be Seen,” arranged in terms of potential tours, the first part being the best things to see on “one day’s tour,” and the second part outlining six potential tours for the week-long visitor.114 The second appended list is actually dubbed “objects of more or less interest to strangers,” which fall under the broad categories of amusements, arms, food, industries, medicines, religion and geomancy, and sundry curios.115 All place and object names were once again most usefully written in both English and Chinese. The visitor thus went into the city with his or her list of places and articles for consumption. Kerr’s guide, while the most successful, was not the only tour book for Guangzhou in the late nineteenth century. J. W. Carrall, of the Guangzhou office of the Imperial Maritime Customs, published in 1877 a truly brief twenty-page pamphlet entitled “The Tourist’s Guide for the City of Canton Compiled from Various Sources.”116 This work consisted of five pages of listed sites with Chinese character equivalents, followed by brief descriptions of four Buddhist temples, the mosque, two other temples, the Gongyuan or civil service examination hall, and the Zhenhai Lou (a.k.a. five-storied pagoda), with about seven pages of city history and statistics.117 A later entry into the guidebook market was R. C. Hurley’s The Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macao, published in 1895 by the proprietor of the hotel 111. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton. I have had access mostly to the 1904 edition. 112. See Noyes, History of the South China Mission, particularly Chapter 6. 113. For an account of a tour given by Dr. Kerr, see Mrs. H. Dwight Williams, A Year in China (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1864), pp. 183–97. This book notably contains a preface by William Cullen Bryant. 114. Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, pp. 84–88. 115. Ibid., pp. 89–93. 116. J. W. Carrall, The Tourist’s Guide for the City of Canton Compiled from Various Sources (Macao: J. M. da Silva, 1877). 117. Ibid.

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on Shamian.118 The motive behind Hurley’s endeavor is made quite clear to the reader by Hurley’s “Special advice to Tourists” facing the title page: Do not be persuaded to remain on board the river steamers after arrival in port for, by remaining on board, you waste both time, money and opportunity. Go straight ahead to the Shameen Hotel, where the Manager [i.e., Hurley himself ] will receive you, and arrange programmes specially suited to your taste, and to the time you may have at your disposal. He will also, if you wish, accompany you on the walking trip to the curio shops, afford much interesting information, and give you many valuable and necessary hints for your general guidance.119

Thus began the package tour in Guangzhou. Hurley’s text departs little from the basic outline of Kerr’s, but does add a small Cantonese glossary and such “helpful” advice as, “The native guides for the City meet the steamers on arrival; but it is safer and better to engage them, and to arrange your day’s programme, from the Hotel.”120 To his list of objects that visitors might purchase, or as he dubbed it, “list of inexpensive articles suggested as curios,” Hurley added prices deemed acceptable for each of the object types.121 He even included a special map of “the walking trip to the curio shops.” True to his book title, Hurley pointed out sites of interest along the river, going to and within Macao. Hurley’s map insert for the whole city (Fig. 3.4) was less detailed than Kerr’s, though more of a souvenir, given its somewhat artistic renderings of notable buildings in elevation, but a secondary foldout accompanied this showing sites in the southern and western suburbs in detail. Kerr, Carrall, and Hurley all give the visitor a check list of “must sees” and even “must buys.” The city thus becomes no longer a place to be explored by the visitor in an individual and experiential way, but rather a collection of notable spots that have already been framed by the travel book or, as will be investigated below, by the Cantonese tour guide. The consistency of travel narratives and guidebooks reveal that, in the Western mind, sites had been transformed in the late nineteenth century into “signifiers of themselves.”122 Rarely did tourists visit a site that was not included in Kerr or Hurley’s guide. Furthermore, visitors’ descriptions are rarely based on their own observations, but rather reiterate the information gleaned from guidebooks or tour guides. In the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century, the visitor’s experience was wholly mediated by a firmly entrenched tourist industry. Given the normative segregation of foreign residents from the Cantonese populace during this era, and a certain level of racial phobia of “the natives,” the industry was geared towards profit from, and at least perceived protection of, the lucrative foreign traveler. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

Hurley, The Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macao. Ibid., p. xxix. The passage is listed under the advertisement section, but of course in a prime place in the text. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., pp. 32–33. This concept is borrowed from Frow, “Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia,” pp. 128–30.

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The previously prevalent practice of resident merchants and missionaries giving tours of the city to foreign visitors began to fade in the 1870s. In their place, a commercial tour guide service run by native Cantonese arose to handle the increased tourist traffic. Preeminent among these was a guide, or eventually family of guides, that went under the moniker “A Cum.” The original A Cum seems to have made his appearance as early as the late 1850s. In perhaps 1874, British “adventure” tourist and world traveler Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff (M.A., F.R.G.S., President of the Alpine Club) noted at the beginning of his tour of the city: To enable us to see some of the lions of Canton, our hosts sent for a first-rate Chinese guide, who gave us his card in English fashion, with the name A Cum upon it. He spoke English intelligibly, and in every way behaved so extremely well that I have great pleasure in recommending him to anyone who may follow our steps to China.123

A Cum had prepared carefully for his profession, down to having cards printed in English. In 1878, Constance Gordon-Cumming hired him and learned of his background: This morning we secured the services of a guide who has long been a servant of Archdeacon Gray, who is the great authority on all matters of local interest, having himself an extraordinary knowledge of Chinese manners and customs, rites and ceremonies. . . . I had been greatly counting on the privilege of making his acquaintance, on the strength of an introduction from Sir Harry Parkes, but to my great regret, find that he has returned to England. So we had to console ourselves with the second-hand erudition of Ah Kum, whom the Archdeacon carefully instructed in all points most certain to interest travelers, all of whom are therefore deeply indebted to him for this living guide, as well as for the written records of all his own wanderings in the city.124

Here, it seems, all roads to the tourist experience in late nineteenth-century Guangzhou led back to Rev. Gray. Some skepticism should be leveled at GordonCumming’s assertion that A Cum’s knowledge was solely the doing of Gray. Her own apparently preconceived thoughts on where authority lay were formed from her own background as a well-to-do female citizen of the British Empire, then nearing its height. Though it may well be true that Gray helped A Cum to understand what sites were most likely to interest foreign travelers, his command of his own language and tradition was undoubtedly better than Gray’s. This raises a question of collaboration in Gray’s Walks in Canton that cannot satisfactorily be resolved with the present level of documentation.

123. Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff, Over the Sea and Far Away, being a Narrative of Wanderings Round the World (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1876), p. 395. 124. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, pp. 46–47.

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What is certain is that A Cum continued to do a thriving trade. In the 1880s, Englishman W. Henry Barneby conducted his world tour and stopped off in Guangzhou, noting: We decided on taking a couple of guides to show us the town, and having engaged an old man, by name “Ah Cum,” and his son, we sallied forth, each in a palanquin (a kind of sedan chair), carried by three or four bearers, our guides being accommodated in the same manner.125

During the 1890s, American globe-trotter Ms. Delight Sweetser noted, “Ah Cum, Sr., and Ah Cum, Jr., were our guides and piloted us skillfully through the maze of streets in the city.”126 The A Cum family seems to have been fully aware of the dominance they had on the tourist traffic in the city, and even to some extent of their global reputation. The rather caustic and often somewhat racist traveler and lecturer John L. Stoddard recorded his surprise on arrival in Guangzhou: It seemed impossible to disembark in such a mob. But suddenly I felt a pressure on my arm. I turned and saw apparently three laundrymen from the United States. A glance assured me they were father and sons. “Good morning, sir,” said one of them in excellent English, “do you know Carter Harrison, of Chicago?” This question, coming in such a place and at such a time, rendered me speechless with astonishment. “He mentioned us in his book, ‘A Race with the Sun,’” continued the young Chinaman. “This is my father, the famous guide, Ah Cum. This is my brother, and I am Ah Cum, Jr. The others are engaged for to-morrow, but I can serve you. Will you take me?” “So you are Ah Cum?” I rejoined; “I have heard much of you. Your reference book must be a valuable autograph album of distinguished travelers. Yes we will take you.”127

This quote more than any other indicates the total institutionalization of Cantonese tour guides as the primary interpreters of the city’s tourist sites to foreign visitors. An  advertisement from the early twentieth century even shows that visitors could arrange a tour with one of the three generations of the family via the Thos. Cook & Son agency in Hong Kong.128 Though A Cum and family were the preeminent Cantonese guides of the late nineteenth century, by the turn of the century they had regular competition. 125. W. Henry Barneby, The New Far West and the Old Far East (London: Edward Stanford, 1889), p. 248. 126. Delight Sweetser, One Way Round the World (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1898), p. 127. Also note that one of the Ah Cum consortium was Rudyard Kipling’s tour guide when he visited the city in 1889. See Rudyard Kipling, “The Canton Trip” in Chris Elder (ed.), China’s Treaty Ports: Half Love and Half Hate (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 214. 127. Stoddard, John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 3: Japan and China, pp. 268–69. 128. See Thomas Cooke & Son, Information for Travelers Landing at Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Thomas Cook & Son, 1919), p. xi.

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In 1899, American clergyman Edward Abbott stopped in Guangzhou on his way to Australia. His only slightly decipherable travel journal recorded his visit in sentence fragments and a simple list of sites he visited with no elaboration. He noted: Perfect swarm of boats and humanity. An introduction to teeming China. Struggle  [?] to get aboard our deck and conduct [?] business. Competition of guides. Kingap [?] the first one who puts in an appearance who speaks English quite well and has a good book of recommendations from English and American travelers.129

This, however fragmented, likely gives a good impression of what a short-term Western visitor at the turn of the century would experience on his arrival in Guangzhou. Several guides now competed for the tourists, boarding the steamers as they arrived, and carrying books with the recommendations of previous clients. Abbott must have ended up with the one whose card he attached to his journal, “Wong A Yew, Guide, Canton.”130 As noted above, R. C. Hurley also made clear in his book that he had relationships with guides who could be taken from the Shamian Hotel, guaranteeing a consistency of quality that could not be counted upon if one obtained a guide from the steamer landing. The tourists, once they had acquired their guide, surrendered control as they were whisked from site to site. The reasons for this were a combination of their own obvious lack of knowledge of the city, expedience, and security from real or perceived threats. Typically, the mode of transportation was the sedan chair, usually suspended between two poles and borne front and back by working-class local men. This distinguished them from the earlier sightseers, particularly those from the era before the Arrow War, who mostly moved about on foot. The chair bearers, as well as the guides, were to some degree responsible for the tourist. As Bishop Marvin noted in his travel memoir, “A man does not take a chair here for the same purpose as in America—that is, not always; for sometimes he takes a sedan-chair, in which case the chair takes him, rather.”131 Sedan bearers laid claim to their own expertise, and were sometimes resistant when given orders they did not feel appropriate. Even Rev. Gray and his wife could not count on control when they ventured forth on chairs, as recorded by Mrs. Gray’s recollections of one of their tours in the adjacent countryside: We should have missed the finest part of the scenery if Henry had not known the route, as the chair coolies wished to take us direct over a high hill after we left the farmhouse, which would have shortened the journey some six or seven miles. They refused to take us where Henry intended to go, round the base of the hill. I got 129. Edward Abbott Papers, Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library (LCCN 78000657), p. 65. 130. Ibid. 131. Bishop E. M. Marvin, To the East by Way of the West (St Louis: Bryan, Brand & Co., Publishers, 1878), p. 145.

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Clearly, even experienced foreign residents surrendered some control when they took a sedan. Note that though Mrs. Gray became extremely worried, everything turned out fine in the end. The role of the chair bearers was more often an enabling rather than a confrontational one. These sturdy Cantonese accomplished foreigners’ progress through the city streets with aplomb, as Henry Barneby indicated: We were soon in the city; such curious narrow streets, only six to eight feet wide, where the passers-by often had to stand on one side to let our chairs through. They were everywhere crowded with people, but we went on at a quick trot, our bearers hallooing and shouting the whole time so as to warn people to clear a way.133

Experiencing the city on a sedan chair may not necessarily have been the most free or relaxed way, but definitely provided some advantages to the foreigners. Cutting through the Cantonese crowds was a primary function.

The Press of the Crowd The progress of foreigners through the city in the tow of guides and sedan bearers was not simply ignored by the Cantonese. The citizens of the narrow streets of Guangzhou’s suburbs in the nineteenth century responded to the presence of Westerners, typically by gathering and observing them. Sometimes, this could be quite benign, as an American traveler of the 1870s noted: But if we were amused with the Chinese, I dare say they were as much amused by us. The people of Canton ought by this time to be familiar with white faces. But, strange to say, wherever we went we attracted a degree of attention which

132. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, pp. 29–32, passim. 133. Barneby, The New Far West and the Old Far East, p. 248.

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had never been accorded us before in any foreign city. Boys ran after us, shouting as they ran. If the chairs were set down in the street, as we stopped to see a sight, a crowd gathered in a moment. There was no rudeness, but mere curiosity. If we went into a temple, a throng collected about the doors and looked in at the windows, and opened a passage for us as we came out, and followed us until we got in our chairs and disappeared down the street. The ladies of our party especially seemed to be objects of wonder. They did not hobble on the points of their toes, but stood erect and walked with a firm step. Their free and independent air evidently inspired respect. The children seemed to hesitate between awe and terror. One little fellow, I remember, who dared to approach too near, and whom my niece cast her eye upon, thought that he was done for, and fled howling. I have no doubt all reported, when they went home, that they had seen some strange specimens of “foreign devils.”134

The press of the interested Cantonese crowd was a common experience for foreign travelers in Guangzhou and elsewhere in South China during the second half of the nineteenth century.135 The crowd could also be employed to intimidate foreign tourists, possibly in hopes of moving them out of the neighborhood. The busy streets of Guangzhou could equally present a peaceful, even pleasant, crowd or a resistant or threatening one, as noted by some visitors. Rev. J. MacGowan stated: There is one feature about this place that is very striking, and at the same time exceedingly disagreeable, and that is the contempt which people in the street show the foreigner. This is not confined simply to looks, but often takes the more offensive shape of insulting epithets and rough jostling, which at the least provocation would lead to something more serious.136

From foreign accounts, there is little to hint at what made the experience of some tourists so different from that of others. What is clear is the role that the guides or chair bearers could play in acting as a buffer. John Stoddard’s recollections attest to this: Some of the ladies feared being insulted by the Canton populace, and told exciting stories of an English lady who had been recently spat upon, and of American ladies who had been followed by a hooting crowd. Ah Cum, however, smiled complacently. “There is no danger,” he assured us; “my father will take care of you ladies, as I will of these gentlemen. Everyone here knows us. Our people are always safe.”137 Occasionally we met a sedan-chair coming in the opposite direction. Both sets of bearers then began to yell like maniacs, and we would finally pass each other

134. Henry M. Field, From Egypt to Japan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), p. 372. 135. Another account of the crowd, rendered as inconvenient but non-threatening, can be found in Williams, A Year in China, p. 191. 136. Rev. J. MacGowan, Pictures of Southern China (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1897), p. 394. 137. Stoddard, John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 3, p. 276.

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Enclave to Urbanity with the utmost difficulty, our coolies having frequently to back the chair-poles into one shop, and then run them forward into a doorway on the opposite corner, thereby blocking the noisy, surly crowd until the passage could be cleared. The faces packed around us, while not positively hostile, were as a rule unfriendly. An insolent stare was characteristic of most of them. Some disagreeable criticisms were pronounced, but Ah Cum’s expression never changed, and we, of course, could not understand them. Once a banana-skin, thrown probably by some mischievous boy, flew by my head; and I was told that China’s favorite exclamation, “foreign devils,” was often heard. But I dare say that if a Chinese mandarin, in full regalia, were to walk through some of our streets, he would not fare as well as we did in Canton; and that if he ever went to the Bowery, “he’d never go there anymore.”138

Cantonese playing a number of different roles, therefore, controlled the Western experience of travel through the city. The crowds could permit and even find interest in the foreign presence. They could alternatively employ their collective action to discourage foreign access. Guides and chair bearers took as their job the negotiation of the foreigners through the streets. Cantonese guides presented chosen sites from an itinerary constructed collaboratively between themselves and certain foreigners, notably Rev. Gray. It was up to the visitor to then produce his or her own interpretation.

The “Regulation” Sites Foreign views and interpretations of the tourist sites of Guangzhou is a complex subject, perhaps worthy of an individual study unto itself. Authors like Bernard Cohn, working in other nineteenth-century colonial environments, have found that the West’s accumulation, ordering, and systematization of knowledge of other cultures were a directly hegemonic move.139 The Western investigative modality, Cohn states, “includes the definition of a body of information that is needed, the procedures by which appropriate knowledge is gathered, its ordering and classification, and then how it is transformed into usable forms.”140 Unlike other colonial environments, China confronted Western observers and scholars with an intact historical record and with citizens prepared to exert some control over their own history. As already outlined, some topographical knowledge was produced as part of British efforts to dominate the city during the Opium and Arrow Wars. These efforts had little long-term impact beyond the production of accurate maps, however. Rev. Gray, the individual primarily responsible for initial gathering of information on the city with

138. Ibid., pp. 280–81. A similar account can be found in Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, China: The Long-Lived Empire (New York: The Century Co., 1902), p. 433. 139. Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 140. Ibid., p. 5.

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an eye toward comprehensiveness, did not do his work in a vacuum. He formulated his primarily geographically ordered survey of the city by gathering information not only from his own experiences and research, but also from local informants. Gray’s collaboration and friendship with knowledgeable Chinese, in particular Buddhist monks and other temple attendants, is amply documented, to the extent that the monks of the Ocean Banner Monastery had even given him a pavilion in the temple for use as a study and retreat.141 Gray’s, and hence all later, summaries of the history and meaning of various sites in Guangzhou therefore relied heavily on the presentations of information by Cantonese people in charge of the sites. On the other hand, Gray’s choice of sites for inclusion was influenced by ideas of interest imported from the West. Chinese-language tourist publications of the same era often indicated distinctly different sites of interest, following a Chinese conception of landscape, scenery, and meaning.142 Sites included in Gray’s and later travel guides for Westerners were generally architecturally monumental, “ethnographically” interesting, or historically significant. The last category of sites was generally agreed upon across cultures. The sites viewed by Westerners as “ethnographically” interesting, that is, to Western eyes unusual or odd, did not overlap with Chinese ideas of things worth seeing. By looking at a few of the many sites that were part of most tours of the city, it is possible to examine how Guangzhou was framed or represented by Western travelers, and to what ends. First, temples always commanded the attention of Westerners. This is true in Guangzhou, even though, by and large due to their urban nature, they were generally not as monumental as elsewhere in China. Though discussed in detail and deemed worthy of interest by Dr. Gray, it did not take long for travel writers to disparage Guangzhou’s temples generally. British engineer Daniel Pidgeon, for instance, stated, “There are any number of temples and pagodas in Canton, notable for nothing but their filthy ruinous condition, and entire want of architectural interest.”143 Wesleyan missionary John Turner concurred: The city of Canton, being much given to idolatry has many temples, more than a hundred and twenty of which are said to be Buddhist. They are mostly dingy in appearance, the chosen abodes of bats, and of spiders whose webs are black with the smoke of ever-rising incense. In the courtyards outside congregate fortunetellers, hucksters, and beggars in sackcloth full of sores.144

141. Gray, Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 13. 142. Er An, Zhucheng Jiji (1901; in Chinese), Zhongshan Library Archives (Wende Lu), Guangzhou (K.1.17244). This book has descriptions and engravings of the traditional Chinese sights of the city. 143. Daniel Pidgeon, An Engineer’s Holiday, or Notes of a Round Trip from Long. 0° to 0° (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1883), p. 328. 144. John A. Turner, Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China (London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1894), p. 27.

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Not surprisingly, most Westerners and particularly those of strongly religious backgrounds had little understanding of the operation and role of temples in Cantonese life. Obviously, statues were interpreted as “idols,” while incense and its effects on the buildings were viewed negatively, particularly by Protestants. The fact that the temple generally served a secondary function as a neighborhood social center in Chinese tradition was frequently viewed as evidence of a lack of reverence. The temple perhaps most frequently visited by foreign tourists of the later nineteenth century was the Temple of Five Hundred Lohans (also known as the Hualinsi). It is also perhaps the most perpetually misinterpreted. Never depicted from the exterior, the conventional view of the building represented in Western books and postcards was of the 500 statues in the interior of a main hall (Pl. 23). Some of the most attentive travelers came close to understanding the contents of the temple: Among the many temples we visited today, one was dedicated to the Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha, whose five hundred life-sized gilded images are ranged all round the temple, so as to form a double square, while others ranged in cruciform lines, meeting at a bronze dagoba which doubtless contains a relic of some great saint. Each of these statues is different (although all alike are hideous), and are supposed to be life-like. Some are sad, some merry, some in tattered garments and barefoot, while some are well dressed and well shod. An extra statue represents the Emperor Kienlung, who was greatly revered, and three Buddhas watch over all.145

Mrs. Gordon-Cumming, with her attention to detail and, apparently, to the notes of Rev. Gray, besides getting the name more or less right, understood a fair amount about the symbolism of the temple’s contents. She of course made a negative aesthetic judgment on the statues, which was common practice though not a rule, as another visitor observed, “The features are good and there is every variety of expression.”146 Another account was put forth after a cordial visit by Olive Risley Seward, the niece of American statesman William Seward, who accompanied him on his tour: Its pantheon contains images not only of gods of whom the Greeks or Romans never dreamed, but of more gods than they ever worshipped. Think of five hundred colossal wooden figures, of all complexions, black, white, and red, with distorted features and limbs, dressed in purple, crimson, and gold, sitting in close order around the walls of a saloon, equal to the largest in the British Museum. These are the guardian genii of China. Each is a deified apostle or saint of the religion. These figures were presented to the monastery by one of the emperors, and perhaps were all carved by one artist. If he failed to impart a natural human expression to any among them, it must be admitted in his favor that, in their hideous distortions, no two are alike. We were kindly received by the monks. . . . The brethren showed by their conversation a vague knowledge of foreign countries. They feared that the disasters which have befallen France may encourage Russian aggression against 145. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 47. 146. Marvin, To the East by Way of the West, p. 147.

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China. They understood something of the great civil war in the United States, and rejoice in its results.147

Olive Seward, having the benefit of being in a tour group of dignitaries led by Rev. Gray, had an interesting experience allowing her to perceive the inhabitants of the temple as contemporaries with knowledge of the modern world. However, she places the site as something of the past, comparing the statues with the gods of Greece or Rome and comparing the building to an exhibition hall in the British Museum. Even with an expert tour guide, her concerns are aesthetically conventional. Here, it should be noted that Lohans in the Buddhist tradition are generally elderly and not particularly friendly figures, not generally thought of as “beautiful.” She also somehow conceives of the statues as being some sort of “guardian genii.” The misunderstanding of the statues, in search of a common past, becomes more and more strained in the accounts of less well-informed travelers. Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff supplies his own story, heedless of documentation, for one statue: “Many of the figures are extremely curious; and in one case a Buddhist version of the history of Elijah is represented in the person of a saint, who in his banishment is being nourished by wild monkeys!”148 Perhaps the most frequent Western misinterpretation focused on one particular statue. Revealing some sort of imperialist fantasy, it  was described as “a European in sailor’s costume, said to be meant for Marco Polo, but, whoever it may be, evidently considered an object at least of veneration, if not of worship.”149 As appealing to the Westerner as this theory might have been, this myth, perpetuated by R. C. Hurley’s guide, was certainly wide of the truth. The figure was described elsewhere as “with a black face,” probably representing a South Asian.150 It is difficult now to assign the exact identity of the statue, though it was undoubtedly a fairly conventionally acknowledged Lohan. Its identification as Marco Polo likely has a complex history that, in addition to Western fantasies, probably owes to the fact that the statue had facial hair and non-Chinese features, combined with the presence in some local temples of an Indian figure, though probably not this one, that was thought to have brought the pineapple (locally dubbed polo) to China. These discussions of the Temple of Five Hundred Lohans reveal themes consistent in Western views of Guangzhou’s sites overall. One is the supposed “backwardness” of the largely misunderstood Chinese religion, which was sometimes used to justify missionary intervention. Another is a continual aesthetic assessment. This of course slid into a view of the city as a sort of museum, often scoured for clues to a shared past, or a searching between Chinese civilization and Western history. In all of these, there seems to have been a perpetual equivocation. On the one hand, some visitors simply 147. 148. 149. 150.

Seward, William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World, pp. 241–42. Hinchliff, Over the Sea and Far Away, p. 397. Brassey, Around the World in the Yacht ‘Sunbeam’, p. 355. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China, p. 27.

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admired the city’s features, and on the other, some viewed them as proofs of Western superiority and justification for intervention. These ideas can also be observed in accounts of other tourist sites of the city. One attraction that was variously interpreted as a marvel or an indication of backwardness, this time in terms of technology, was the city’s water clock. Located in the central part of the walled city, in a part of a ceremonial double gate, it was in almost every tourist’s itinerary. A typical description might be as matter-of-fact as the following: Over one of the principal gateways is a curious Water-clock, which consists of three barrels placed step-like one above the other, and is very ancient. The water drips at a given rate from the higher to the lower, thus indicating the time.151

Constance Gordon-Cumming praised it as “a most ingenious contrivance which seems to have been in use among various ancient nations.”152 Maturin Ballou, however, asserted, “Much has been said about the wonderful Water-clock of Canton, but it is actually a very simple and crude method of measuring time, which any smart Yankee school-boy would improve upon.”153 Another visitor noted, “It is a device unworthy even of a barbarous country.”154 This attraction received a progressively worse reputation as the twentieth century dawned, one lady visitor being so oblivious to its significance that she actually sat on part of it and was consequently chastised by her local guide. The water clock, incidentally, can still be seen in its new location, the Zhenhai Lou, now the museum of the city.155 The attraction that perhaps most epitomized the use of the site as a static place of discourse—observe that, as in any of these examples, there is little account of foreign visitors actually doing anything—about the nature of China and the Chinese was the Gongyuan or “Examination Hall.” This was a great attraction, much represented in postcards, both because of its large scale and because of its apparent illustration of Chinese systems of governance (Pl. 24). Dr. Kerr’s guide offered its concise and precise description: The triennial examination of candidates for the Ku-yan or second literary degree is held here. All the Siu-tsai or graduates of the first degree in the whole Province are required to compete at this examination. The enclosure is divided into two sections: that for the candidates and that for the officials. On each side of the great avenue are ranges of cells, in which the scholars write their essays. These cells are 5½ feet long by 3 2/3 feet wide and are 11,616 in number. The apartments for the officials, copyists, police, and servants are in the rear, and there is room for about 3,000. The examination begins on the 8th of the 8th moon, and occupies 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

Ibid., p. 35. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 49. Ballou, Due West or Round the World in Ten Months, p. 100. Pidgeon, An Engineer’s Holiday, p. 328. Scidmore, China the Long-Lived Empire, p. 438.

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three sessions of three days each. The same texts are given to all at daylight, and the essay must be handed in the following morning, after which candidates leave the Hall, to re-enter the following day for the next trial. About 130 are passed after the final trial, and these are booked to promotion in civil offices. They are also required to go to Peking to compete for the third degree. The Hall is about 1,380 feet long by 650 feet wide. The plan gives an ideal arrangement of an institution peculiarly Chinese.156

Accompanying this entry is a plan, copied from a Chinese woodblock, into which the author inserted arabic numerals keyed to points of interest such as “Watch tower. God of Literature in second story” and “Hall of Perfect Rectitude, where essays are handed in.”157 Thus precisely measured and mapped, the examination hall solidified into one of Guangzhou’s must-see attractions. Explanations of the examinations offered to visitors were reinterpreted by them as assessments of the nature of Chinese civilization. The greatest enthusiasts for the site, also often those who had a favorable impression of the city, echoed praises of China by the Enlightenment philosophers. Henry M. Field, D. D., an American world traveler of a pragmatic turn of mind, assessed the site in the 1880s: We found a very curious study in the Examination Hall, illustrating as it does, the Chinese manner of elevating men into office. We hear much in our country of “civil service reform,” which some innocently suppose to be a new study in political economy—an American invention. But the Chinese have had it for thousands of years. Here appointments to office are made as the result of a competitive examination; and although there may be secretive favoritism and bribery, yet the theory is one of perfect equality. In this respect China is the most absolute democracy in the world. There is no hereditary rank or order of nobility; the lowest menial, if he have native talent, may raise himself by study and perseverance to be Prime Minister of the Empire.158

To Field, China contained lessons for his own government in the United States. He later went on to consider, “May we not get a hint from this for our instruction in America where some of our best men are making earnest efforts for civil service reform?” and “if they [American officials] were required to pass an examination, and to furnish written essays, showing at least some degree of knowledge of political affairs, we might have a more intelligent class of officials to fill consular posts in different parts of the world.”159 Other visitors to the site posed backhanded compliments, such as “if the country remains stationary under a system from which we expect advance, it is because the

156. 157. 158. 159.

Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, pp. 29–30. Ibid., pp. 30–31. Field, From Egypt to Japan, pp. 374–75. Ibid., pp. 376–77.

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test of merit is mere scholasticism.”160 John Stoddard was a bit taken aback by the physical conditions of the exams; in describing the cubicles, he stated: One of the horse-sheds in the rear of a New England meeting house would be a far more comfortable house in which to sleep and eat. Perhaps they are meant, however, to emphasize the triumph of mind over matter. Their only furniture consists of two small planks, one for a seat, the other for a table. Rest is, of course, impossible in such cages, and candidates have sometimes died here from physical and mental strain.161

The morbid, perhaps spurious, claim that examination candidates died in the cells seems to have had a fascination for Western travelers, who often repeated this line. Those who were predisposed to condescend to the Chinese as a backward race, of course, found fault with the system. Biologist Edward S. Morse, for whom everything Japanese seemed vastly superior to everything Chinese, assessed the activities of the site as follows: An ignoramus on everything but Chinese classics may beat other numskulls in writing the best composition on the text given, and attain some office dealing with matters pertaining to the nineteenth century. As an illustration, a competitor has secured a position in the army by passing a literary examination on the art of war, not as understood today, but with the art as set forth by authorities three thousand years ago.  .  .  . No wonder in the recent war with Japan, Chinese generals were found with bird cages, and a retinue of concubines, while every soldier carried a fan, and every third one a banner. How inferior to the Japanese in these matters!162 The matter of literary examination for public office has been repeatedly dwelt upon, yet no one can realize the powering absurdity of it until he comes to examine the conditions minutely. China is supposed to have an army and a navy, arsenals and departments of telegraph, customs, etc. Now let one open a page of Confucious [sic] . . . and find if he can a single line which would enable him to perform any of the duties involved in the above departments.163 These moral admonitions of Confucius are evidently taken in the usual Chinese reverse sense; for, outside of the municipal affairs of New York and Philadelphia, no greater corruption or dishonesty exists than can be found in China.164

If a visitor like Morse toured China expecting inferiority and backwardness, he would find it. Morse’s tone was one of great authority, to which he had no more claim than most of his fellow tourists. His work was one of intended “objective” analysis, but he consistently failed to approach his ideal. He was prone to profound cultural 160. Pidgeon, An Engineers Holiday, p. 328. 161. Stoddard, John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 3, pp. 328–29. 162. Edward S. Morse, Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1902), p. 174. 163. Ibid., p. 175. 164. Ibid., p. 176.

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misunderstandings, as when he visited the Howqua family villa and wondered why the residents were brusque with him when he wanted to draw their kitchen rather than admire the gardens.165 Those Westerners who toured Guangzhou in the later nineteenth century, no matter their cultural sensitivity or disposition, uniformly saw the buildings and sites on their tour as examples of Chinese culture and places with which to represent it. Most of the tourist sites were physically described in terms that repeated Gray or Kerr’s guides almost verbatim, and then were used to express personal feelings or opinions, usually to appraise the “Chinese” as a civilization or race.

Urban Fabric and Western Perceptions The setting where this was, finally, most apparent was in the streets of Guangzhou themselves. Delight Sweetser in the 1890s asserted that “The regulation sights of Canton are less interesting than the streets.”166 Constance F. Gordon-Cumming expressed the sentiment in a more elaborate way: What really fascinates the eye and bewilders the mind is simply the common street-life, which, from morning till night, as you move through the streets, presents a succession of pictures, each of intense interest and novelty. In all this there is life—a great busy people, and one feels that it is really an effort to turn aside from these to see any recognized “sight.”167

By the streets, it was generally understood that the narrow thoroughfares of the Xiguan, or western suburbs, were somehow representative, although in reality these were fairly uniquely urbanized conditions in terms of China overall. Though few Western visitors in the later nineteenth century actually seem to have felt “at home,” several had generally favorable impressions. Bishop E. M. Marvin reflected: Canton is in many respects and by far the finest, as it is the largest, Chinese city we have seen. Soochow and Hangchow were, perhaps, as large before the insurrection, but they were terribly depopulated by the [Arrow?] war, and have not yet recovered their former greatness; nor were they ever anything so well built as Canton. Some of the best brick work I ever saw is here. The most perfect of pressed brick is laid in mortar, spread so thin that it looks like a thread of white running from one end of the wall to the other. The face of the wall is very beautiful. . . . There are the same very narrow streets here as elsewhere, but they are cleaner; and though the odors are bad enough, yet they do not come up to those of other cities we have visited. The shops are larger, and the stocks of goods better than we have seen elsewhere.168 165. 166. 167. 168.

Ibid., Chapter 9. Sweetser, One Way Round the World, p. 131. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, p. 36. Marvin, To the East by Way of the West, p. 151.

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This from a world traveler, who despite antagonism to what he termed the “idolatry” of the Chinese, was quite impressed with their civilization as represented by Guangzhou. H. M. Field lumped his descriptions of the sites of Guangzhou all together, then expanded on his view of the Chinese from his brief visit, at one point dubbing them “the most industrious people on the face of the earth.”169 Guangzhou was his main experience of China, and favorably impressed him, as he ended the chapter on the city: No one can visit China without becoming interested in the country and its people. There is much that is good in the Chinese, in their patient industry, and in their strong domestic feeling. Who can but respect a people that honor their fathers and mothers in a way to furnish an example to the whole Christian world? . . . The mass of the people are miserably poor, but they do not murmur their lot. They take it patiently, and even cheerfully; for they see in it a mixture of light and bright. In their own beautiful and poetical saying, “The moon shines bright amid the firs.” May it not only shine through the gloom of deep forests, but rise higher and higher till it casts a flood of light over the whole Eastern sky!170

The people who seem to have had the most favorable impressions of Guangzhou are the ones who appear to have taken the initiative to have personal interactions with the Cantonese. John Russell Young, part of the retinue of General Grant on his visit to the city, is one such example, recounting, “The spirit of the people is as a general thing courteous. Now and then some member of the party at one of our pauses would exchange a remark or a salute with the crowd in front of his chair, or pat a child on the head, or give it a coin, and there would be a sudden whiff of laughter or merriment.”171 Most travelers were equivocal in their assessment of the city streets and their inhabitants. The typical foreign tourist in Guangzhou saw it as a paradigm of China, and made judgements, often underpinned with ideas about Western superiority and historical progress, that took into account both good and bad. Many, when they saw conditions they disliked, instinctively paused to reflect on the reasons for them. Rev. J. MacGowan noted: Canton, like other Chinese cities, presents a curious mixture of squalidness and opulence. Narrow, dirty streets, with tumble-down houses and untidy interiors (which in the shops at least are always open to the inspection of passers-by), give one the impression that poverty must be an important factor in the lives of the large majority of these vigorous, sturdy people.172

Other travelers expressed a typical sentiment, put succinctly by Thomas Hinchliff, that “The Chinese are wonderfully clever and interesting race of people, capable of great

169. 170. 171. 172.

Field, From Egypt to Japan, p. 387. Ibid., p. 396. Young, Around the World with General Grant, p. 320. MacGowan, Pictures of Southern China, p. 308.

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things if they ever free themselves from the thraldom of a grasping Government.”173 Guangzhou’s inhabitants were aware of Western critiques of their city, and some agreed with them. As it turns out, the bustling Cantonese were about to rid themselves of the imperial government and of many of their narrow streets. The reader must follow this part of the story, however, into the twentieth century.

173. Hinchliff, Over the Sea and Far Away, p. 401.

Chapter 4 Xin Guangzhou Architecture, Foreigners, and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century

The City of Canton may be rightly called the most up-to-date city of China to-day, when compared with other cities throughout the land. It is progressive, modern, prosperous and rich. It is the only city with modern conveniences, entirely constructed and controlled by Chinese.1 —Milton Chun Lee, May 1930

In Guangzhou, profound architectural change accompanied the dramatic political and social changes that swept China in the early twentieth century. The old dichotomy between the foreign neighborhoods and the Chinese city had blurred to such an extent by the 1930s that the visitor could no longer be sure from the outside of buildings whether they represented foreign or Chinese habitation and business. Some foreign businesses and missionary enterprises embraced the modernizing city, while Shamian remained socially conservative, continually confronting challenges to its insular status. Foreign interests collaborated with Chinese institutions to produce new institutions, from universities to utilities, which were accompanied by massive building projects. In some new suburbs, foreigners and wealthy Chinese began to live harmoniously as neighbors. The gathering storm clouds of Japanese occupation in the late 1930s effectively interrupted the Western presence. By this time, the racial divides that had accompanied the decades after the Opium War were beginning to heal, but many tensions remained unresolved. The modernizing city had opened new possibilities for cross-cultural relations, yet the sweeping trauma of twentieth-century global politics interrupted the further rebuilding of an architectural and social world between empires.

New Business, New Buildings, and Cross-Cultural Controversy in Twentieth-Century Shamian While the late nineteenth century saw construction on nearly all of the lots on Shamian, the early twentieth century witnessed a burgeoning of business that transformed the 1.

Milton Chun Lee, “Public Construction in Canton,” The Far Eastern Review, May 1930, p. 217.

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built environment of the concession island. The looming neoclassical, multistory buildings marking many of the street corners today all date from this era. Demand for space and the accompanying rise in real estate prices caused a proliferation of multistory buildings. Increasingly, multinational corporations that harnessed the monetary power necessary for international academic design constructed these buildings. The historical transformation from the old, two-story suburban houses to a new commercial skyline on Shamian began around the years of 1905–06. The last of the arched verandah–wrapped houses on Shamian, the residence for Butterfield & Swire’s senior employees, was finished and occupied in April 1906 (Fig. 4.1).2 The company’s new buildings in the godown complex on Honam relieved their Shamian residence of the need to house much in the way of business facilities. Two decades later, even Butterfield & Swire would be pressed for space. In 1927, the company added a third story to their Shamian house, which included “a flat over agents quarters—living room, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms & w.c.’s, box-room, hall, pantry, kitchen, laundry, 3 boys rooms.”3 The increasing staff needed for the expanding business opportunities of Guangzhou, and the demand for lot space, resulting in the movement of Chinese employees’ quarters back into the main block, would come to characterize the first three decades of the century.

Fig. 4.1 Butterfield & Swire residence, Shamian, built 1906. The final expression of the nineteenth-century verandah-wrapped house type, the Butterfield & Swire house is only recognizable as a late expression by its contrasting red brick and stone components, reflecting Edwardian taste. The third story was added two decades after the initial construction. Photo by author, 2002.

2. 3.

JSS I 6/2, Swire Property Book, p. 26. SOAS, University of London. Ibid.

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While Butterfield & Swire’s house was being completed, Arnhold, Karberg & Co. was already constructing a more urban and technologically sophisticated building form immediately to the west (Fig. 2.13, bottom). The Danish-German-American firm hired the newly arrived Australian-American architectural partnership of Messrs. Purnell & Paget, who had taken up residence in the French concession, to design the building.4 The very bones of the building were something new on the China coast. One of the oldest surviving reinforced concrete buildings in China, the building uses the newly developed Kahn system of reinforcing.5 The system was only recently developed in America by Truscon, the firm of Albert and Julius Kahn, builders of some of the first great US automobile factories.6 Built by the Hong Kong contractor Mr. Lam Woo, the building also contained such modern features as an electric elevator, electric lighting throughout, telephones, and a gas plant for heating and cooking.7 The four-story building was conceived of as an urban project, but also made a bow to the green surroundings of Shamian in its roof garden. The modern structure of the building was cloaked in Beaux-Arts language, with a Renaissance, “Mannerist”-derived rusticated first story and monumental classical orders above providing a screen for recessed front verandahs. The spatial arrangements of the building would be repeated many times in the corporate buildings of Guangzhou through the early twentieth century. The ground floor contained the sales and storage facilities, consisting of a 2,500-square-foot machinery exhibition room and a 8,000-square-foot godown.8 The second story contained the general offices, and the living apartments of managers and principal assistants filled the upper floors.9 Purnell, son of an architect in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and Paget, who had received his architectural education at Lehigh University, were simultaneously at work on other large structures on Shamian.10 These included Imperial Maritime Customs staff quarters in the French concession, and another large residential block, used in part by the silk trading firm T. E. Griffith, on the back road of the island facing the English bridge (Fig. 4.2). The customs staff quarters, three and a half stories tall and around twenty bays wide, still dominates the eastern end of the central avenue, and the Griffith building also survives in slightly altered form. These buildings adopted a broadly eclectic, late-Victorian language, which could loosely be associated with the “Queen Anne” style. They also employed perhaps as early as 1904 the rusticated first story and monumental orders tying the verandahs of upper stories together that seems to have

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 788. See Jeffrey W. Cody, Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000 (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 41. Ibid., p. 37. Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 788. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See pp. 794–95.

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Fig. 4.2 Buildings by Purnell & Paget, architects, in Canton. These buildings, illustrated as a page in a promotional publication, show much of the architects’ works falling within a very eclectic VictorianEdwardian vein. The Griffith building (top right) and the Imperial Maritime Customs staff quarters (drawing, bottom left) are still extant. From Wright and Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 793.

been a trademark of their design, in the first building of the International Banking Corporation (IBC), predecessor of National City Bank, now Citicorp (Pl. 25). The massive German consulate building (Fig. 4.3) was erected on the site of the old consulate in 1906, at the cost of $185,000.11 The designer was a Mr. W. Danby, a civil engineer.12 Like the Butterfield & Swire building, it is stylistically transitional. 11. 12.

Ibid., p. 788. “Imperial German Consulate, Canton,” The Far Eastern Review, September 1906, p. 118.

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Fig. 4.3 German consulate building, built 1906. This enormous building, apparently in a nationalist NeoBaroque style, was used by Asiatic Petroleum after the German consulate and German firms were expelled from the British concession during the First World War. Photo by author, 2006.

On the one hand, it sports the arcade-fronted verandahs of old Shamian, but, on the other, it has many more academic stylistic references, including domed roof towers, which may be a vague reference to a “nationalist” Neo-Baroque. This structure served its original purpose until the First World War, when the consulate as well as German firms were uniformly expelled from the British concession and took up residence in the Chinese city. The consulate building was acquired in 1920 by the British firm, Asiatic Petroleum, as their Guangzhou headquarters.13 A series of infrastructure improvements accompanied the influx of new investment in Shamian in the years around 1905. In 1904, a new drainage system was installed in the British concession. 14 The public gardens were remodeled in 1906 with a bowling and croquet lawn, a summerhouse, and late-Victorian-style flower gardens.15 The same year, telephone service came to both Shamian and the Chinese city.16 In 1908, septic tanks started to be installed on the island, and a swimming pool was constructed on one of the lots facing the canal, where it still exists as an indoor facility to this day.17 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Foreign Concession Dossier—Shameen (Canton) 1919–1925, FO 228/3193, p. 11 (no. 46). The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid. Ibid., p. 25.

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The late 1910s and 1920s saw continued construction in much the same vein as the Arnhold Karberg and IBC buildings. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) building (Fig. 4.4), possibly constructed in 1919–1920, maintains the same elaborated ground floor and monumental columns tying together second and third stories, but uses a formal Beaux-Arts classicism and marks its corner entrance with a cupola.18 Here, verandah space has considerably diminished—something that likely would only be contemplated after the introduction of electric ceiling fans. This new climate-control technology was undoubtedly responsible for the enclosure by the 1930s of many of the verandahs of older structures with wood-framed casement windows, a development that can still be observed in extant buildings of the period.

Fig. 4.4 Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Building, built 1919–20. This restrained classical building makes the most of its corner lot with a corner entrance, emphasized by a cupola several stories above. Photo by author, 2002.

18.

Though the Guangzhou branch of HSBC opened in 1909, the date of construction is derived from the fact that in 1915 HSBC had a very small staff in Canton and a rare surviving land record refers to the rental of an apartment to an “American, Mr. Kelley, who is employed on the new HSBC building” in March 1920. See Foreign Concession Dossier—Shameen (Canton) 1919–1925, FO 228/3193, p. 7. The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Funds were appropriated for construction in 1919. See Frank H. H. King, The Hong Kong Bank between the Wars and the Bank Interned, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 105.

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The building constructed for the American firm of Andersen, Meyer, & Co. is an example of a building so stylistically similar to the HSBC building that the same firm most assuredly designed it. Anderson, Meyer, & Co., a Danish company representing many American firms and with significant American investment (notably by Galen  Stone and Willard Straight) and corporate registration, built its Shamian offices around 1920 (Fig. 4.5).19 The company was a prominent vendor of machinery and engineering expertise in China—on the one hand, it represented such important manufacturers as General Electric, International Harvester, American Radiator,

Fig. 4.5 Andersen Meyer & Co. building and branch staff, c. 1930. Typical for the early twentieth century, this tidy building of the Danish and American firm that prominently marketed engineering and machinery goods had both offices and residences in it, where a combined foreign and Western staff passed their days. From Ferguson, Andersen, Meyer, & Company of China, p. 141. 19.

Charles J. Ferguson, Andersen, Meyer, & Company of China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, Ltd., 1931), pp. 4, 138.

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Sherwin-Williams, Duraflex, and Masonite, while on the other, it provided consulting services for the new public works of Republican China, notably the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou.20 This corporate branch echoed the organization of other businesses of the period, with main offices in Shanghai or Hong Kong and a comparatively small staff in Guangzhou. The reason for this was simple: “Canton is so quickly and easily reached from Hong Kong, however, that the additional engineering staff of the latter office is at all times available in Canton.”21 Thus the photograph of the staff around 1930 (above that of the building) shows only one foreign engineer, seated next to two Chinese staff members in Western dress, with the lower-ranking employees in Chinese dress standing behind. While the offices and showroom of the company were on the ground floor, the great amount of space in the upper floors suggests that at least some Chinese employees were resident in the building. The more delicate classicism of HSBC, the also still extant Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China, and Andersen, Meyer, & Co. drew more explicitly on the precedents of eighteenth-century European monumental architecture than Purnell & Paget’s work of the first decade of the century. Whether the firm of Purnell & Paget designed these buildings or whether they were the products of another firm is difficult to determine in the absence of good corporate and architectural practice archives. The former firm was still the most established in Guangzhou, but by 1915 they had competition in the form of the three offices of Thomas Adams & Wood, Weaser & Raven, and A. Abdoolrahim.22 The prolific Hong Kong firm of Palmer and Turner could also have contributed designs. The 1910s, incidentally, saw the emergence of Japanese firms, and their accompanying new business facilities, in the British concession. The Japanese firms adopted wholly Western building forms and languages. The Bank of Taiwan (then a Japanese colony) took up residence in a still-extant, very formal three-story building with Doric columns tying together the upper-story verandahs. Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, Ltd., also built a massive four-story facility on the back canal road, apparently in 1915 (Fig. 4.6).23 This building sports somewhat naïve Neo-Baroque decoration, notably a broad broken pediment over the entrance porch. The mid-1920s saw the last great building projects on Shamian of the first half of the twentieth century. On Shamian in the early 1920s, the International Banking Corporation built a new branch office, designed by the New York- and Shanghai-based architectural firm of Murphy & Dana, opening it in 1924.24 The bank’s Beaux-Arts exterior, with stone cladding on a reinforced concrete structure, has a monumental 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Ibid., passim. Ibid., p. 141. Directory and Chronicle for China, Japan, Straits Settlements, . . . (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Daily Press, 1915), pp. 1041–53. The date here comes from applied letters in the pediment over the entrance. Number 8 (the IBC corporate newsletter), November 1924, and Cody, Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000, pp. 68–69.

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Fig. 4.6 Mitsui Bussan Kaisha Building (detail), built 1915. Japanese firms arrived on the British concession a bit later than those of many other nationalities, so they tend to be found towards the north side of the island, like this building, which faces the canal. The mixture of a baroque classicism with some more modern touches, like the round window that breaks through the pediment, makes this a striking building. Photo by author, 2002.

Fig. 4.7 Second IBC Building/National City Bank, built first half of 1920s (Murphy & Dana, architects). This example of American Beaux-Arts classicism, with its “triumphal arch” façade, resembles banks of the period throughout the United States. Photo by author, 2002.

Ionic order in antis that was part of a corporate program of “uniformity of design” being carried out by IBC in its foreign branches (Fig. 4.7).25 Here, the interest in a sort of brand recognition caused the building to resemble contemporary American bank facilities in a way hitherto not witnessed in Guangzhou. The interior arrangements 25.

Ibid.

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were a main banking floor on the ground story, with a still-intact monumental central staircase leading to offices on a mezzanine above. The rest of the building’s interior contained “commodious living quarters on the upper floors for the staff members,” but to what extent this represented the spaces of Western versus Chinese employees is unknown.26 The early twentieth century did, however, see an increased proximity of Chinese and Westerners in the new large buildings. In 1911, there were 323 foreigners and 1,078 Chinese residing on Shamian, and, in 1937, there were 412 foreigners and 1,350 Chinese residents.27 With the disappearance of “back lot” servants’ quarters that resulted from the new construction at the beginning of the century now taking up entire concession lots, the resident Chinese employees were brought back inside the building. Where some relationships between foreign firms and Chinese employees were apparently growing more casual and perhaps close, other settings retained conservative, segregated spatial arrangements. First and foremost among the architectural reassertions of late nineteenth-century foreign, segregated privilege was the new British consular complex, constructed in the early to mid-1920s. Shamian and expanses of Guangzhou’s riverside suburbs suffered a severe flood in July 1915. While many buildings were simply repaired after this disaster, the British consulate buildings, still much the same as when they were built in the 1860s, were deemed damaged enough to warrant complete rebuilding.28 Much of the original arrangement of the structures was retained. The first building to be built, the consul’s residence, had the most ornamented exterior. The British Office of Works approved the rebuilding of the assistants’ quarters and offices (Fig. 4.8) in 1922, and this building was occupied on April 7, 1924.29 This building is the most dramatically changed and enlarged in comparison to its nineteenth-century antecedent. Standing two full stories high, it had a projecting, pediment-capped verandah that almost certainly was a self-conscious architectural quotation of the pediment-capped verandah of the British East India Company’s main factory during the Shisan Hang era. The room on the ground floor was the consul’s office, the interior of which was furnished in a wholly Western style. Above this room was a “sleeping porch” appended to the second-story assistants’ quarters. The vice-consul’s house, designed in 1922 but not completed until 1927, finished out the complex as an elegant essay in climatic adaptation underneath Beaux-Arts cladding.30 An elegant ink-wash rendering by one of the Office of Works architects (Fig. 4.9) shows a two-story verandah on the south harmoniously integrated into an overall classical whole, notably featuring a triumphal arch motif on the eastern elevation. These buildings, all of which were presumably 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Number 8 (the IBC corporate newsletter), November 1924. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 27. WORK 10/299. The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. This is a loose miscellaneous file of notes and letters regarding the construction of the Guangzhou consular complex in the 1920s. Ibid. Ibid.

Fig. 4.8 Assistants’ residences and office wing, British consulate, built 1922–24, destroyed 1948. A  much grander centerpiece to the consular compound than its predecessor, this building probably selfconsciously refers to the British Factory of East India Company days. Used with the permission of The National Archives, Kew, UK (WORK 55/2).

Fig. 4.9 “New Vice Consul’s House,” August 1922 (by “B. C.”). This handsome rendering by an Office of Works architect shows the vice-consul’s house, which stands today little changed, excepting that the southern verandah is now enclosed. The eastern elevation features a triumphal arch motif symmetrically overlaying both verandah and house. Used with the permission of The National Archives, Kew, UK (WORK 10/299).

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designed by Office of Works employees, display a strong Beaux-Arts affinity, with a certain sparseness that prefigures the emerging “stripped classicism” that in the 1930s would become a worldwide language for institutional architecture. Though only the consul and vice-consul’s residences survive at present, a plan of the complex as completed remains in the Office of Works files (Fig. 4.10).31 It reveals two major aspects of the retrenchment of a conservative, truly imperial mode of spatial organization, on the eve of the waning of British global power. One is an increased allocation of space to ceremonial and social purposes. The office building contained a

Fig. 4.10 Plan, British consular complex, drawn 1938. The smaller plans outside of the central block are of the second floors of adjacent first-floor plans (bottom left: consular residence; bottom right: vice consular residence; top: assistants’ residences and office wing). The overall layout echoes the arrangement of the buildings that preceded these on the site. Used with the permission of The National Archives, Kew, UK (WORK 10/301).

31.

The offices and assistant’s quarters were destroyed in a protest against the British eviction of squatters in the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong in January 1948. The records they contained, which would have allowed a much fuller exploration of the history and development of Shamian, were completely destroyed as well. WORKS 10/301. The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. The plans were provided in conjunction with this incident.

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large vestibule at the center of its first floor, behind the entrance to the complex from Shamian’s central avenue. This was labeled simply “public space.” The vice-consul’s residence had a ground floor completely allocated to social space, with a drawing room of impressive dimensions, a study, and a dining room. The consul general’s residence contained a large colonnaded hall, with no functional assignment, inside its west entry that dominated and occupied over a third of the ground floor. The second notable feature of the complex was the continued relegation of Chinese staff quarters to wings, apart from the main body of the buildings. The designations of “cook,” “gardener,” “amah,” and the by-now-anachronistic “coolie” and “boy” are the scattered labels of cramped rooms throughout the service wings. The amahs were the only servants with second-story quarters, owing to their intimacy with the consular families, necessitated by their childcare responsibilities. The staunchly classist, and potentially racist, prejudices of the British upper and upper-middle classes, ignoring the evolving social trends in the surrounding city and even in Shamian, were solidified in the plan of the consular complex. The increasing density of habitation on Shamian, as well as the increasing unease felt by certain residents with the changing world of early Republican China around them, formed the impetus for increasing regulation of the concession. In 1903, a barracks for a police force was erected, and it was in turn expanded for a larger force in 1919.32 Even more notable was the increasing number of regulations set in place by Shamian’s “Municipal Council.” The original set of regulations seems to have been drawn up in 1908, and these were revised again in 1919.33 These regulations included a ban on setting off fireworks, a ban on “Chinese” dogs on the concession and a requirement to register other breeds on the island; a ban on “spirit shops, houses of entertainment, or public lotteries”; the requirement of all persons passing through the concession after dark to carry lighted lanterns; and the enforcement of a fine for any person “willfully damaging trees, flowers, or turf.”34 Residents were carefully enumerated, as indicated by one regulation: “The Secretary of the Municipal Council shall keep a register of all Chinese domestic servants and employees residing in the British Concession, and no person of Chinese nationality who is not so registered shall be allowed to reside in the British Concession.”35 Tensions, and regulations in response to them, reached a peak in the mid-1920s. Strikes, protests, and the bombing of the hotel by a Vietnamese nationalist during the visit of the French governor of Indo-China all resulted in more stringent bylaws.36 In 1924, the council drew up a new series of traffic regulations. Many of these were meant to bar casual access to the island by the Cantonese, although, notably, the 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 23. FO 228/3193, Foreign Concession Dossier—Shameen (Canton), Dispatch No. 101. PRO, Kew. Ibid., enclosure 2. Ibid. Smith, Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen, 1859–1938, p. 23.

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regulations themselves, which were posted by the bridges and river landing steps, make no mention of race.37 This type of regulation set a curfew for those without a permit at ten in the evening, set hours when the amahs were allowed to take the children out to the riverfront “bund,” and banned non-residents from using the island as a promenade.38 Some regulations were also aimed at both the Chinese and Westerners who used the island, including a regulation on bicycle and sedan chair traffic and a rule against walking on the grass “unless that allotted to recreational purposes.”39 Although the expanding regulations show attempts at restricting movement on Shamian, the reality was probably never what the Municipal Council desired. Photographic evidence like an Underwood & Underwood stereoscope view indicates that, at the dawn of the twentieth century, it apparently would not have been unusual to see Chinese girls from a missionary school out for a stroll on the Shamian riverfront.40 Though, presumably, the increasing number of regulations was intended to stem casual use of the island by non-residents, the minutes of the meeting to draw up the 1924 traffic regulations indicate a differing reality. From the rather complicated exchange in the formulation of the regulations comes a statement from H. Davenport Browne of Asiatic Petroleum: Will a serious attempt be made to enforce the new regulations? I have frequently observed a neglect to do so. If the regulations do exist, they ought to be enforced. At present Chinese use the seats, walk on the Bund, and use Shameen as a thoroughfare, just as much as they ever did before.41

Though Mr. Browne might find Shamian more peaceful without Chinese traffic, his argument is strikingly more concerned with consistency than segregation. Though it is difficult to infer personal feelings from the minutes of the meeting dominated by early twentieth-century businessmen, there was discomfort with the regulations in some sectors. After some discussion, J. W. Taylor of Butterfield & Swire convinced the council to amend the regulation, “The roads on Shameen shall not be used as a thoroughfare from bridge to bridge or from landing steps to the city,” by adding on, “except as regards the latter, by those whose business connection with Shameen residents necessitates it.”42 The discussion indicates that Taylor was greatly concerned that the regulations might offend the Cantonese with whom he had business, and he explicitly did not want them to be stopped and pestered by the Shamian police.43 Despite the 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

FO 228/3193, Dispatch No. 203. PRO, Kew. Ibid. Ibid. No. 12 from the series: James Ricalton, China through the Stereoscope (New York: Underwood & Underwood, 1901). 13 Nov. 1924 Minutes of general meeting of ratepayers of the British Concession in FO 228/3193, Dispatch No. 147. PRO, Kew. Ibid. Ibid.

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introduction of state-of-the-art business and architectural practices onto Shamian in first decades of the twentieth century, in many ways the municipal council and other conservative forces on Shamian wanted to maintain a feeling of bucolic segregation. These desires were manifest in the increased attempts to regulate boundaries and behaviors on the concession island, only partly successful and not universally agreed upon. Such measures were, however, increasingly out of place in a Chinese city at the forefront of efforts to forge a modern, globally involved nation. Shamian’s insularity did not dissolve. Though many local employees of Western interests lived on Shamian, the district remained closed to habitation by the general populace. When, in the 1930s, the promoter of “Modern Canton” Edward Bing-Shuey Lee attempted to inquire about renting an apartment on the island, he was turned away by individual building owners despite numerous signs advertising vacancies.44 He pointed out the inherent contradictions of the continued segregationist practice: The foreign business men of Shameen are the ones who are most anxious to cultivate the friendship of the Chinese residents of Canton for that it brings in business, and that is the main reason for their enthusiastic participation in such organizations as the Canton Rotary Club, the Thursday Club and the Canton branch of the Pan-Pacific Association. How much more good-will would be created if these very same residents of Shameen took the initiative to perform voluntarily a really friendly act by lowering the bars against the Chinese people, which cannot but be regarded as insulting to the race as a whole?45

The backwardness of Shamian’s policies, whether sanctioned by the municipal council or informally put into unspoken practice by individual building owners, truly became apparent when compared to developments involving foreigners and the Cantonese elsewhere in the city.

Learning and Living Together: Foreign Philanthropic Institutions The late nineteenth century saw the increasing engagement of foreigners of the missionary class with the city. The lessons learned in these years were implemented in the early decades of the twentieth century, most prominently the desire of the Cantonese to understand the West and use what it could offer in the ways of technology and global knowledge, as opposed to a self-evident desire to convert to Christianity. Thus, missionaries began to coordinate with each other to produce institutions that, while still containing a religious education component, were increasingly secular in their emphasis. Educational institutions, often constructed and maintained by both foreign and Chinese donations, became the center of their efforts. The development of schools involved larger numbers of Westerners becoming close neighbors to the Cantonese 44. 45.

Edward Bing-Shuey Lee, Modern Canton (Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936), p. 28. Ibid.

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population and participating in joint enterprises. These institutions profoundly shaped mutual understanding during the early years of the Chinese Republic. The most architecturally significant and socially important of these schools was the Canton Christian College, known in Chinese and later, as it became more secular, by all as Lingnan (in Cantonese, Lingnam) University. Having begun in the 1890s as a small school sponsored by the American Presbyterian Board, the school became formalized as an institution of higher education in the first decade of the twentieth century.46 In 1904–05, the institution acquired land at Honglok on Honam and commenced construction of a campus.47 In these years, the board of trustees of the university, which frequently met in New York City, sent Columbia University–trained architect Charles W. Stoughton, of the small architectural firm of Stoughton and Stoughton, on a site visit to draw up a campus plan.48 The architectural practice of Stoughton and Stoughton, whose office was on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, generally focused on small civic buildings in New York (the Jacob Reis Free Bathing Pavilion, police stations, hospitals, structures on the Bronx Parkway, etc.), but also produced campus plans for institutions in Puerto Rico and India.49 Charles Stoughton and trustee/architectural advisor Professor Warren Powers Laird, head of the architecture school at the University of Pennsylvania, were responsible for much of the evolving appearance of the campus.50 The architectural patterns they set would largely be followed by American architects J. R. Edmunds and Henry K. Murphy, who made architectural contributions to the campus in the later 1910s and 1920s, respectively. The Stoughton and Stoughton concept for Lingnan is best illustrated in a campus plan revised by J. R. Edmunds in 1918, showing the extant and projected building projects (Fig. 4.11). It shows a typically Beaux-Arts scheme with a grand central axis and a series of cross-axes giving a formal, processional aspect to the whole. Remarkably, all of the shaded buildings (indicating extant structures) survive in some form as part of the main campus of Zhongshan University, even the swimming pool near the river entrance. Early photographs show massive buildings rising formally out of the open plain on the southern bank of the Pearl River with the new institutional buildings looming over young banyan saplings, which, now fully grown, complement the buildings and give the campus much of its pleasant and shady character. The buildings are uniformly of reinforced concrete construction with red-brick cladding and, for the most part, Chinese tiled roofs. Structurally, Charles Stoughton 46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

For a comprehensive history of the institution, see Charles Hodge Corbett, Lingnan University (New York: Trustees of Lingnan University, 1963). Corbett, Lingnan University, Chapter 6. Ibid., p. 39. See Charles W. Stoughton architectural drawings collection, Archives, Avery Library, Columbia University. and Henry F. and Elsie Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased) (Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Co., 1956), p. 577. Corbett, Lingnan University, p. 61. Laird was the brother of Lingnan chemistry professor Clinton Laird.

Fig. 4.11 Plan of buildings proposed (white) and buildings completed (shaded), Canton Christian College/ Lingnan University, 1918 ( J. R. Edmunds). This campus, designed by New York and Philadelphia architects, is the most unified Beaux-Arts building complex in the city. Most of the buildings indicated as “completed” still survive. From Edmunds, Canton Christian College, p. 36.

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consistently employed Triangle Mesh Wire reinforcement, produced by the United States Steel Products Company, in the early buildings.51 The initial campus buildings, therefore, paralleled the contemporary Arnhold Karberg building on Shamian in its groundbreaking use of reinforced concrete. The exterior style of the buildings, on the other hand, tended to evolve over time. The first permanent building on the Lingnan campus, Martin Hall (Fig. 4.12), built with donations from Mrs. Henry Martin of Cincinnati in memory of her husband, was a fairly functional affair.52 Deep verandahs stretch around the building, with ornament being confined to segmental arches on the first story and monumental verandah piers with sunken panels and abstracted “capitals.” Later building designs by Stoughton would attempt to tackle a fundamental stylistic goal. In the promotional, well-illustrated university history and status report of 1919, university president Charles Edmunds outlined the “architectural problem” of the campus.53 Of the issue of style, he wrote:

Fig. 4.12 Martin Hall, built 1905–07 (Stoughton & Stoughton, architects). The first permanent classroom building to be erected on the campus, it already employed modern reinforced-concrete construction. From Edmunds, Canton Christian College, p. 52.

51. 52. 53.

“Triangle Mesh Wire Concrete Reinforcement,” The Far Eastern Review, February 1915, p. 360. Charles K. Edmunds, Canton Christian College, Ling Naam Hok Hau: Its Growth and Outlook (New York: Trustees of the Canton Christian College, 1919), p. 52. Ibid., p. 37.

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Fig. 4.13 Swasey Hall, built 1913–15 (Stoughton & Stoughton, architects). The relative complexity of the design, with regard to massing and materials (including local glazed tile and stone panels), reveal the Arts & Crafts–influenced flavor of much of Stoughton & Stoughton’s work for the campus. The tile roofs and abstracted brackets are explicit references to classical and local interpretations of traditional Chinese architecture. From Edmunds, Canton Christian College, p. 18.

Assuming the value to the Chinese students and people of an environment of scholarly and dignified architecture, in contrast with the prevalent nondescript adaptations of ill-sorted European styles, it is the aim of the designers to give the buildings individual distinction while subordinating them to the general unity of the scheme. The type of permanent building adopted combines modern construction with a Chinese aspect, chiefly expressed in the roofs which are of green glazed tile and ornamented and curved according to the best native style…. It is the distinct aim of the College to so build as to exemplify structurally and artistically the best combination of Western and Chinese architecture and thus as well as in other ways to be of help in this period of change in China.54

The idea of individually distinct buildings united into a whole by materials, style, and a formal plan reflects contemporary American Beaux-Arts planning and design ideals, largely a legacy of a generation that espoused the “City Beautiful” in their civic projects. A stylistic synthesis of modern Western architecture and “Chinese aspect,” however, was something newly developing. This design trajectory would be 54.

Ibid.

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fully articulated in the more “archaeologically correct” work of Henry K. Murphy of the New  York and Shanghai firm Murphy and Dana, as well as the first generation of Chinese professional architects.55 Murphy himself would add two buildings to the Lingnan campus in the 1920s, including Willard Straight Memorial Science Hall.56 Charles Stoughton’s attempts at a stylistic synthesis of Chinese and Western building styles were tentative and somewhat fanciful. Many of the early classroom and dormitory buildings were, like Martin Hall, sparsely ornamented, their main “Chinese” feature being low spreading tile roofs. More ornamental Stoughton designs include Swasey Hall (Fig. 4.13) and many faculty residences. Swasey Hall, one of the focal points of the campus, was designed in 1913 and completed in 1915, funded by a donation of Ambrose Swasey of Warner & Swasey Company of Cleveland for a Christian Association building.57 Standing nearly at the southern tip of the campus’s grand axis, Swasey Hall sports twin three-story towers on the front office block of the building, and the campus auditorium in a shorter rear polygonal projection. The details on the Swasey Hall façade include green tile vertical bands, red tile panels, stone medallions and ornament, and ornamental barge and ridge boards on the roof. The porch piers have capitals that allude to the dougong of traditional Chinese monumental architecture. The auditorium wing is capped with octagonal vent cupolas modeled on Chinese garden ornaments and roof finials. This polychromy and ornament echo late-Victorian medieval revival styles, and perhaps even more relevantly the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement blended with Chinese precedent. This sort of whimsical interpretation of a campus with a “Chinese aspect” generally comes to an end in the early 1920s. The later additions to the campus were generally more restrained. Henry Murphy’s Willard Straight Science Hall of the mid-1920s (Fig. 4.14) is a fairly plain institutional building, the Chinese gestures being confined to the roof and tile panels beneath the windows. Lingnan never possessed buildings that so thoroughly quoted Chinese imperial architecture as Murphy’s designs for northern Chinese campuses like Yenching (Beijing) University. The closest to the trend of applying more literally derived Chinese ornament, including dougong brackets, which had become so prevalent in other parts of China, is exhibited only in the Bell Pavilion, which was a gift of the Class of 1928.58 Here the tile roof, with its ridge animals, sits upon dougong and columns of a classical Chinese model, the whole thing resting on a circular marble platform, directly quoting the imperial architecture of the north.

55. 56. 57. 58.

An extensive and compelling discussion of this can be found in Jeffrey W. Cody, Building in China: Henry K. Murphy’s “Adaptive Architecture,” 1914–1935 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2001). Cody, Building in China, pp. 159–61. Corbett, Lingnan University, p. 60, and Charles W. Stoughton Drawings, Avery Library. Dougong are the bracket sets in classical Chinese architecture that surmount the columns and are the basis for the proportional scales of buildings.

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Fig. 4.14 Willard Straight Science Hall, 1920s (Murphy & Dana, architects). One of Henry Murphy’s design contributions to the campus, this building reveals a restraint typical of the later (1920s and 1930s) buildings. From Ling Naam: The News Bulletin of Canton Christian College 6, no. 2: 6.

Though the Lingnan campus was important as an early attempt at merging Western Beaux-Arts planning and Chinese stylistic references (with an additional influence of an Arts and Crafts movement aesthetic), the institutional functions that the campus housed were perhaps even more important. The Canton Christian College/Lingnan University was truly a collaborative enterprise. While many of the most elaborate structures were products of Western, largely American, donations, by 1919 approximately a third of the buildings had been contributed by Chinese and overseas Chinese.59 The institution brought Western teachers together with Chinese teachers and students. By the late 1910s, campus photographs of the faculty and staff of the university are striking, as Chinese, American, and British faculty stand next to and intermingle with each other. Gone are the hierarchical arrangements so prevalent in earlier business and missionary group photos—an egalitarian spirit prevailed. The evangelical mission of the university had faded by the late 1910s: The college is nondenominational. The doors are open to all students qualified by character and scholastic attainment to enter, irrespective of religious belief. Great care is taken to make the atmosphere of the campus wholesome and tolerant.60

59. 60.

Corbett, Lingnan University, pp. 22, 24–25. Ibid., p. 32.

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Religious instruction was of course still available to those who sought it. The mission of the school, however, had become one of social improvement and reform parallel to the normal schools and other colleges in contemporary “Progressive Era” America. Teacher training, science education, and agriculture, complete with extension service efforts, all became emphases of the university’s work.61 It was also a comprehensive educational enterprise, hosting an elementary and middle school in connection with its teacher training program. Though apparently never completed, Lingnan also hosted a “model village,” which, on the one hand, was meant as housing for the university’s “subordinate employees” and, on the other, apparently as a demonstration of modern home economics.62 The progressive atmosphere of Lingnan was not limited to the course work and extension efforts alone. American travel writer and suffragette Grace Thompson Seton wrote of her visit to campus in the tumultuous mid-1920s: Located on the outskirts of the city, with its large campus and modern buildings, this institution seemed like a bit of America, well assimilated into a Chinese community. The occasion was stamped with unusual interest because it was my first address to Chinese men. There were over seven hundred of them, and it seemed strange to watch their interested faces as they listened to the story of woman’s emancipation throughout the world, the topic they had chosen themselves.63

The faculty and students at Lingnan fostered attitudes that could be considered modern anywhere in the world in the 1920s. Progressive philanthropic and Western-sponsored educational institutions began in various parts of Guangzhou during the 1910s and 1920s. Structures such as the main building of True Light Middle School (Fig. 4.15), a project sponsored by the American Presbyterian Mission, followed the same stylistic model as Lingnan. This building was constructed in 1917 at Paak Hok Tung (Baihedong), the suburban district just south of Huadi where the school had been founded.64 The building apparently survives, along with additional buildings for the institution from the next two decades, although it is not accessible to the general public in the now heavily industrial area.65 The original architectural rendering, however, reveals the intent was an up-to-date, red-brick school building with symmetrical wings and large windows. Were Colonial Revival details substituted in place of the Chinese Revival tile roof, the building would

61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

The agricultural extension efforts of Lingnan included setting up agricultural improvement clubs in rural communities. The club and winners of the silkworm cultivation contest at the village of Yung K’ei are illustrated in Lingnan: The News Bulletin of Lingnan University 5, no. 4 (November 1928): 4–5. Ibid., p. 37. Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1924), p. 238. The energetic Ms. Seton was also the wife of one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. Noyes, History of the South China Mission, p. 134. See The Architectural Heritage of Modern China: Guangzhou, pp. 101–3. The author attempted a site visit but was unable to find access to it.

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Fig. 4.15 True Light Middle School, constructed 1917. One of the foreign-run schools dotting the suburbs of Guangzhou from the 1910s to the 1930s, this building shows contemporary Western school design ideas in its symmetry and large windows for ample reading light and hygiene, while also sporting a Sinified tile roof. From History of the South China Mission of the American Presbyterian Church, 1845–1920, facing p. 124.

be at home in almost any community of the period in the United States. By the 1930s, the Baptists had added a kindergarten, an elementary school, and separate boys’ and girls’ secondary schools in Dongshan, though by this time all of the management of the schools was turned over to Chinese citizens in accordance with new national laws.66 The increasingly ecumenical nature of missionary and philanthropic institutions necessitated connections through which their efforts were coordinated. They also rapidly became parallel with and complementary to Chinese internal efforts at modernization. Western-sponsored Chinese organizations like the local YMCA, whose headquarters were situated in the new “bund” district, and the YWCA, for which Stoughton designed a building with a “Chinese aspect”—sporting a moon gate entry— at Baihedong, became active parts of modern Cantonese social life.67 The Rotary Club and the International Women’s Club had both Chinese and foreign members.68 The lines between Chinese and foreign were blurring, if not disappearing altogether, while the remaking of the architecture of the city subsumed visual distinctions into an overall appearance of modernity.

66. 67. 68.

Ng Yong Sang, Canton, City of the Rams (Canton: M. S. Cheung, 1936), pp. 75–76. Directory and Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea . . . for the Year 1927 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Daily Press), p. 878, other yearly directories, and Charles W. Stoughton drawings, Avery Library, Columbia University. Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, pp. 38–39.

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Xin Guangzhou: Foreigners and the Modernization of Canton The traditional city of Guangzhou was radically transformed in the first half of the twentieth century. The modernization of the city fabric of Guangzhou has been treated fairly thoroughly elsewhere.69 A discussion of this transformation is here inserted to give context to the foreign presence, to briefly sketch the role of foreigners in the process, and to allow a further examination of where some foreigners lived. Dramatic changes to the city’s urban fabric would, by the 1930s, inspire the Cantonese to proudly call their city Xin Guangzhou, literally “New Guangzhou.” The modernization commenced with the construction of a “bund” district, the Changdi, on the northern bank of the river. The construction of a massive embankment to control floods and of its accompanying broad road and walkway was planned in the later years of the Qing Dynasty and finally (at least in its initial phase) completed in 1914.70 The project soon attracted new investment, both foreign and Chinese. The first landmark building to be built along the new riverfront throughway, excluding the electric power plant that predated the construction was the Daxin (or Tai  Sun) Company (Fig. 4.16). Constructed in the 1910s, sporting neoclassical details and a cupola, this was the first reinforced concrete “tall building” of the city. It represents the extent to which Cantonese expectations and tastes had modernized or, perhaps, Westernized. An article from The Far Eastern Review in 1921 described the building’s contents and features (such as the roof garden, Pl. 26): Besides a full-fledged department store in the American style, the company includes in its new home a modern hotel and roof garden called “Hotel Asia,” which caters to foreign as well as Chinese patrons. The building is of concrete and cost $700,000 Hongkong currency. From the tower wonderful views of both the city and the harbor of Canton are to be had.71

Here was a commercial establishment whose modernity was attractive to Cantonese as well as Westerners. As a tall building with panoramic views of the city, it offered everyday Cantonese a distinctly new way of seeing their city and a democratizing one, given that the view from above had hitherto been mostly reserved for the imperial or

69.

70.

71.

See Delin Lai, “Renewing, Remapping, and Redefining Guangzhou 1910s–1930s,” in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treatuy Ports to World War II, edited by Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thomsen (Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia/Art Media Resources, 2009). See also Michael Tsin, “Canton Remapped,” in Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950, edited by Joseph W. Esherick (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000). For the impact of American planning on the redesign of Guangzhou, see Cody, Building in China, Chapter 5, and also Cody, Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000, pp. 111–17 passim. Jeffrey W. Cody, James R. Richardson, and Wallace Chang (eds.), Changdi, Guangzhou, PRC, June 2002: A Report on an Urban Environmental Design Charette in the Pearl River Delta (Hong Kong: Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and others, 2002), p. A10. “Canton in the Changing,” The Far Eastern Review, October 1921, p. 706.

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Fig. 4.16 The Hotel Asia and Sun Company. This building, with its classically detailed façade and high-tech construction, was Guangzhou’s first “tall building.” In the 1910s and 1920s, it contained a department store and “Hotel Asia” in its upper floors, where both Chinese visitors and many foreigners (shunning Shamian) stayed during their visits. Photo by author, 2006.

military gaze. The department store was a significantly new institution on the China coast, and thus required a new building type. It was in the Chinese-run Hotel Asia that Grace Thompson Seton stayed during her visit when she lectured at Lingnan University.72 Besides the somewhat academic classicism of the Western-managed Chinese institutions of the still-extant main post office and the Customs Building, both probably finished in the early to mid-1910s, most of the buildings on the bund lack the flashiness of the Daxin Company. Not until the mid-1930s would the Aiqun Hotel, Guangzhou’s Art Deco skyscraper then newly built on reclaimed land that was 72.

Seton, Chinese Lanterns, Chapter 10, passim.

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part of a section of the “New Bund,” surpass its predecessor in height and stylishness.73 The majority of new buildings on the bund, and later (starting circa 1920) accompanying the dramatic alteration of the city fabric with the destruction of the city walls and with wide avenues, called “malu” (literally, “horse roads”), were of a modern but somewhat hybrid type (Fig. 4.17). These new buildings of the city’s center were sometimes masonry and often concrete. Sometimes now dubbed “shop houses,” they formed a continuous street front, with the first story containing a covered sidewalk with commercial space behind, and projecting upper stories containing living quarters. The building type occurs in much of coastal South China, Taiwan, and in some parts of Southeast Asia, but proliferates in few places or with as much flair or extent as Guangzhou.74 The

Fig. 4.17 “Contrasts on a Modern Street in Canton,” c. 1920s. This view shows Guangzhou’s modern “shop house” typology as well as modern transport (autos from America and rickshaws from Japan) going down the malu. The arcades shelter commercial space and pedestrian sidewalks (upon which the goods of individual shopkeepers routinely still spill). The upper residential floors of these buildings often have classical or Art Deco stylistic touches borrowed from the West, as well as more traditional local touches, like manzhou stained glass windows. Keystone Stereoview Card, author’s collection. 73. 74.

See Cody et al., Changdi, Guangzhou, PRC, June 2002, p. A10. The sources I have located for the date of the hotel’s completion are all secondary and contradictory, but range between 1933 and 1937. The type has a fairly definite presence in Shantou and Xiamen. Its presence in the other geographic areas was confirmed by the author through conversations with my Cornell peers Zhao Hua-yu and Edson Cabalfin.

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Westerner did not always approve of these structures. The Far Eastern Review asserted, “most of the buildings are a curious combination of Western and Chinese ideas and are not always as carefully built as they should be.”75 The streetscape these buildings and the recessed sidewalks create is a truly local, early twentieth-century vision of modernity, and characterizes the districts now newly revived and treasured by the Cantonese for one of their historically favorite pastimes, shopping. The new urban fabric of Guangzhou was part of a massive reorganization of the city. Modernized utilities, efficient transportation, and general civic amenities were all part of the effort, which catalyzed around 1920 under the mayoral tenure of Sun Fo, Sun Yat-sen’s son. The transformation was reported in the Far Eastern Review: The city wall has been torn down. Around the labyrinth of narrow lanes that have been the city’s only streets for centuries is a belt of newly made broad roads. It is now possible to ride in motor cars as well as sedan chairs. Inside the city houses and shops are being torn down to make new thoroughfares where the streets have been from eight to twelve feet wide. Old temples are being made over for schools and charitable institutions.76

The redesign of the city would proceed at a rapid pace through the early 1930s, under the supervision of several progressive mayors. The construction of new roads peaked in the years 1930–33.77 Both secondhand and direct foreign involvement worked in conjunction with Chinese talent to modernize the city. Chinese graduates of American universities, a result of the Boxer Rebellion indemnity fund, played a leading role in the transformation of the city. Leading the efforts in the early 1920s was Director of Public Works Cheng Tien-tow, who had studied in America.78 Mr. H. L. Wu, educated initially at Lingnan University and then in civil engineering at Ohio Northern University and the University of Illinois, succeeded Cheng in the office.79 Joining the heads of the public works (generally engineers) were other American-educated professionals. Yeung Sik-chung (Yang Xizong), also a graduate of Lingnan University who in the mid-to late 1910s attended Cornell University to receive a bachelor’s degree in architecture, became head of the public park bureau.80 The chief of the municipal land bureau was Luan Chang, who had a Master of Science degree from the University of Illinois.81 The list might well be further expanded. Foreign firms had a hand in all of these improvements as well. Andersen Meyer & Company was engineering consultant on two of the major municipal projects of circa 1930. The first of these was Sun Yat-sen 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

“Canton in the Changing,” The Far Eastern Review, October 1921, p. 706. Ibid., pp. 705–6. Lee, Modern Canton, chart facing p. 160. “Canton’s New Maloos,” The Far Eastern Review, January 1922, p. 22, and Cody, Exporting American Architecture, p. 111. “Canton’s New Maloos,” p. 22. Ibid., and alumnus file, archives, Cornell University. “Canton’s New Maloos,” p. 23.

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Memorial Hall (erected 1929–31), an enormous civic auditorium designed by Cornell architecture graduate Lu Yanzhi in the newly formulated, academic Chinese Revival national style.82 The auditorium, which seats 5,000 people, required the foreign firm to supply and supervise the erection of 650 tons of structural steelwork.83 The second project was the Zhujiang Bridge (started in 1929), the first bridge in Guangzhou to span the Pearl River, linking Honam with the main body of the city.84 Andersen Meyer and Company worked in conjunction with the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company to draw up the plans and acquire the materials for the long span, which were then assembled by another foreign firm as contractor.85 Efficient transportation was an important part of the “modernization” of the city. The city wall was demolished not only for the construction of broad new avenues but also for the installation of an electric tramway.86 As the new roads were being constructed, automobiles began to proliferate. In April 1921, the city hosted about forty-five automobiles, the majority of which were of American manufacture.87 By July of the same year, 125 cars were registered with the municipal government.88 Bus companies began to spring up and, in 1922, one line was operating fifteen four-wheeldrive buses, with Wisconsin-made cores and Chinese-manufactured bodies.89 By the mid-1930s, the bus companies had expanded to a fleet of 200, operating on fifteen different routes. The buses were known by the name “Canadian,” as one of the early transport companies was founded by overseas Chinese from Canada operating under the title “The Canadian Company.”90 The rapid increase in motor traffic was noticed. One visitor of the mid-1920s described Guangzhou’s boulevards as “honking with Fords” and noted “ungreased autobuses constantly snorting to and from Tung Shan [Dongshan].”91 Complementing the city’s new infrastructure for automobile traffic was an older network of railways that provided important links to other major centers. The three major railways of the era were the Canton-Samshui Railroad and the CantonKowloon Railway, both completed during the last years of the Qing Dynasty, as well as the Canton-Hankow railway, which would finally see completion in the 1930s.92 These great works projects were jointly produced by the Chinese government and 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

Ferguson, Andersen, Meyer, & Company of China, p. 140, and Cody, Building in China, p. 63. Ferguson, Andersen, Meyer, & Company of China, p. 140. Ibid., and “Canton—A World Port,” The Far Eastern Review, June 1931, pp. 352–54. Ibid. “Canton in the Changing,” The Far Eastern Review, October 1921, p. 706. “Industrial Canton: An Adventure and Some Trade Reports,” The Far Eastern Review, April 1921, p. 257. “Canton’s New Maloos,” p. 23. Ibid. Ng, Canton, City of Rams, pp. 82–83. Harry A. Franck, Roving through Southern China (New York: The Century Company, 1925), pp. 222–23, 231. See Lee, Modern Canton, pp. 2–3.

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foreign interests, and had employed staff members from both China and the West. The technology and design of the train stations were entirely Western.93 The CantonKowloon Railway, perhaps the most important new link between Guangzhou and its close economic partner Hong Kong, provided an important factor in the development of Dongshan, the newest eastern suburb of Guangzhou. Situated on the other side of the railway and its Daishatou station terminus from the city center, Dongshan hosted the rise of a technologically and stylistically upto-date suburb on Western models during the 1920s and 1930s.94 The promotional literature of the 1930s tends to describe the new neighborhood as a model of new development: This is intended to be an exclusively residential district, and modern town planning methods have been employed to some extent in its development. The district has grown rapidly, and hundreds of modern dwelling houses have been built over a comparatively larger area than other districts, providing more hygienic living conditions than obtaining elsewhere in the city.95

The new suburb seems to have been influenced by the British Garden City movement and American trolley suburbs of the era. It had its own separate commercial main street, surviving with some alteration as Guigang Street/Dongshan Main Street. Its architecture obviously has links to the shop/apartment buildings going up in the main block of the city. Flanking the commercial center on either side was an assortment of residential architecture ranging from detached “villas” to townhouses and apartment buildings. Street trees shade most of these dwellings and some even have commodious yards and lawns. Early in the development of Dongshan, the contrast between modernity and the surrounding agricultural countryside was striking, as illustrated by an early postcard (Pl. 27) showing a modern Mediterranean Revival–influenced villa with water buffalo lined up outside its garden walls. By the 1930s, however, the district became densely built with houses of a great variety of stylistic influences. Flanking the commercial center on either side is an assortment of residential architecture influences, ranging from the Mission Revival (Pl. 28) to Art Deco, and even a sort of strippeddown modern Gothic (Pl. 29).

93.

94.

95.

See “Chinese Imperial Railways—Canton-Kowloon Railway,” The Far Eastern Review, May 1911, pp. 468–73, and “Opening of the Chinese Section, Canton-Kowloon Railway,” The Far Eastern Review, October 1911, pp. 149–54. There is still much study to be done on Dongshan, which is perhaps the greatest concentration of “academic” domestic architecture of the early twentieth century still extant in Guangzhou. Difficulties have been posed for the researcher, however, as original sources on the district’s development are hard to come by. This is probably partially due to the destruction of records, but information about the neighborhood may also be restricted since many high officials of the provincial and municipal governments still reside there. Photography of Dongshan (particularly in its Plum Blossom Village section) is sometimes strongly discouraged or forbidden by local police. Ng, Canton, City of Rams, p. 8.

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The raison d’être of the suburb was explained by Edward Bing-Shuey Lee: While the aristocrats formerly lived in the extreme west, it is now considered fashionable to live in the eastern suburb of Tungshan. This popular residential section among the officials of Modern Canton, consisted of open territory and paddy rice fields previous to the construction of the Piu [sic] To Girls’ School in 1906 and the Piu [sic] Ching Middle school a year later. In those days there were no roads. The growth of Tungshan as a residential section is attributed to the purchase of real estate and construction of foreign-style houses by oversea Chinese for rental, and since these residences are more comfortable and contain more modern conveniences than the old-style houses in Honam and Saikwan, foreignized officials, merchants and educators find it more convenient to live in the district.96

The buildings of the Pui To girls’ schools, initially missionary enterprises that in the 1920s and 1930s were transferred to Chinese administration, survive today, stylistically ranging from verandah-clad late-Victorian types to more academic Chinese/ Beaux Arts design.97 In addition to the core of Dongshan (Lee uses the variant spelling Tungshan), in 1929 Plum Blossom Village was developed on the north side of the Canton-Kowloon Railway to house many of the top provincial and municipal officials.98 Added to Dongshan’s mix of overseas Chinese and well-to-do Cantonese was a mix of foreigners. Travel writer Harry A. Franck described Dongshan in the early to mid-1920s as “a mere knoll about which are scattered many foreign houses, mission schools, a cluster of residences of the higher employees of what is now in name only the railway to Kowloon.”99 The railroad employees were still in this era quite likely to be foreigners. The significance of the scattered suburban residences of many foreigners is further clarified in Franck’s writings: In fact, if all of the foreign communities scattered about Canton, the original home of foreign trade and Protestant missions in China, were gathered together in one town, Shameen, the hub of them all, would indeed be a little island by comparison.100

The foreign community now found comfortable habitation throughout many sections of a modern city, where the destruction of the ancient city wall heralded modern architecture and transportation that made the architectural distinction between Western and Cantonese increasingly less significant. Franck, instead of staying on Shamian or even the Hotel Asia, rented an apartment, “in quite the modern sense,” in the western suburbs.101 A 1926 publication of the US Department of Commerce stated monthly Lee, Modern Canton, p. 29. Ibid., p. 114, and Architectural Heritage of Modern China: Guangzhou, pp. 72–76. Ibid., p. 29. Fewer historical buildings survive in this region of Dongshan today, though there are still a few in the same range of early twentieth-century revival and “modern” styles. 99. Franck, Roving through Southern China, p. 229. 100. Ibid., p. 258. 101. Ibid., p. 233. 96. 97. 98.

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rental rates for the Bund ($50 for 625 square feet of office space), Dongshan ($75 to $100 for an eight-room unfurnished house minus utilities), the Chinese city ($20 for 625 feet of office space or $15 to $50 for a five-room house of the type used by the Chinese middle class), and Shamian ($300 for a three-story building with firstfloor offices and apartments in upper stories and a whopping $150 to $200 for an unfurnished suite of rooms).102 Increased real estate costs on Shamian, combined with a growing fellowship felt by some Westerners with the Cantonese of the “New Guangzhou” fostered a new pattern of living as close neighbors.

Civic Visions: The Sights of Republican Guangzhou After 1911, Western visitors to Guangzhou experienced the city altogether differently than their predecessors had a decade or two earlier. The city was no longer for the West a repository of the traditional or ancient, but rather a site of cultural transformation. Even before the great transformation of the city’s urban fabric of the mid-1910s through the 1930s, foreign understanding of Chinese politics allowed the visitor to see the city differently. Carl Crow, in his 1913 The Traveler’s Handbook for China, gave an assessment of the city that would be repeated much over the next few decades, calling it “the most advanced, largest, and most turbulent city in the country.”103 This assertion was based not so much on the architecture and urban fabric of the city, but by the progressive politics of its inhabitants. He explained that it was the seat of power for revolutionaries like Sun Yat-sen, Wu Tingfang, and Tang Shaoyi, and that “It is from Canton that practically all the Chinese in America came. . . . Many of these emigrants returned to their loved birthplace, bringing with them advanced ideas of government.”104 Two decades or so later, the Intimate Travel Guide for 20 Oriental Cities would assert, “The motif of the city is change. Everything seems to be in the process of being improved. Yet, at the same time, the old continues, so that it remains charming.”105 In reality, during the twenty-five years before the Japanese occupation of the city, drastic changes in urban fabric transformed visitor expectations by demolishing former tourist sites and constructing new ones. The evolving identity and selfrepresentation of the Cantonese were now shaping the foreign visitor’s experience. With modernization, the municipal Cantonese government perpetually made decisions about what to preserve and what to destroy. The 1919 dismantling of the city wall for road space was perhaps the easiest, as it answered the demands of modernizing 102. Julean Arnold, China: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926), p. 429. 103. Carl Crow, The Travelers’ Handbook for China (San Francisco: San Francisco News Co., 1913), p. 178. 104. Ibid., pp. 178, 180. It is interesting to note that Tang Shaoyi, a Columbia University graduate, was the nephew of Jardine & Matheson’s comprador. 105. Stuart Lillico, Intimate Travel Guide for Twenty Oriental Cities: Tokio to Singapore (Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1935?), entry for Guangzhou.

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infrastructure while displacing the least amount of facilities currently in use.106 A profound change for tourists visiting the city would be the ever-decreasing number of what in the nineteenth century were “regulation” sites. During the years of Sun Yat-sen’s government, the city took over the sites not only of the former imperial government, notably the official yamen, but also most of the Buddhist, Taoist, and local temples.107 These were converted for use as barracks or schools, or were demolished altogether for city parks and municipal government buildings. Around 1931, a revival of Buddhism in the city, combined with the preservation interests of academics, led to renewed interest in remaining sites.108 The list of surviving tourist sites in city guides possessed some continuity with past itineraries, as well as more recent additions in the form of buildings whose significance had been rediscovered. The Temple of Five Hundred Lohan, later destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but recently reconstructed, and the Temple of the Five Immortals, whose main interest had been and is still its association with the foundation myth of the city, both of which had been standard on the nineteenth-century itinerary, remained. The Flower Pagoda always had been to foreign tourists a remarkable feature of the city’s skyline but not a site to visit, due to its bad state of repair. It was restored in 1935, allowing visitors to ascend it for a view of the city, and has remained a standard attraction ever since.109 The Guangxiaosi, the city’s most ancient Buddhist temple, had been largely ignored by visitors of the nineteenth century, but by the 1930s it was actively preserved due to the increased interest of Chinese and foreigners in architectural history, though part of it was used as the Government Law College.110 The Ocean Banner Monastery did not fare as well, its eight acres subject to partial demolition for the new Ocean Banner Park, office space for the Municipal Public Education Institute, the Honam Telephone Exchange, the Third Free Clinic, a children’s playground, and police and fire stations.111 In the process of the monastery’s demolition, two of the main halls of the temple were left standing, the restoration of which was in 1936 “under contemplation.”112 It should also be noted that a new “traditional” site was rapidly added to the touring routes. The Chen Clan Academy (Chenjiaci) was built only in 1898, but less than fifteen years later was hailed as “the most elaborate and costly in all China.”113 Though in the 1920s it was utilized as a military barracks, the academy was back on the tourist route by the 106. For a description of this project, see Lee, Modern Canton, pp. 13–14. The process of transforming wall to avenue could be quite literal, as wall materials were often transformed for use as paving materials. 107. Franck, Roving through Southern China, p. 277, and Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, pp. 57–58. 108. Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, pp. 57–58. 109. Ibid., p. 60. 110. Ibid., p. 59. 111. Lee, Modern Canton, p. 135. 112. Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, p. 63. 113. Crow, The Travelers’ Handbook for China, p. 186.

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1930s, when one guide pointed out that “the elaborate carvings cannot fail to arouse the admiration of all and sundry.”114 This site, now a folk arts museum, is still the likeliest to have tourist buses parked in front of it at any given time. The Zhenhai Lou and the portion of the city wall around it were left standing. The five-storied building was restored in 1928, with poured concrete used to replace the timber columns.115 This was part of a plan to provide tourists with an interesting site to visit, as well as maintain the local landmark. In the 1930s, the building was used as the city’s natural history and fine arts museum—today, it is the city’s history museum.116 A Keystone View Company stereoview card depicted the structure (Fig. 4.18), probably in the early 1930s, and recounted the museum’s contents on its obverse:

Fig. 4.18 Zhenhai Lou (Five-storied “pagoda,” here misidentified as a Buddhist temple), c. 1930. This view shows the building restored as the city’s natural history and art museum, a process in which all of its timber elements were replaced with cast concrete replica parts. Note the addition of the Guomindang sun disk ornament in the gable. Keystone View Company card no. 23978, from author’s collection.

114. Franck, Roving through Southern China, pp. 277–78, and quote from Lee, Modern Canton, p. 137. An interesting feature of this building, much of which is a grand elaboration on the Cantonese vernacular, is that some of its columns are in fact made of cast iron. 115. See Wu, Guangzhou jianzhu, pp. 64–66. 116. Lillico, Intimate Travel Guide for Twenty Oriental Cities: Tokio to Singapore.

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on the first and second floors, collections of the animal and bird life of south China; on the third, cases containing miscellaneous natural history objects of the same region; and on the fourth and fifth, an art gallery displaying examples of ancient and modern Chinese art. Among the latter, to the surprise of the Occidental visitor, are many works showing the newer forms of Cubism and Futurism, to which the younger Chinese artists seem to have turned with enthusiasm.117

Even in the “ancient” tourist sites, the Cantonese were enthusiastic to show off their modern accomplishments. Increasingly, the historic, traditional Cantonese sites became a more minor part of the foreign visitor’s experience. The Cantonese had now taken publicity for their city into their own hands. English-language city guides, such as Edward Bing-Shuey Lee’s Modern Canton and Yong Sang Ng’s Canton, City of the Rams, now became the visitor’s reference.118 Lee’s guide seems to follow the model of promotional chamber of commerce books on cities that were then popular in the United States. His intentions are evident in the first lines of his introduction: It has been the favourite contention of certain foreign conservatives that China can never develop as a modern nation without foreign political domination. The rapid transformation of Canton from a mediaeval walled city with narrow tortuous lanes into a modern city with wide asphalt roads and public conveniences possessed by any American or European city provides an answer to this antiquated point of view.119

While paying some attention to the traditional sites of tourist interest, and detailing travel facilities and shopping opportunities, Lee devotes most of his attention to chronicling the city’s efforts towards modernization. Everything is carefully surveyed, from the planning efforts involved in revising the city’s fabric, to utilities, social services, and educational institutions. Though certainly useful to the Western traveler, it is also a work seemingly intended to attract broader foreign interest and investment by portraying the city as filled with all necessary modern conveniences and infrastructure. Ng’s Canton, City of the Rams, subtitled “A General Description and Brief Historical Survey with Four Stories from Popular Cantonese Folk-Lore,” was friendlier to the general interests of the foreign traveler. The “human interest” aspects of the historical narratives and folktales Ng included are accompanied by descriptions of modern aspects of the city, even down to its industrial zones. To both of these promoters of Guangzhou, the modern city offered more attractions than the traditional. They devoted considerable space to modern places of leisure and interest, including 117. Keystone View Company. Card #23978, “The Buddhist Temple Which Has Become a Public Museum, Canton, China” (Meadville, PA: Keystone View Company, no date). The building in fact was never a Buddhist temple. 118. Lee, Modern Canton, and Ng, Canton, City of the Rams. 119. Lee, Modern Canton, p. v.

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the municipal parks, the newly constructed Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, and even the Dr. Sun Memorial Library, then under construction, designed by French-trained architect Lin Keming in an “adaptive Chinese” style.120 The latter building was constructed partially with funds donated by overseas Chinese in the Americas.121 The municipal library was not the only new attraction funded by the Cantonese living overseas. The monument that perhaps more than any other represented the international pretensions, and indeed real state, of Guangzhou during the Chinese Republic, the Huanghuagang (Mound of Yellow Flowers, or 72 Martyrs Park), wears such contributions on its face. This monument (Fig. 4.19) was built in a suburban park northeast of the main city around 1920, to commemorate the seventy-two

Fig. 4.19 “The Tomb of the Seventy-two Heroes” (Huanghuagang), before mid-1930s. The creation of new sites for the modern visitor can be seen in this monument to martyrs of the 1911 revolution, surmounted by a small Statue of Liberty replica. Keystone View Company Card No.  23988, from author’s collection.

120. See particularly Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, Chapter 7, “Public Grounds and Buildings.” For information on the Zhongshan Library, still the home of the municipal archives, see Wu, Guangzhou jianzhu, pp. 163–64. For Lin Keming, ibid., pp. 256–58, and Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan, Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), p. 219. In 1932, Lin founded the first school of architecture in Guangzhou, the Guangdong Provincial Xiangqing University. 121. Ng, Canton, City of the Rams, p. 54.

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revolutionaries killed during an April 1911 Guangzhou uprising against the imperial government. This was one of several new monuments dedicated to recent history and billed as being of top interest to foreign visitors, including the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial, erected on the site of the Guanyin Temple described in early Western tourist guides.122 This memorial, behind the mass tomb of the martyrs, consists of a rusticated stone plinth supporting stepped marble slabs with a replica of the Statue of Liberty surmounting the whole. On the stone slabs are inscriptions recording the donors to the monument, clubs of overseas Chinese from far-off, exotic locations such as Pittsburgh and other cities all over the Americas, Asia, and even Africa. The identity of Xin Guangzhou as a center of national and international note could not be announced more clearly. The monument did undergo a few changes over time. In the mid-1930s, Liberty was replaced with the sun disk emblem of the Guomindang.123 During the Cultural Revolution, this was in turn replaced by a flaming torch.124 Today, Liberty has returned to her post. The monument itself mirrors the continual reinvention of Guangzhou, now to some extent returned to its former international progressive spirit.

122. Notably, graduates of Cornell University’s architecture school in the late 1910s were responsible for both monuments. Lu Yanzhi designed the architectural homages to Dr. Sun in Yuexiu Park. His sometime classmate, the less well-known Yang Xizong, in addition to being in charge of the municipal parks department, was primarily responsible for the design of the Huanghuagang. See Lu Jiefeng, Huanghuagang (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2006), particularly Chapter 4. 123. Ibid., p. 92. 124. Johnson and Peterson, A Historical Dictionary of Guangzhou (Canton) and Guangdong, p. 53.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

In the mid-1920s, American professional travel writer Harry A. Franck noted that “if all the foreign communities scattered about Canton  .  .  . were gathered together in one town, Shameen [sic], the hub of them all, would indeed be a little island by comparison.”1 The spread of foreigners throughout the city and the self-conscious modernization of Guangzhou’s streets and urban fabric by the municipal government did not, however, resolve cross-cultural tensions. The legacy of foreign impositions on Chinese sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century still yielded tragedy with an unfortunate irony that became all too common in the twentieth century. The penultimate example of this occurred on June 23, 1925, when a group of Cantonese students, laborers, and merchants met in reaction to the killing of Chinese students by British policemen in Shanghai (Fig. 5.1). They marched peacefully in protest down the bund to the western bridge of Shamian. Upon reaching Shamian, the orderly protesters were fired upon by British troops, killing fifty-two and injuring many more. Prominent among the casualties were a Canton Christian College professor, one of his students, and even a thirteen-year-old lad identified as a Boy Scout. In embracing the ideals of democracy, sovereignty, modernity, and justice instilled by the foreign educators in Guangzhou, these principled Cantonese found themselves caught in the gap between the ideals and practices of the Western trading powers when they physically addressed the segregated island of foreign privilege. On the other hand, Westerners recognized and admired Guangzhou’s rapid development into a modern city, with all of the utilities, transportation, and other comforts. They also took an interest in the development of a modern Chinese state, in Dr. Sun and his Guangzhou allies. This left an uneasy legacy, as the United States and Britain, with their conflicting democratic ideals and hegemonic business interests, jockeyed for influence against the Soviet Union’s ideological representatives in the 1920s and 1930s. The cosmopolitan Cantonese had produced for themselves a city with Western-style amenities and secular municipal hierarchies. Public buildings mixed Western classicism and newly developed “adaptive Chinese” architectural languages that could be 1.

Franck, Roving through Southern China, p. 258.

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Fig. 5.1 Demonstrators on the Changdi bund, June 23, 1925. This shows the orderly march of protesters along the bund going to confront the hegemonic commercial powers on Shamian. From Commission for the Investigation of the Shakee Massacre, June Twenty-Third.

harnessed to a new nationalism. The bulk of the new commercial and residential fabric, however, used modern materials to create a new local vernacular, with ground-level shops and covered walkways that ideally suited Cantonese cultural habits, replacing the previous covered, narrow lanes. The tensions created by the foreign architectural footprint on Guangzhou were not resolved when foreign habitation in the city ceased. The Japanese occupation (1938– 45) and subsequent rise of the government of the People’s Republic decreased and then completely removed foreign residence in the city for a span of decades. Lingnan University, that hub of Sino-Western interaction, moved itself entirely to Hong Kong, leaving its campus to be taken over by the public Sun Yat-sen [Zhongshan] University. Though many traces remain of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century legacy of Westerners in what was once to the British and Americans the “emporium of the East,”

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the city was transformed once again by the social goals of Maoist China. Given the municipal infrastructure developed during the Republican period, the post-war rise of the People’s Republic had relatively little to offer the city in terms of major civic building projects. There were of course some, but these remained so well within the mainstream of Maoist-era construction, in a mixture of Western Beaux-Arts and Soviet influences, that they paled in comparison with the grandeur these buildings sometimes possessed in other cities. The public construction of the 1920s and 1930s, in its “adaptive” Chinese mode, in examples such as Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Zhongshan Library, remain the monuments that truly stand out in the urban fabric dating before the last few decades. The more profound impact that the period of the 1950s to around 1980 had on the appearance of Guangzhou was the mass-produced, often nine-story, concrete-slab apartment building (Fig. 5.2). The reason behind the choice of nine stories may have resulted, even during perhaps the most secular period in Chinese history, from traditional numerological beliefs. The Chinese word for nine, jiu, is a homophone for a character associated with long time spans, longevity, and everlastingness.2 Such associations in the context of building would of course instill confidence. If one counts in the English fashion, with a ground floor and eight floors above it, the association with eight might resemble Cantonese fa, “to multiply,” symbolizing prosperity.3 At any rate, these buildings accomplished the noteworthy goal of providing sturdy, modern, if somewhat cramped, housing for great masses of people. They still serve this purpose today. Though their rectangular rows give an overall monotonous and sometimes even grim appearance, to the planners’ credit, they generally occupy the interior of blocks, with the earlier (and some new) shop houses on the outside maintaining a lively street life. Overall, the construction of the decades of the 1950s through the 1970s gives the impression of a city asleep. It is no coincidence that these are the very decades when Hong Kong sprouted its great white towers. The historical and cultural proclivity of the Cantonese for the art of the business transaction no doubt left some uneasy enough with the centralized economy of Mao’s state that many fled to the British colony of Hong Kong, where their cousins spoke the same language and enjoyed commercial freedom. There is some sense that the government in Beijing did not quite know what to do with the city in the third quarter of the twentieth century, given that the economy of the city did not really meld with the goals of the nation-state. Mao-era attempts to find a role for the city did add another noteworthy impact upon the skyline of these years: in previously rural parts of the Honam and Baihedong districts, heavy industrial plants on the Soviet model were constructed.4 2. 3. 4.

See Evelyn Lip, Chinese Numbers: Significance, Symbolism, and Tradition (Singapore: Times Books International, 1992), pp. 33–35. The number is traditionally found in pagodas and the Tiantan in Beijing. Ibid., p. 31. Johnston and Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Guangzhou (Canton) and Guangdong, p. 12.

Fig. 5.2 Nine-story concrete-slab apartment buildings (built c. 1960–80) in foreground and middle ground, as viewed from the Flower Pagoda. This is largely the architectural contribution of the Mao era to Guangzhou’s urban fabric, which, although grim-looking today, met a very important need during the third quarter of the twentieth century. Photo by author, 2002.

Fig. 5.3 View of tall buildings (mostly 1980s–2000s) along the Pearl River, from bridge close to Shamian, looking east along the city’s riverfront. Much of the contemporary construction of the city is characterized by not always agreeable glass and steel tall buildings with polished granite lobbies. There are a few remnants of the early twentieth-century city on the left, including the landmark Aiqun Hotel. Photo by author, 2006.

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The early 1980s, however, would see the city awaken and building recommence on an enormous scale. The return of foreigners in substantial numbers also was a feature of this transformation. The initial impetus for this was the lead-up to and actual acquisition of Economic and Technical Development Zone status in 1984.5 In this, Guangzhou was preceded by the boomtown of Shenzhen, on the territorial border of Guangdong and Hong Kong, in 1980. This city’s location on the CantonKowloon Railway route to Guangzhou, however, was no accident. In Guangzhou, the architectural herald of things to come was the construction of the White Swan Hotel, on  newly reclaimed land in front of Christ Church and its parsonage on Shamian. Built in the first couple of years of the 1980s, to a design by Mo Bozhi (educated before the Second World War at Sun Yat-sen University), it is a shining white tower with a diamond-shaped plan, with all the amenities that an American visitor would expect.6 Since its construction, Guangzhou has sprouted innumerable gleaming glass and steel high-rise buildings along the Pearl River (Fig. 5.3) and in sprawling new developments east of the old city. The original city core of the eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries is now less than a third of urbanized Guangzhou. Following the urbanization of the countryside surrounding Dongshan, the city extended north to the Baiyun Mountains, south to engulf Honam (now more typically known as Haizhu) nearly entirely, and further east to two high-profile adjacent districts, Tianhe (in Cantonese, Tien Ho) and Zhujiang Xincheng (Pearl River New Town). If Shanghai’s tall buildings invite comparisons with New York, and if Beijing’s wide avenues invite comparisons with Paris, then Guangzhou’s new form would invite comparisons with London, where the winding streets of the old city contrast with gleaming new high-rise development downriver. Tianhe, located south of the new Guangzhou East Station on the Canton-Kowloon Railway, echoing the earlier development of Dongshan, sprouted many buildings on its wide avenues during the 1990s. Its landmark building, the Citic Plaza, designed by Dennis Lau and Ng Chun Man, is a combination office tower, apartment building, and shopping mall.7 It bears the distinction of being, at 390 meters, the tallest reinforced-concrete building in the world, a testament to the combination of contemporary technology and the sheer muscle of the Chinese workforce. Between Tianhe and the river lies the Zhujiang New Town, intended to be the gem of new development in eastern Guangzhou. The Beaux-Arts ancestry of its wide grid of avenues centered on a green mall, terminating in a riverfront park flanked by cultural institutions, is truly unmistakable. This district now sprouts buildings by internationally known architects at an astounding rate. Some are in fact in historicist modes, including a fantasy of a 5. 6. 7.

Ibid., pp. 35–36. See Rowe and Kuan, Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China, pp. 148–49, 222. See Layla Dawson, China’s New Dawn: An Architectural Transformation (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2005), pp. 68–69.

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Second Empire high-rise apartment complex and the grandly neoclassical towers of the Agricultural Bank of China. Most of the projects, however, embrace contemporary modernist chic.8 The remnants of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century foreign architecture now increasingly lie quietly in the shade of these enormous edifices. Shamian and its buildings are now preserved with varying levels of integrity, and Westerners are a fairly commonplace sight on it once again, though this time largely as tourists rather than residents. The White Swan Hotel’s construction testifies to some remembered logic that Shamian is where foreigners belong. Scores of parents issue from the hotel, pushing strollers of newly adopted Chinese babies down the banyan-lined streets, as Guangzhou is a major point for filing the necessary legal papers. Tourist shops line the streets, some specifically catering to this trade, with some version of traditional baby clothes. Chinese visitors are also attracted to the island. In the early 2000s, a billboard montage of some more prominent Shamian buildings faced the north canal, and announced it as “Shamian—the Romantic European Culture Island.” This perception of the island as Guangzhou’s bit of Europe is quite clear among some of the populace. Newlyweds dressed up in Cinderella and Prince Charming outfits pose for wedding photographs, and more professional photographers with lights and tripods focus on fashion models, using the legacies of historical foreign residence as backdrops. Historically denied such pleasures, Cantonese schoolchildren now enjoy the shady lanes and retired Cantonese spend languid afternoons socializing along the Shamian bund. Much of the Changdi bund has been replaced by more recent construction, but the Sun Company building again houses active commercial enterprise, while the Aiqun Hotel building sometimes serves as a backdrop for tourist snapshots and harbors a popular dim sum restaurant on the top three floors of a post-1980 addition—one can watch the city float past while noshing on dumplings from the rotating top floor. Important public officials and the wealthy still dwell in the villas and townhouses of Dongshan’s historic core, though foreigners are generally rare in this district today. The future of historic Dongshan may be in doubt due to development pressures, and a more massive project of recording than this author could accomplish should be mounted.9 Mission stations have all more or less disappeared, but a hospital of more recent construction stands on or near the old American Presbyterian compound site. A few chapels of the late Republican period still dot the city streets. The Catholic cathedral still stands. Interestingly, on its street of Yide Lu, it has seemingly drawn shops with all kinds of holiday decorations and gifts suitable for 8. 9.

Dawson, China’s New Dawn, pp. 124–25, and Xing Ruan, New China Architecture (Hong Kong: Periplus Editions, 2006), pp. 204–7. Upon my visit to the area with The Architectural Heritage of Modern China: Guangzhou as my guide, I found that quite a number of historic structures had been demolished in the last decade, particularly in the Plum Blossom Village area.

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Chinese New Year, Christmas, birthdays, or any number of other occasions. The educational buildings built by the missionaries and the early twentieth-century municipal government still perform admirable service. The Lingnan University Campus is now the shady main campus for Sun Yat-sen University, and it retains nearly all of its buildings from the first half of the twentieth century. The continued preservation of this campus would be a great boon to world heritage, as few universities in China or even the United States can boast such architectural integrity, and as it is the site of a great history of cross-cultural collaboration. A few foreigners have returned to the campus on the south side of the river as teachers, and quite a few students from abroad now come there to hone their Chinese-language skills. The important Cantonese legacy of the 1920s and 1930s shop houses again bustle with business. They have been restored or renovated in some numbers to create pedestrian malls, with air conditioning and Canto-pop or European techno music exploding out of the shops to greet enthusiastic shoppers, most notably on Shang Xia Jiu Lu in the Xiguan (the historic shops lining Beijing Lu have fared less well). These streets can still compete with the indoor shopping malls, perhaps because they are viewed as the proper place for a Cantonese night out by locals and other Chinese, anchored as they are by famous restaurants that include some of the few businesses in continuous operation since the Republican period. Compared with the broad sidewalks of the Zhujiang New Town, the older commercial streets seem yet to foster more interest for pedestrians. In some ways, the two streets are competing models of what dwelling in Guangzhou could be. Though the eastern suburbs may yet draw activity with their gleaming cultural facilities and climate-controlled indoor malls, they do not seem to be the domain of the working-class or perhaps even the middle-class Cantonese, who both traditionally and still today make the street life of Guangzhou so pleasurably exuberant, even among Chinese cities. Resolving the high-stakes debate of the identity of the city, as made manifest by the conjoined effects of architecture and citizenry, is beyond the scope of, and indeed the authority claimed by, this work. The authority that is here claimed is that history should be used in addressing the evolving present. With the reemergence of the foreign presence, new footprints of occupation are being established. In terms of what the architectural history of Guangzhou’s Western-occupied neighborhoods can teach us, it seems clear that the urban and domestic imprint of foreigners should be self-consciously examined and reexamined. Though those that dwell on cultural borders often do not determine the course of international affairs, these women and men often do act as the oil for meshing of the gears of international relations. In the close, if sometimes less than comfortable, quarters of the Thirteen Factories, Westerners and Cantonese learned mutual respect by living and working together. The more Western governments pushed for unequal concessions, however, the angrier the Cantonese became. As a result, the Westerners became more defensive and moved

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to partition their space further from that of the local inhabitants of the city. This in turn resulted in an escalation of Cantonese resistance, and great damage to property. It should be pointed out here, though, that for the most part, because of spatial intimacy, and therefore greater personal knowledge, targets were rarely “innocent.” Generally, even an angry group of rioters could distinguish between the people and property of a belligerent foreign nation (Britain, for example) and the people and property of a neutral or benign one (the United States). In response to the Arrow War, that debacle in mutual understanding, most foreigners reacted by further separating themselves from the traditional city, dwelling on an island. This, combined with increasingly racist attitudes, manifest in the removal of Chinese employees from Western dwellings, led to increasingly less mutual knowledge. Both Westerners and Cantonese came to find in each other something increasingly alien. While the very firm physical separation and control of the foreigners’ environment accomplished peaceful existence in the short term, this would not last when tempers and misunderstandings boiled over. As the 1883 incident illustrated, when Cantonese perceptions of injustice came to a head, the canal’s boundary made little difference. The lack of personal knowledge led to destruction that did not discriminate between individual foreign identities. Given the architecturally aggressive acts of the foreign appropriation of symbolically loaded government yamen for offices and the construction of the cathedral, this should not have been unexpected. Every indication is, however, that it caught the residents of Shamian completely off guard, clearly demonstrating that they did not know what was occurring in their surrounding environment. Tensions were somewhat eased, as the Cantonese found their own type of modernity in architecture and lifestyle and the Westerners found their approach engaging. Led by missionaries, whose job it was to interact with the populace and know about it, foreigners began to move out into the city. Guangzhou’s booming early twentiethcentury economy, furthermore, necessitated close collaboration between the small community of Westerners and the Cantonese. The conservatives on Shamian still tried to hold onto practices of racial segregation, leading to the outright disaster of the massacre of 1925, an event that appalled not only the Chinese but also progressive Westerners. On the other hand, Canton Christian College/Lingnan University was a site of tremendous collaboration, an almost idyllic cross-cultural environment. Its administration, having learned from years of missionary experience, by the 1910s had come to offer what the populace wanted educationally, toned down evangelical sentiment in favor of universal tolerance, and produced an architectural language that at least gave a nod to symbolic appropriateness for its place and time. While the practices of segregating by regulations and canals are no longer an issue, class, money, and privilege threaten to reinstate a separate existence that fails to serve the long-term best interests of the city’s Chinese and Western inhabitants. Tourists

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sequestered on Shamian or businessmen dwelling in the extremely high-end new eastern suburbs may be in danger of once again becoming “insular dwellers.” Even transportation through city streets can make an enormous difference in perceptions and thus relations. Flashy private cars might be the equivalent of Victorian sedan chair riders. On the subway or on foot, the foreigner in Guangzhou is greeted with attention, generally of a bemused and friendly nature reminiscent of the Thirteen Factories era. Peaceful existence, enabled by knowledge from mutual interaction, seems predicated on a carefully articulated social and residential proximity and, at least to a degree, equality. While the nature of empires, East and West, has changed, the awareness of how habitation and cross-cultural relations relate remains important to establishing peace and prosperity at their intersections.

Glossary

Amah—a Chinese nursemaid, generally in service of a Western or wealthy Chinese family Bendi (Puntai)—a word meaning “local,” used by Cantonese speakers to refer to themselves in the context of Guangzhou Cooley (coolie)—a word in general use in the nineteenth century for any Chinese laborer Chunam (also chunampo)—a lime-based cement, sometimes used as paving material Dongshan (also Tungshan)—an eastern suburb of Guangzhou developed around the Canton-Kowloon Railway during the early twentieth century Fati (in Mandarin, Huadi)—“flower grounds,” a suburb of Guangzhou southwest of the main part of the city and due west of Honam, historically famous for its flower nurseries Feng shui—literally “wind and water,” the traditional Chinese art of geomancy and numerology involved in questions of siting and arrangement of buildings and cities Godown—a warehouse Hakka—“visitors,” an ethnic/linguistic subgroup of Chinese from the north who moved into areas of Guangdong and Fujian provinces during the period from the Song Dynasty to the early Qing, as defined by their traditional rivals, the bendi Cantonese Honam (Henan, Henam)—the island south of the Pearl River from central Guangzhou, a suburban district, the name meaning literally “south of the river” Huanghuagang—the park containing the tomb and monument for the seventy-two martyrs of the April 1911 Guangzhou uprising against the Qing Dynasty imperial government Lingnan Daxue—Lingnan University (in Cantonese, Lingnaam Hok Hau), founded as Canton Christian College Shisanhang—Thirteen Businesses/Thirteen Factories Thanka—a Cantonese word for the “boat people” ethnic group, no longer in general use due to a negative connotation

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Glossary

Xiguan—western suburbs Yamen—an official residence or office of a Chinese government official Zhongshan—“middle mountain,” the Mandarin version of Sun Yat-sen’s given name Zhenhai Lou—a five-storied tower built on the northern tip of Guangzhou’s city wall by a Ming Dynasty marquis, probably partially for feng shui purposes Zhujiang—the Pearl River

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Index

Note: Page numbers set in italics refer to illustrative material (figures and plates). Numbers beginning with “Pl.” refer to plate numbers of drawings and other illustrations in the insert. A. Abdoolrahim (firm), 197 Abbott, Edward, 177 A Ching, 81 A Cum, 175–76, 179–80 Aesthetic Movement, 117, 119, 119 fig. 2.31 Agricultural Bank of China, 231 Aiqun Hotel, 214–15, 229 fig. 5.3, 231 Aling (contractor), 93, 99–101, 107–8, Pl. 17 American architecture, 139, 139 fig. 2.36, 198, 198 fig. 4.7, 208 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 127 American concession, 98–101, 100 fig. 2.21, 105, 106–7, Pl. 19, Pl. 20 American consulate, buildings of: location of, 86, 86 fig. 2.8, 101; one-story, 111, 112 fig. 2.26, 113, 114 fig. 2.27; two-story, 113–14, 115 fig. 2.28, 116; usually rented, 98 American consulate, social activities at, 120, 122–23 American Factory: Chinese name of, 10n6; cross-cultural interactions at, 40; destruction and rebuilding of, 18; interior of, 19–20; location of, 10; residents of, 13; social activities at, 37–38 American Garden: construction and features of, 17, 48–49, 62, Pl. 5, Pl. 8–9; violence surrounding, 63, 101. See

also British Garden; square in front of Thirteen Factories American Presbyterian mission efforts, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32, 173, 205, 211, 231 Americans: as flourishing traders in Thirteen Factories era, 12; background of Thirteen Factories merchants, 35; desire for influence on early twentieth-century Guangzhou, 226; relations with British people, 42, 101, 144, Pl. 14; residences during Thirteen Factories era, 13; status during Opium War, 58; treaty between Chinese and, 166 American trolley suburbs, 218 American vs. Chinese civil service, 185 Andersen, Meyer, & Co., 196–97, 196 fig. 4.5, 216–17 apartment buildings, 228, 229 fig. 5.2 architecture, approach to, 1, 3–6, 5n1. See also Cantonese vernacular design; schools; Shamian; Thirteen Factories; tourist sites; Western design Arlington, L. C., 121–22 Arnhold, Karberg & Co., 90, 91 fig. 2.13, 192 Arrow War: aftermath of, 66, 66 fig. 1.4; changes wrought by, 167; concessions made after, 74–76, 84, 101, 165; defined, 3; maps produced during, 167, 168 fig. 3.3, 180; motives for, 4, 166; tourism during, 152; violence during

246 and immediately after, 64–65. See also Opium War Art Deco, 214, 215 fig. 4.17, 218, 229 fig. 5.3 Arts and Crafts movement, 208 fig. 4.13, 209, 210 Asiatic Petroleum, 194, 194 fig. 4.3 Au Fungchi, 133–34 Augustine Heard & Co.: American concession and, 106, Pl. 20; in Thirteen Factories, 28–30, 35–36, 59–60, 61, Pl. 12; on Honam, 70; on Shamian, 81, 82 fig. 2.6, 87–88, 88 fig. 2.10, 101 Ball, B. L., 150, 157, 158 Ballou, Maturin, 184 Bank of Taiwan, 197 Banque de L’Indo-Chine, 96, 97 fig. 2.19 Barneby, W. Henry, 176, 178 baroque revival, 89, 89 fig. 2.11 barriers. See gates and guardhouses Beaux-Arts architecture: in late twentieth century, 230; in Mao era, 228; in schools, 205, 206 fig. 4.11, 208, 210, 219; on Shamian, 192, 195, 195 fig. 4.4, 197, 198 fig. 4.7, 199, 200 fig. 4.8–4.9, 201 Bell Pavilion, 209 Beth Eden Compound, 138–39, 139 fig. 2.36 Birley & Co., 96 boat people, 43–44, 53, 83 bodies, buildings as surrogate, 54–55, 57–59, 62, 142–43 boundaries, contesting and violating, 49, 52–53, 143. See also regulations on foreigners’ movements; segregation Bowring, Lewis Bentham, 149 Boxer Rebellion indemnity fund, 216 boys (house servants), role of, 33, 107 Brassey, Mrs., 83–84 British concession. See Shamian British consulate buildings: at Whampoa, 99; in Thirteen Factories era, 17; nineteenth-century Shamian, 79–80, 81, 82 fig. 2.7, 83, 141–42; twentiethcentury Shamian, 199, 200 fig. 4.8–4.9, 201–2, 201 fig. 4.10; violence against,

Index 28n70, 79n40, 141–42. See also yamen: as British and French consulate buildings British East India Company, 12, 35, 54–55. See also British Garden; New English Factory; Old English Factory British Garden: construction of, 50–51; destruction of, 54–55, 59, 101; features of, 16 fig. 1.2, 47, 66 fig. 1.4. See also American Garden; square in front of Thirteen Factories British Garden City movement, 218 British people: background of Thirteen Factories merchants, 35; classism and racism of, 202; desire for influence on early twentieth-century Guangzhou, 226; relations with Americans, 42, 101, 144, Pl. 14; residences during Thirteen Factories era, 13; violence against and by, 54–55 (See also Arrow War; Opium War) British Wesleyan Methodist Mission, 93–94, 94 fig. 2.16, 133, 138 Browne, H. Davenport, 203 Brumstedt, Carl, 76, 77 fig. 2.5, 79–80 Buddhism vs. Catholicism, 149–50 Buddhist iconography, 132, 132 fig. 2.34 Buddhist temples. See temples, Buddhist building practices and techniques, Chinese, 93, 136, Pl. 17 Bull, Isaac M., 48 Butterfield & Swire (firm), 71–72, 73 fig. 2.3, 74, 191, 191 fig. 4.1 Canton. See Guangzhou Canton, City of the Rams (Ng Yong Sang), 223–24 Canton Christian College. See Lingnan University Canton Club, 94, 95 fig. 2.18, 96, 126 Cantonese, use of term, 1n3 Cantonese building techniques, 136 Cantonese people: feelings towards Christianity, 132; places of residence in Thirteen Factories era, 9; relations with Hakka, 140–41; self-representation of their city to tourists, 181, 220–25, 231.

Index See also Sino-foreign interactions and relationships Cantonese vernacular design: current example of, Pl. 6; in early twentieth century, 227; in shops, 160; in Thirteen Factories, 14, 15, 17–18, 19, Pl. 2, Pl. 10–11; Ocean Banner Buddhist monastery and, 149; on Honam, 68–71, 69 fig. 2.1; on Shamian, 81, 82 fig. 2.6; Westerners’ view of, 23. See also Chinese architecture Canton Garden fund, 101 Canton-Hankow railway, 217 Canton Hospital, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32, 231 Canton-Kowloon Railway, 217–18, 219, 230 Canton Repository, 59, 61 Canton-Shamshui Railroad, 217 Carlowitz & Co., 94, 95 fig. 2.17, 95 fig. 2.18, 96, 126 Carpenter’s Square, 163 Carrall, J. W., 173, 174 Catholic cathedral: as show of Western power, 131, 140, 144, 233; construction and features of, 130–32, 131 fig. 2.33, 132 fig. 2.34; current state of, 231–32; map showing location of, 169 fig. 3.4; violence and, 140–41, 233 Catholicism, 132–33, 149–50 cemetery at Whampoa, 42, Pl. 15 Certeau, Michel de, 145 chair bearers, 177–78, 179–80 Chalmers, John, 133–34 Changhi (bund), 213–16, 220 Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China, 197 Chen Clan Academy, 221–22 Cheng Tien-tow, 216 China Mail, The, 86, 120, 142 Chinese, use of term, 1n3 Chinese architects and municipal officials, American-educated, 216–17, 225n122 Chinese architecture: blurs with Western, 212, 219; high-status, 103, 103 fig. 2.22, 104 fig. 2.23; in early twentieth century, 215 fig. 4.17, 216, 226–28; in schools, 208–10, 208 fig. 4.13, 210 fig. 4.14,

247 212 fig. 4.15, 219. See also Cantonese vernacular design Chinese building practice, 93, Pl. 17 Chinese design, 136 fig. 2.35, 137, 149, 157–58. See also furniture and interior decor Chinese employees. See employer-employee relationships, Sino-foreign; living and working quarters of Chinese employees Chinese government, exams for posts in, 184–86 Chinese Repository, 17, 47 Chinese Revival, 217 chinoiserie, 149, 157 chop-stick dinners, 152–56, 159 Chowchow Factory: Chinese employees’ actions during violence against Thirteen Factories, 60, 61; Chinese name of, 10n6; destruction and rebuilding of, 18; façade of, 15, Pl. 2; hospital in, 46, 127; location of, 10; residents of, 13 Christianity, Chinese people’s feelings towards, 132. See also missionaries Chunqua’s Hong. See Mingqua’s Hong Citic Plaza, 230 class conflict, 64 classicism: elsewhere in early twentieth century, 214, 215 fig. 4.17, 226–27; on Shamian, 195, 195 fig. 4.4, 197, 198 fig. 4.6, 199, 200 fig. 4.8–4.9, 201 Cleverly, Charles St. George, 79 climate, architectural accommodations for: in Thirteen Factories, 23, 26, 30; on Shamian, 111, 112 fig. 2.26, 113, 114 fig. 2.27, 195, Pl. 25 Cohn, Bernard, 180 cohong merchants. See hong merchants collaboration, Sino-foreign, 8, 66, 210–11, 232, 233 compradors, 22, 31, 107 Cooke, George Wingrove, 102 cooks, 32 cooleys, 22, 32–33, 32n82 Coolidge (American merchant), 58–59 Cree, Edward H., 165 Creek Factory, 10, 10n6, 17, 25, 58, 59–62

248 cross-cultural relations, approach to, 1, 66. See also Sino-foreign interactions and relationships Crow, Carl, 220 customs houses, 47 Danby, W., 193, 194 fig. 4.3 Danish Factory, 10, 10n6, 17 Davenport Browne, H., 203 Daxin (Tai Sun) Co., 213–14, 214 fig. 4.16, 231, Pl. 26 Deacon & Co., 81, 82 fig. 2.6, 96, 113, 114 fig. 2.27 desegregation: brought about by missionaries, 127, 139; during Thirteen Factories era, 12–13, 24–25, 28; in early twentieth century, 190, 219–20, 226. See also living and working quarters of Chinese employees; regulations on foreigners’ movements; segregation dining rooms in Thirteen Factories, 25–26 domesticity, 105, 121. See also families Dongshan (eastern suburb), 7, 138, 218–20, 218n94, 231, Pl. 27–29 Downing, Charles, 24, 32, 33–34, 43–44 Dr. Sun Memorial Library, 224 Dutch East India Company, 13 Dutch Factory: Chinese name of, 10n6; destruction and rebuilding of, 16–17, 58, 59–62; destruction of, 17; location of, 10; residents of, 13; verandah of, 14, 16, 18, 26 eastern suburb. See Dongshan (eastern suburb) Edmunds, Charles, 207–8 Edmunds, J. R., 205, 206 fig. 4.11 Edwardian architecture, 191 fig. 4.1, 193 fig. 4.2 Eighth Ward Chapel, 133–34 employer-employee relationships, Sinoforeign, 61, 90, 90 fig. 2.12, 124–26, 143. See also living and working quarters of Chinese employees English Factory. See New English Factory; Old English Factory

Index Examination Hall (Gongyuan), 184–86, Pl. 24 façades: on Honam, Pl. 16; on Thirteen Factories, 14–18, Pl. 2, Pl. 4, Pl. 10 families, foreigners’, 79, 84–85, 108, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25, 119. See also Western women Far Eastern Review, The, 213, 216 Fati: flower gardens at, 146, 150–51, 152 fig. 3.2; map of, 7 Field, Henry M., 185, 188 fires. See violence flags: after demise of Thirteen Factories, 65, 66 fig. 1.4; as indicating consul’s residence, 12–13, Pl. 1, Pl. 4, Pl. 8, Pl. 10; violence against, 59, 62 Flower Pagoda, 221 Forbes, Paul S., 51–52, 158 Forbes, Robert Bennet, 37–38, 155–56 foreigners, departure and return in twentieth century, 227, 230, 232. See also names of specific nationalities; regulations on foreigners’ movements; Sino-foreign interactions and relationships Franck, Harry A., 219, 226 Franco-Chinese War, 131, 140, 141, 142–43 French Catholic mission, 130. See also Catholic cathedral French concession, 75–76, 96, 97 fig. 2.19– 2.20, 98, 106 French consulate buildings. See yamen: as British and French consulate buildings French Factory, 10, 10n6, 13, 16, 17 French Gothic architecture, 132, 132 fig. 2.34 French people, 131, 166. See also Arrow War furniture and interior decor: in hong merchant’s house, 155, 158–59; in houses on Shamian, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25, 116–17, 118 fig. 2.29–2.30, 119, 119 fig. 2.31; in Thirteen Factories, 23–24, 26, Pl. 11 gardens: Fati flower, 146, 150–51, 152 fig. 3.2; in yamen, 103, 103 fig. 2.22,

Index 104 fig. 2.23; on Shamian, 84, 96, 97 fig. 2.19, 192; roof, 192, 213, Pl. 26; typical features of Lingnan, 154, 158, Pl. 21. See also American Garden; British Garden garden villas of hong merchants, 152–55, 156–59, 167, Pl. 21 gate-keepers in Thirteen Factories, 22 gates and guardhouses, 46, 47, 52, 64, 83, 101 German consulate, 81, 82 fig. 2.6, 87–88, 88 fig. 2.10, 193–94, 194 fig. 4.3 godowns, 20, 21 fig. 1.3, 22, 72, 73 fig. 2.3, Pl. 16 Gongyuan (Examination Hall), 184–86, Pl. 24 Gordon-Cumming, Constance F.: on A Cum and Archdeacon Gray, 175; on Guangzhou street life, 187; on Shamian, 67, 83, 85; on Temple of the Five Genii, 182; on water clock, 184 Gough, Hugh, 59 Grant, Ulysses S., 159 Gray, Archdeacon John Henry: as tour guide, 171, 183; friendship with Chinese, 123–24, 159, 170–71; incident with chair bearers, 177–78; relationship with Chinese servants, 125; tourist guidebook written by, 170–72, 175, 180–81, 187 Gray, Mrs. J. H.: friendship with Chinese, 123–24, 159; on chair bearers, 177–78; on Chinese servants, 124–25; on Christ Church parsonage, 78, 116–17; on Shamian’s vegetation, 83 Greaves, J. R., 72, 74 Greek Revival, 16 Guangxiaosi (Buddhist temple), 221 Guangzhou: approach to, 3–6; current state of older buildings in, 231–32; early history of, 2–3; late twentieth-century architecture in, 230–31; maps of, 7, 11 fig. 1.1, 167, 168 fig. 3.3, 180 (See also tourist guidebooks: maps in); never a colony, 145; population distribution and numbers for, 9–10, 79; preeminent example of a Chinese city, 172. See

249 also Dongshan (eastern suburb); Fati; Honam; Old City; Shamian; Thirteen Factories; tourist sites; Xiguan (western suburb) guidebooks. See tourist guidebooks Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, A. See Kerr, J. G. Hakkas, 132, 140–41 Heard, Augustine, 49, 51, 59. See also Augustine Heard & Co. Heard, John, 25, 29, 35–36, 46, 59–60, 61 Henry, B. C., 128–29 Hermitte, Achille-Antoine, 131 fig. 2.33, 132, 132 fig. 2.34 Hinchliff, Thomas Woodbine, 175, 183, 188–89 Hog Lane, 41, 46, 61, 64–65, 162 Honam, 67–72, 69 fig. 2.1, 73 fig. 2.3, 74, 98; architectural influence on Shamian, 81; Beth Eden Compound on, 138–39, 139 fig. 2.36; climate inconveniences of, 78; drawings of, Pl. 16; houses foreigners’ warehouses in Thirteen Factories era, 28; Mao-era architecture on, 228; map of, 7; Opium War concessions and, 166; tourist sites on, 146, 153; university on, 205 Honam Chapel, United Brethren’s, 137 Hong Kong, 2, 3–4, 67, 85, 197, 228 Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 195, 195 fig. 4.4, 197 hong merchants: as supervisors of builders, 29; compradors and, 31; cooleys’ accommodations in buildings of, 22; defined, 17; houses and gardens as tourist sites, 152–55, 156–59, 167, 187, Pl. 21; location of premises, 10; Thirteen Factories–era relations with foreigners, 3, 25, 38–40. See also Howqua (hong merchant); Paunkeiqua (hong merchant) hospitals, 46, 127, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32, 231 Hotel Asia, 213–14, 214 fig. 4.16, Pl. 26 Howqua (hong merchant): garden villa as tourist site, 152–53, 187, Pl. 21; garden

250 villa location, 68; involvement in violent incident, 55; social status of, 153n27 Howqua family, Grays’ friendship with, 123–24, 152n25 Huadi. See Fati Huanghuagang (72 Martyrs Park), 224–25, 224 fig. 4.19, 225n122 Hübner, Baron de, 170–71, 172 Huc, Abbé, 51 Hunt, Thomas, 42, Pl. 14 Hunter, William C.: as tour guide, 156, 163; interactions with Chinese merchants, 40; on comprador’s role, 31; on New English Factory’s dining room, 25–26; on Ocean Banner Buddhist monastery, 148–49; on square in front of Thirteen Factories, 50; on Thirteen Factories, 8; on violence against Thirteen Factories, 56; plan of factories by, 47; relationship with Chinese woman, 44; social activities of, 38–39 Hurley, R. C., tourist guidebook written by, 167, 169 fig. 3.4, 173–74, 177, 183 identity: approach to, 1n3; buildings as motivated by dynamics of foreign, 99–105; distinctness of different foreign, 2, 233; of Cantonese as shaping tourist experiences, 181, 220–25, 231; Shamian buildings reflect European, 85–98; verandahs as projecting, 18. See also otherness Imperial Factory: Chinese name of, 10n6; façade of, 15, 16, Pl. 2; location of, 10; plans and room use of, 20, 21 fig. 1.3, 22–24, 26–27, 32; relationships of guests and Chinese servants at, 34; residents of, 13; social activities at, 37–38 Imperial Maritime Customs: commissioner’s residence, 89, 89 fig. 2.11, 117, 118 fig. 2.29–2.30, 119 fig. 2.31; deputy commissioner’s residence, 89–90, 90 fig. 2.12, 108, 109 fig. 2.24, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25; main office, 99; medical officer’s residence, 96, Pl. 18; on Changdi bund, 214; and otherness,

Index 82 fig. 2.7, 83; staff quarters, 192, 193 fig. 4.2 Inness, James, 55 International Banking Corporation, 193, 197–99, 198 fig. 4.7, Pl. 25 Intimate Travel Guide for 20 Oriental Cities, 220 Japanese firms, 197, 198 fig. 4.6 Japanese occupation, 190, 227 Jardine, Matheson & Co., 13, 28, 59–60, 87, 88 fig. 2.10 Jardine, William, 35 Jeejeebhoy, Jamsetjee, 35 Kahn, Albert, 192 Kahn, Julius, 192 Karanjia Terrace, 98, 106 Ke-kung (provincial governor general), 60–61 Kerr, J. G., tourist guidebook written by, 130, 167, 173, 174, 184–85, 187 King, Edward, 155 Kingqua (hong merchant), 40 Kingsmill, Thomas W., 76, 77 fig. 2.5, 79 Kinsman, Nathaniel, 24, 48 Laird, Warren Powers, 205, 206 fig. 4.11 Lam Woo, Mr., 192 Lau, Dennis, 230 Lee, Edward Bing-Shuey, 204, 219, 223–24 Lee, Milton Chun, 190 Lee Mun Une, 167 leisure spaces, 27, 49, 84–85, 113. See also social activities Lemm, John, 135–36 Leung Alo, 133–34 Leung Poon, 108 Lingnan University, 205, 206 fig. 4.11, 207–10, 207 fig. 4.12, 208 fig. 4.13, 210 fig. 4.14; as collaborative and progressive, 211, 233; current state of, 232; graduates of, 216; map of, 7; moves away from Guangzhou, 227 Lin Keming, 224 living and working quarters of Chinese employees: in American concession,

Index 107, Pl. 20; in Thirteen Factories, 22, 30–33, Pl. 12; on Honam, 73 fig. 2.3; on nineteenth-century Shamian, 80, 108, 109 fig. 2.24, 113, 116, 125, 126; on twentieth-century Shamian, 191, 197, 199, 202. See also employeremployee relationships, Sino-foreign Lixiang Yuan, 153, 156–58 Lo, Mr., 38–39 London, Guangzhou’s resemblance to, 230 London Missionary Society: building on Shamian, 92–93, 101, 106, 107–8, 141, Pl. 17; school founded by, 137–38; Shakee Chapel, 133–35, 137; Tsung Kwai San Kai Chapel, 135–37, 136 fig. 2.35 Loomis, Augustus Ward, 158 Loudon, John Claudius, 48 Low, Captain, 43 Luan Chang, 216 Lu Yanzhi, 217, 225n122 MacGowan, J., 179, 188 Macgregor (British consul), 63 Magee’s Hotel, 13, 39, 53–54 Malcolm, Howard, 159 Manchu City. See Old City Mannerist design, 192, Pl. 25 Mao-era architecture, 227–28, 229 fig. 5.2 mapping, 145, 170 Markwick’s Hotel, 13, 20, 24, 26–27 marriage, Sino-foreign, 121–22 Martin Hall, 207, 207 fig. 4.12 Marvin, Bishop E. M., 177, 187–88 Matheson, James, 35 Medical Missionary Society of China, hospital founded by, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32 Mediterranean Revival, 218, Pl. 27 Melrose, William, 24–25, 27, 36 merchants, Chinese. See hong merchants merchants, foreign: as supervisors of builders, 29; background and role of, 34–35; Guangzhou as popular place for, 9; vs. supercargoes, 13n17. See also Sinoforeign interactions and relationships; Thirteen Factories

251 Mingqua (hong merchant): garden villa as tourist site, 155–56; social activities of, 39 Mingqua’s Hong: Chinese name of, 10n6; cross-cultural interactions at, 40; façade of, 16, Pl. 4; location of, 10 Mingqua’s New Hong, 18 missionaries, 127–39; American Presbyterian, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32, 173, 205, 211, 231; background of, 35; British Wesleyan Methodist, 93–94, 94 fig. 2.16, 133, 138; changing tactics of, 204; construction of cathedral by French Catholic, 130–32, 131 fig. 2.33, 132 fig. 2.34; contributions to modernization, 212; conversion activities of, 133–38; hospitals founded by, 46, 127, 128–30, 129 fig. 2.32; impact on Guangzhou, 144; justifications for intervention by, 183; sponsors of, 38. See also London Missionary Society Mission Press, 146–47 Mission Revival, 218, Pl. 28 Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, 197, 198 fig. 4.6 Mo Bozhi, 230 Modern Canton (E. Lee), 223–24 modernization, 5, 212–21, 223, 226 Morse, Edward S., 186–87 Morss (American merchant), 58 Moul & Co., 79, 81 Mowqua’s hong, 25 Mundy, Walter William, 84, 121 Murphy, Henry K., 205, 209, 210 fig. 4.14 Murphy & Dana (firm), 197, 198 fig. 4.7, 209, 210 fig. 4.14 Nathan Dunn & Co., 20 national joint stock companies, 9, 12, 13, 35, 54–55. See also Dutch Factory; New English Factory; Old English Factory Neo-Baroque architecture, 194, 194 fig. 4.3, 197, 198 fig. 4.6 neoclassicism: in cemetery at Whampoa, Pl. 15; in early twentieth century, 191, 213, 214 fig. 4.16; in late twentieth century, 231; in Thirteen Factories, 15, 16, 16 fig. 1.2, Pl. 1, Pl. 2, Pl. 4, Pl. 11;

252 on Shamian, 76–77, 77 fig. 2.5, 80, 85, 91 fig. 2.13, 191 neo-Gothic architecture, 218, Pl. 29 neo-Palladianism, 23 New China Street: as tourist site, 146, 160, 162; location and characteristics of, 46, 52; violence in, 63, 65 New City, 131–32 Newell, George, 42 New English Factory: architectural influence of, 199, 200 fig. 4.8; Chinese name of, 10n6; destruction and rebuilding of, 14–16, 17, Pl. 7, Pl. 12; dining room of, 25–26; façade of, 14, 15–16, Pl. 2; leisure spaces in, 27; location of, 10; residents of, 35; violence against, 54, 58, 59–62, 66 Ng Chun Man, 230 Ng Mun Ching, 80 Ng Yong Sang, 1, 223–24 Notices Concerning China and the Port of Canton, 146–48, 147 fig. 3.1 Nye, Gideon, 13, 29, 51, 56–57, 70, 98 Nye & Co., 68–69, 69 fig. 2.1, 70 observation and surveillance: by Chinese employees, 34; in and near square in front of Thirteen Factories, 51–52; of and by Western tourists, 145, 150, 157, 164, 178–80; on and near verandahs, 40–41 Ocean Banner Buddhist monastery, 146–50, 147 fig. 3.1, 181, 221 Old China Street: as tourist site, 146, 160, 161–62; location and characteristics of, 46, 52; violence in, 62–63, 64–65 Old City, 7, 9, 146n4, 165, 166, 167. See also yamen: as British and French consulate buildings Old English Factory: additions to, 17; Chinese name of, 10n6; destruction and rebuilding of, 14–16, 18; façade of, 14, 15–16, Pl. 2; location of, 10; residents of, 35; violence against, 56, 57 Olyphant, David W., 38, 40 Opium War: changes wrought by, 167; concessions made after, 165–66;

Index defined, 3; maps produced during, 11 fig. 1.1, 167, 180; tourism during, 152; violence during and immediately after, 57–62, 66. See also Arrow War Osbeck, Pehr, 12 otherness, 34, 82 fig. 2.7, 83, 126. See also identity Paget, Mr., 192 Pak Hin Hok, 72 Palmer and Turner (firm), 197 Paoshun Factory, 10, 10n6, 18 Parker, Dr. Peter: as tour guide for foreigners, 156, 163–64; fights rioters during assault on Thirteen Factories, 63; hospital founded by, 46, 127, 128; successor of, 173 Parker, E. H., 140–41 Parsees: cemetery of, 42, 42n126; on Honam, 70; residences during Thirteen Factories era, 13; socializing with Westerners, 38, 40, 49 Paunkeiqua (hong merchant): garden villa as tourist site, 152–54, 156–58; garden villa attacked during Arrow War, 167; merchants with name of, 39, 153n27 Pearce, T. W., 134, 135, 142 Pearl River (Zhujiang), 7, 41–45 Pidgeon, Daniel, 181 Plum Blossom Village, 219 Polo, Marco, 183 power and status: buildings as manifestation of Western, 99–105, 144, 201–2; furniture as display of, 159; influence on foreigners’ perceptions of tour guides, 175; social activities as display of, 120, 123; verandahs as projecting, 18; Zhenhai Lou as symbol of, 165 Presbyterian mission efforts, American. See American Presbyterian mission efforts progress, Lingnan University as site of, 211 Protestant missions, 133–38 Pui To girls’ schools, 219 Purnell, Mr., 192 Purnell & Paget (firm), 91 fig. 2.13, 192–93, 193 fig. 4.2, 197, Pl. 25

Index pursers, role of, 22, 31–32 Pustau & Co., 87–88, 87 fig. 2.9, 141 Quanshing (outside merchant), 40 quarters of Chinese employees. See living and working quarters of Chinese employees Queen Anne design, 192, 193 fig. 4.2 racism and Sinophobia, 34, 83, 124, 126, 174, 202. See also segregation railways, 217–18, 219, 230 recreation. See social activities; tourist sites regulations on foreigners’ movements, 12, 44–45, 145, 164–65, 166–67. See also desegregation; gates and guardhouses; segregation; tourist sites regulations on Shamian, 202–4 reinforced concrete buildings: in early twentieth century, 213, 214 fig. 4.16; in late twentieth century, 230; in Lingnan University, 205, 207, 207 fig. 4.12; on Shamian, 91 fig. 2.13, 192, 197, 198 fig. 4.7 Reiss & Co., 79, 81 Renaissance Italian architecture: in Thirteen Factories, 15, 23, Pl. 2; on Shamian, 76, 77 fig. 2.5, 78, 85, 192, Pl. 25 rent rates in early twentieth century, 220 restrictions. See regulations on foreigners’ movements riots. See violence Roberts, I. J., 127–28 rooms for Chinese employees. See living and working quarters of Chinese employees room use. See Shamian: plans and room use of houses on; Thirteen Factories: plans and room use of Ruschenberger, W. S. W., 162 Russell, Samuel, 44 Russell & Co.: buildings of, 92, 92 fig. 2.14, 98–101, 100 fig. 2.21, 106–7, Pl. 19–20; violence and, 141, 142 Sacre Coeur. See Catholic cathedral Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company, 217

253 schools, 128, 137–39, 204, 211–12, 212 fig. 4.15, 219. See also Lingnan University Second Empire architecture, 89, 89 fig. 2.11 segregation: during Thirteen Factories era, 12, 18, 52, Pl. 7; foreigners’ desire for, 67–68; influence on tourist industry, 174; of foreigners from one another, 131; on Shamian, 83, 85, 105, 143–44, 199, 202–4, 226, 233; threat of current, 233–34. See also desegregation; living and working quarters of Chinese employees; regulations on foreigners’ movements self-representation of Cantonese, 181, 220–25, 231 servants. See employer-employee relationships, Sino-foreign; living and working quarters of Chinese employees Seton, Grace Thompson, 211 Seward, Olive Risley, 145, 182–83 Seward, William H., 85, 171 Seymour, Charles, 98, 120 Shakee Chapel, 133–35, 137 Shameen Hotel, 92, 93 fig. 2.15, 173–74, 177 Shamian, 74–98; aerial view of, 75 fig. 2.4; as center of foreign social life, 67, 74; as pastoral paradise, 83–85; construction and planning of, 74–76; early twentieth-century architecture on, 190–202; European identity reflected in buildings of, 85–98; foreigners’ move to, 70; furniture and interior decor in houses on, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25, 116–17, 118 fig. 2.29–2.30, 119, 119 fig. 2.31; infrastructure improvements on, 194; late twentieth-century building on, 230; maps of, 7, 86, 86 fig. 2.8; plans and room use of houses on, 107–8, 109 fig. 2.24, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25, 112 fig. 2.26, 113–14, 114 fig. 2.27, 115 fig. 2.28, 116; population of, 199; real estate pressures on, 98, 116, 191, 220; regulations on, 202–4; social activities on, 105, 119–21, 122–24; Thirteen Factories’ architectural influence on, 81, 82 fig. 2.6, 199, 200 fig. 4.8; tourism

254 today, 231; vegetation on, 80–81, 83–84; violence on, 141–43, 202, 226, 227 fig. 5.1, 233 Shanghai, 2, 4, 67, 85, 197 Shenzhen, 230 Shewan Tomes & Co., 91–92, 92 fig. 2.14 Shing On Company, 137 ship captains, 36–37, 41 ships on the Pearl River, 41–45, Pl. 14 Shisan Hang. See Thirteen Factories shop houses, 215–16, 215 fig. 4.17, 228, 232 shopping, 46, 146, 160–64, Pl. 22 Shumaker, H. K., 138–39 Sino-foreign interactions and relationships: approach to, 1, 3–6, 30n76; Archdeacon Gray, 123–24, 125, 159, 170–71; boat people, 43–44; employeremployee, 124–26, 143; foreigners’ humanitarian efforts and, 171, 173; language barrier and, 3; missionaries and, 130–31, 134–35; plans and contracts for building construction, 93, 99–101, Pl. 17; possibilities and problems in the twentieth century, 190; schools as bridge to, 205; sexual and marital, 44, 121–22; shifts during Thirteen Factories era, 8; shopping as point of, 160; social activities, 38–40, 120, 122–24, 212; square as space of, 49–52; tourists, 149–57, 159, 162–63, 164, 175–78, 182, 187, 188; use of term fanqui, 40, 41n122. See also collaboration, Sino-foreign; living and working quarters of Chinese employees; observation and surveillance; segregation; violence Sinophobia. See racism and Sinophobia; segregation Smith, A. B., 157 Smith Archer & Co., 98–100, 100 fig. 2.21, 106–7 social activities: at Whampoa, 43, 45; cross-cultural, 38–40, 120, 122–24, 212; in Thirteen Factories, 37–40, 50; on Shamian, 105, 119–21, 122–24; shopping, 46, 146, 160–64, Pl. 22. See also leisure spaces; tourist sites

Index social spaces, 201–2. See also leisure spaces; Shamian: plans and room use of houses on; Thirteen Factories: plans and room use of South Asian traders, 96, 97 fig. 2.20 Soviet architecture, 228 Soviet Union, 226 Spanish Factory, 10, 10n6, 16–17 spatial relations, approach to, 1, 66. See also Sino-foreign interactions and relationships Spinney, Annie Ward: on edenic appeal of Shamian, 84; on social activities, 119–20; plans of house drawn by, 108, 109 fig. 2.24, 110–11, 110 fig. 2.25, 126; relationship with Chinese servants, 125–26 Spinney, William, 84 square in front of Thirteen Factories: as site and cause of violence, 52, 53, 56; as space of freedom for foreigners, 45; as space of Sino-foreign interactions, 49–52; design development of, 46–47, 48, Pl. 3–4; drawings of, 16 fig. 1.2, Pl. 5, Pl. 8–9. See also American Garden; British Garden status. See power and status Stoddard, Caroline, 27, 163–64 Stoddard, John L., 176, 179–80, 186 Stoughton, Charles W.: architectural plans for Lingnan University, 205, 206 fig. 4.11; design style of, 205, 207, 209; photos of buildings of, 207 fig. 4.12, 208 fig. 4.13; YWCA building by, 212 street life in Guangzhou, 187–88, 232. See also shopping suburbs. See Dongshan (eastern suburb); Xiguan (western suburb) Sun Fo, 216 Sun Yat-sen, 5, 216, 226 Sun Yat-sen Memorial, 225 Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, 197, 216–17, 224–25, 228 Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 205, 227, 232. See also Lingnan University supercargoes, 13n17, 36–37 surveillance. See observation and surveillance

Index Swasey Hall, 208 fig. 4.13, 209 Swedish Factory: Chinese name of, 10n6; façade of, 15, 16, Pl. 2; location of, 10; residents of, 13; violence against, 56 Sweester, Delight, 176, 187 Tai Sun (Daxin) Co., 213–14, 214 fig. 4.16, 231, Pl. 26 Taylor, Fitch W., 19–20, 40–41, 44, 148, 160 Taylor, J. W., 203 tea tasting rooms, 23–24, 71, 72 fig. 2.2, Pl. 11 T. E. Griffith (firm), 192, 193 fig. 4.2 temples, Buddhist: as top tourist attraction, 181; Temple of the Five Genii (Temple of the Five Hundred Lohans), 166, 172, 182–84, 221, Pl. 23; Temple of the Five Immortals, 221 Thirteen Factories, 8–66; architectural influence of, 18, Pl. 6; architectural influence on Honam, 68–69, 69 fig. 2.1, Pl. 16; architectural influence on Shamian, 81, 82 fig. 2.6, 199, 200 fig. 4.8; building materials, 14–15; demise of, 64–65, 66 fig. 1.4; destruction and rebuilding of, 14–17, 18, 28–30, 28n70, 47, 59–62, Pl. 3, Pl. 7, Pl. 12; drawings of, Pl. 1–5, Pl. 9–11; façades of, 14–18, Pl. 2, Pl. 4, Pl. 10; later foreign buildings constructed on site of, 98–101, 100 fig. 2.21, 106–7, Pl. 19–20; living and working quarters of Chinese employees in, 22, 30–33, Pl. 12; location and size, 9–10, 9n3, Pl. 1; maps, 7, 11 fig. 1.1, 19, 28; names of, 10, 10n6, 12; nationalities of residents of, 13; plans and room use of, 19–20, 21 fig. 1.3, 22–30, 32, 47, Pl. 7; social activities at, 37–40, 50; violence against, 8, 52–65, 233; work performed by staff and servants of, 31–37 Thirteen Factories era: connection with current era, 234; duration of, 8; foreign tourism in, 145–46 (See also tourist sites) Thomas Adams & Wood (firm), 197 Thomas Cook & Son travel agency, 176

255 Thomson, John, 71, 102, 160 Tianhe, 230 Tiffany, Osmond, Jr.: on American Garden, 48; on boat people, 43–44; on cooleys’ accommodations in hong merchants’ buildings, 22; on counting rooms, 24; on Fati flower gardens, 151; on Ocean Banner Buddhist monastery, 148–50; on Paunkeiqua’s garden, 157; on shops, 42, 161–63; on square in front of Thirteen Factories, 49; on Thirteen Factories’ employees, 31, 32–33, 36; on Thirteen Factories’ layout, 19; praise for China, 1 Tilden, Bryant Parrott: on Chinese employees, 32, 33; on cross-cultural social activities, 39, 49, 153–54, 158; on factories as hotels, 13; on Imperial Factory’s plans and room use, 20, 21 fig. 1.3, 22, 23, 26; on shops, 160; on Thirteen Factories’ buildings, 14; on violence against Thirteen Factories, 53–54 Tingqua (hong merchant), garden villa of, 155, 159 tour guides: Cantonese, 175–77, 178, 179–80; Western, 156, 163–64, 171, 173, 183 touring vs. mapping, 145 tourism on Shamian today, 231 tourist guidebooks: Archdeacon Gray’s, 170–72, 175, 180–81, 187; by Cantonese, 223–24; Hurley’s, 167, 169 fig. 3.4, 173–74, 177, 183; Kerr’s, 130, 167, 173, 174, 184–85, 187; maps in, 167, 169 fig. 3.4, 170, 173, 174 tourists. See observation and surveillance: of and by Western tourists “Tourist’s Guide for the City of Canton Compiled from Various Sources” (Carrall), 173, 174 Tourist’s Guide to Canton, the West River, and Macao, The. See Hurley, R. C. tourist sites: as items on itinerary, 146, 156, 174, 180; Cantonese guides as primary interpreters of, 176; Fati flower gardens, 146, 150–51, 152 fig. 3.2; hong merchants’ houses and gardens,

256 152–55, 156–59, 167, 187, Pl. 21; in early twentieth century, 220–25, 222 fig. 4.18, 224 fig. 4.19, Pl. 26; in immediate aftermath of Arrow War, 170; Ocean Banner Monastery, 146–50, 147 fig. 3.1, 181, 221; Western superiority and views of what constitute important, 180–87, 188–89. See also shopping trade, Sino-foreign, 2, 3–4, 8, 165. See also Thirteen Factories transportation, modernization of, 217–18 Traveler’s Handbook for China, The (Crow), 220 Treaty of Nanjing, 2, 3–4, 165–66 Triangle Mesh Wire reinforcement, 207 True Light Middle School, 211–12, 212 fig. 4.15 Truscon (firm), 192 Tsung Kwai San Kai Chapel, 135–37, 136 fig. 2.35 Turner, John A., 130, 181 United Brethren, 137, 138–39, 139 fig. 2.36 United States Steel Products Company, 207 valets, role of, 33, 107 verandahs, 14–16, 18, 26, 40–41, 195, 195 fig. 4.4 Victorian design: in Purnell & Paget’s buildings, 192, 193 fig. 4.2; in schools, 208 fig. 4.13, 209, 219; machine aesthetics, 90, 91 fig. 2.13 violence: against British consulate buildings, 28n70, 79n40, 141–42; against Thirteen Factories, 8, 52–65, 233; Catholic cathedral and, 140–41, 233; escalation following Thirteen Factories’ destruction, 65–66; on Shamian, 141–43, 202, 226, 227 fig. 5.1, 233. See also Thirteen Factories: destruction and rebuilding of Wales, J. F., 96, Pl. 18 Walks in the City of Canton. See Gray, Archdeacon John Henry walled city. See Old City warehouses, 28, 72, 73 fig. 2.3, 74

Index War of 1812, 42, Pl. 14 water clock, 184 Weaser & Raven (firm), 197 Wesleyan Methodist mission efforts, 93–94, 94 fig. 2.16, 133, 138 Western, use of term, 1n3 Western design: blurs with Chinese, 212, 219; current example of, Pl. 6; in early twentieth century, 216; in schools, 208–10, 212 fig. 4.15; in Thirteen Factories, 14, 18, 28–30, Pl. 20; in Tsung Kwai San Kai Chapel, 136–37; on Honam, 69, 69 fig. 2.1, 70; vs. Cantonese practice in plans and contracts, 93, 99–101, Pl. 17. See also furniture; names of specific architectural movements Westerners. See foreigners, departure and return in twentieth century; merchants, foreign; names of specific nationalities; regulations on foreigners’ movements; Sino-foreign interactions and relationships western suburbs. See Xiguan (western suburb) Western superiority and tourists’ perceptions of China, 180–87, 188–89 Western women: at Lingnan University, 211; relationships with Chinese servants, 124–26, 143; restrictions on residing in China, 13, 166; social activities on Shamian, 119–21; tourist experience of, 163–64, 179. See also families, foreigners’ Wetmore & Co., 20, 21 fig. 1.3, 22–23, 32, 37–38, Pl. 11 Whampoa, 41–43, 45, 99, Pl. 13–15 White Swan Hotel, 230, 231 Willard Straight Memorial Science Hall, 209, 210 fig. 4.14 Wood, W. W., 50 Wu, H. L., 216 Xiguan (western suburb): chapels and churches in, 133, 135, 136 fig. 2.35, 137, 138; commercial functions located in, 146n4; contrast with Shamian, 83;

Index current state of, 232; map of, 7; representative of street life in China, 187; shopping in, 160–61, 163–64; Thirteen Factories–era residents of, 9 Xu, Commissioner, 166 yamen: as British and French consulate buildings, 98–99, 102–5, 103 fig. 2.22, 104 fig. 2.23, 140, 143; attacked and appropriated during Arrow War, 130, 144, 166–67, 233; municipal takeover of, 221 Yang Xizong, 224 fig. 4.19, 225n122 Ye, Governor, 130, 144, 166

257 Yeung Sik-chung, 216 Yik Shing, 29 Young, John Russell, 188 Yvan, Melchior, 13, 162 Zhenhai Lou, 165, 167, 173, 222–23, 222 fig. 4.18 Zhongshan Library, 228 Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University, 205, 227, 232. See also Lingnan University Zhujiang (Pearl River), 7, 41–45 Zhujiang Bridge, 217 Zhujiang Xincheng (Pearl River New Town), 230, 232

Pl. 1 “The Hoppo Returned upon an Office Call at the E. I. Co., Guangzhou,” late eighteenth century, anonymous (watercolor on silk, detail). In this detail from a hand scroll showing the Guangzhou waterfront, the Thirteen Factories are prominently shown, many sporting neoclassical fronts. Flags indicate the European consuls in residence at that time. Used with the permission of the Hong Kong Museum of Art (AH1964.0196).

Pl. 2 Foreign Factories in Guangzhou, c. 1807, anonymous (oil on canvas). This oil on canvas features a close view of the fronts of the Imperial, Swedish, Old English, Chow-chow, and New English factories, from left to right. The earliest incarnation of the British East India Company’s signature pedimented terrace is shown at the far right. Note, on the one hand, the neoclassical pilasters, arches, and balustrades imported from the Western tradition, and, on the other, the tile roofs and grey brick end wall of the New English Factory (complete with banded gable ornament), indicating the structures’ origins in the Cantonese vernacular tradition. Used with the permission of the Hong Kong Museum of Art (AH 1964.0028).

Pl. 3 “The Great Fire of Canton,” c. 1822, anonymous (gouache on paper). This gouache shows the state of the factories after the fire, as well as the masonry end walls in the interior of the former structures. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E79459.5).

Pl. 4 View of the hongs at Canton, c. 1835, attr. Lamqua (oil on canvas). This view, from the western end of the Thirteen Factories site, shows the rebuilt factories, as well as the numerous peddlers, beggars, and entertainers in the newly unfenced square. The foreground shows pens to house Western merchants’ livestock. The grey walled building in the center is Mingqua’s Hong, which retained its Chinese appearance much longer than the surrounding factories, although a sort of neoclassical pavilion is appended to the front. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (M3793).

Pl. 5 View of the American Garden at Canton, 1844–45, anonymous Chinese (gouache and pen on paper). Showing a degree of continuity in the factories of the central block during the 1840s, this view focuses on the American-dominated factories and the new “American Garden.” During this period, the factories on the eastern end of the site had been destroyed and not yet rebuilt. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E82881).

Pl. 6 This rare survivor of Guangzhou vernacular domestic architecture shares many features with the Thirteen Factories, including a Westernized balustrade and Cantonese gable ornamentation. Photo by author, 2002

Pl. 7 “Plan of the New English and Foreign Factories, Canton,” April 19, 1847. The narrow proportions of the older factories can clearly be seen here, as well as the locations of their small courtyard skylights. The “new” New English factories on the eastern end of the site are clearly a departure from older architectural precedents in their footprint. Used with the permission of The National Archives, Kew, UK (FO17/127).

Pl. 8 View of the American Garden and Anglican church at Canton, c. 1848–56, studio of Tingqua (gouache on paper). This view takes an elevated vantage point, perhaps from the roof of the boat house or club house. Prominent are the chunam paths between the now matured plantings of the American Garden, the Anglican church, and the American, British, and Danish flags (the latter indicating the consular role “by appointment” of Jardine and Matheson). Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E83532.3).

Pl. 9 View of workers loading tea crates onto a sampan at Canton, c. 1855, attr. Tingqua (gouache on paper). Viewed from across the river, this gouache gives a good sense of the individual buildings during the last phase of the Thirteen Factories. Note the extension of the factories on the west (left) end of the site almost all the way towards the river. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E82553).

Pl. 10 Panoramic view of Guangzhou across the rooftops of the foreign factories, mid-1830s, anonymous (gouache on canvas). The narrow courtyards and tile roofs make the Chinese building typology masked by the Westernized façades very evident in this view. Used with the permission of the Hong Kong Museum of Art (AH1989.0002).

Pl. 11 Wetmore & Co.’s tea taster’s office, 1835–43, by Warner Varnham (watercolor on paper). This view of a factory interior shows the tea taster’s assistant at work, with a neoclassically influenced desk and chair that were in reality likely local “Chinese export” products. Shelves and tea crates line the walls, and lines of tea crates also dominate the center of the room. The foreigners’ neoclassical adaptations can be seen in the demilune window and crown moldings. The indigenous Cantonese skylight is alluded to by a few lines at the top of the work. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (M20597).

Pl. 12 Augustine Heard & Company’s House, Canton, c. 1850, studio of Tingqua (gouache on paper). This illustrates one of the residences/offices that Heard & Co. inhabited as one of the few American companies to inhabit the new British factories on the eastern end of the factory site. The new building typology is detached, hipped-roofed, and verandah-clad. The interior spatial arrangements, with godown and staff quarters below and the social and private spaces of Western traders above, were, however, an element of continuity with the older factories. Bamboo blinds are illustrated behind the ground floor arcade, and the upper stories are shown with hinged and louvered shutters. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E83532.2).

Pl. 13 Whampoa Anchorage shown on a fan, c. 1850, anonymous Chinese (lacquer, rosewood, white metal, and gouache). Perhaps intended as a souvenir for the wife of a British ship captain, this folding fan features a topographical view of the islands associated with the Whampoa district, with British clippers in the foreground and two feng shui pagodas in the background. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E46494.AB).

Pl. 14 View of Whampoa Reach with Thomas Hunt & Co.’s ships’ chandlery, c. 1850, anonymous Chinese (oil on canvas). This is a view of the floating village at Whampoa, featuring Thomas Hunt’s ship converted to a floating provisioning store. The dismantling of the masts of ships and the building of a semi-permanent roof structures was typical when the vessels were to stay in Canton’s port for an extended period, such as when United States ships were blockaded into the harbor by British warships in the War of 1812. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (M246).

Pl. 15 View of the foreign cemetery on Dane’s Island (Whampoa), c. 1840, by Sunqua (oil paint on canvas). This cemetery is still extant, and contains the remains of many sailors and ships’ captains who perished while in port. The type of the monuments presently ranges from a neoclassical obelisk to box tombs and simple headstones. There is a separate cemetery for South Asian traders on a nearby hillside. Many of the resident merchants associated with the large trading houses who died while in China are not buried at Whampoa, but rather at the Protestant chapel in Macau. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (M20543).

Pl. 16 Godowns in Honam, Guangzhou, 1857–61, anonymous (oil on canvas). The provisional dwellings and godowns on Honam were generally in a dense, but more relaxed urban setting. The basic building typology seems to have been very similar to that of the Thirteen Factories, and in the center of this view are visible some factories that did in fact acquire Westernized façades. Used with the permission of the Hong Kong Museum of Art (AH1964.0043).

Pl. 17 Plan and elevation of proposed London Missionary Society residence, Shamian, 1871 (by Aling). This architectural drawing is an important example of a Chinese builder drawing (with great accomplishment) elevations and plans for a commission, a full two or three generations before the first Western-trained Chinese architects appear. Used with the permission of the Council for World Missions and SOAS, the University of London (CWM/LMS/South China/ Incoming Correspondence, Box 7, Folder 1, Jacket B).

Pl. 18 Dr. Wales House, Shamian. Built c. 1885. This modest house, facing the northern canal, represents the modest end of foreign construction in Canton, and is a rare, rather intact example of the period. The front verandah was likely originally open and then acquired casement windows in the twentieth century. Photo by author, 2006.

Pl. 19 “Survey of the Factory Site, Canton, 14 May 1879,” Russel & Co. Records. This is a site plan of the American concession. The labels help identify the long, low outbuilding in the photo above as the kitchen, but also shows that a godown and a comprador’s house were added in the 1870s. Russel & Co./Perkins and Co. Collection, used with the permission of Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

Pl. 20 Plan of upper and lower stories of an unknown building (possibly in the American concession?) in Heard & Co. Papers. The plan shows both the newly popular verandah-clad, Westernized building typology and a continuity with previous practice, given the situation of the comprador and “boys” (cooleys) within the house. This arrangement would change in about the 1870s, as  witnessed by the removal of the Chinese staff into a separate “comprador’s house” on Russell & Co.’s premises in the “American concession.” Heard Family Business Records, used with the permission of the Baker Library, Harvard University.

Pl. 21 Howqua’s Garden, 1830–36, studio of Tingqua (gouache on paper). Typical of souvenirs that Western traders brought back from their expeditions, this scene shows Howqua’s villa garden at the height of its development and maintenance. The elaborately carved architecture and the specimen plants in pots are typical elements of the Lingnan (Cantonese) style of garden. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E83532.16).

Pl. 22 A shop in China Street, Canton, 1825, anonymous Chinese (gouache on paper). A Cantonese shop owner greets a South Asian customer with an umbrella into his shop that contains mats, Panamastyle hats, cloth, and tea. A vendor of feather fans stands outside. Used with the permission of the Peabody Essex Museum (E80607.23).

Pl. 23 Temple of the Five Hundred Genii, early twentieth century. This view was one of the most popular for postcards and souvenir photos in the early twentieth century, as this temple replaced the Ocean Banner Monastery as one of the most visited. Postcard in author’s collection.

Pl. 24 Examination Hall, Canton (here mislabeled as a yamen). This site caused much rumination by Western authors in their attempt to appraise Chinese civilization, though actual physical descriptions of the institutional building are somewhat rare. Postcard in author’s collection.

Pl. 25 First IBC Building, built c. 1905. A Purnell & Paget building, this combines the revival of a Renaissance Mannerist idiom with the climate-appropriate verandahs behind a monumental order. Photo by author, 2006.

Pl. 26 Rooftop terrace of the Hotel Asia, Tai Sun Building, during era of Japanese occupation. This postcard is part of a contiguous set showing the panorama of the city as viewed from the terrace restaurant. The taking in of new views, as well as the viewing of new buildings, was part of the tourist experience in Republican-era Canton. Postcard in author’s collection.

Pl. 27 Villa with water buffaloes outside the gates, c. 1920. Dongshan was very much on the edge of the city when built, as illustrated by the water buffaloes making themselves at home outside the wall of this well-appointed villa. Postcard in author’s collection.

Pl. 28 Mission Revival house, Dongshan. In the absence of readily available records, it is difficult to ascertain why the owner of this house chose to make this statement of architectural affinity. Was the owner from the American West, or an overseas Chinese that had made his money in California? Photo by author, 2002.

Pl. 29 Townhouse in Dongshan. This house gives some indication of the international eclecticism in domestic architecture of 1920s and 1930s Dongshan. The neo-Gothic brick and stone (complete with diamond-paned casement windows) apparently reveal a nostalgia for Merry Old England. Photo by author, 2002.