Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai

324 Pages·2006·23.2 MB·English

by  Paul French

Carl Crow 叫
A Tough Old China Hand
Hong Kong University Press thanks Xu Bing for writing the Press's name in his Square
Word Calligraphy for the covers of its books. For further information, see p. iv.
"Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his
pleasur臼. A man simply cannot conceal himse軒"
Confucius
一Life itself. Nothing more intensely living can be imagined."
Aldous Huxley on Shanghai in 1926
“'Never let the truth get in the way 01 a good story."
Anonymous
For Lisa (Xu Ni)
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The Life Times and Adventures
an American in Shannhai
Paul French
香港付出版社華
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS
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。HongKong University Press 2006
ISBN-13: 978-962-209-802-2
ISBN-l 0: 962-209-802-9
All rights reserved. No portion ofthis 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 thi日 book is available from the British Library.
Secure On-line Ordering
http://www.hkupress.org
Printed and bound by Liang Yu Printing Fact。可TLtd., Hong Kong, China.
Hong Kong University Press is honoured that Xu Bing, whose art
explores the complex themes of language across cultures, has written
the Press's name in his Square Word Calligraphy. This signals our
comrnitment to cross-cultural thinking and the di日tinctive nature of
our English-language books published in China.
“At first glance, Square Word Calligraphy appears to be nothing more
unusual than Chinese characters, but in fact it is a new way of rendering
English words in the format of a square so they resemble Chinese
characters. Chinese viewers expect to be able to read Square Word
Calligraphy but cannot. Western viewers, however are surprised to find
they can read it. Delight erupts when meaning is unexpectedly reveale缸，
Britta Erickson, The Art 01X u Bing
Contents
Names and Spelling ........................................................................................ vii
Acknow1edgments ............................................................................................民
Introduction: A Quarter Century in China ....................................................... 1
1 From the Mid-West to the China Coast .................................................... 7
2 The China Press Man 口17
..……..…..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..…..
3 Living at the End of the Wires ................................................................ 25
4 The Collapse of the Qing Dynasty and Opportunities Abound ............. 35
5 Intrigue in Tokyo and World War ............................................................ 57
6 From Fruit Rancher to Spy ...................................................................... 71
7 Sun Yat-sen and the Biography That Never Was .................................... 83
8 Four Hundred Million Customers and Bringing Billboards
to China ....................................................................................................89
9 Getting Friend1y with Warlords ............................................................. 113
10 Rumblings in Shanghai .......................................................................... 133
11 The Life of a China Coast Man ............................................................ 139
12 Fear in Shanghai, the Generalissimo and Three Stripes on
the Arm................................................................................................... 161
13 Back in the Newspaper Business .......................................................... 171
14 The New Repub1ic and the Soong Dynasty .......................................... 177
VI CONTENTS
的 More Skirmishes and a City in Flux ..................................................... 185
16 Swallowing Like Whales, Nibbling Like Silkworms ............................ 193
17 Final Days in the City of the Dead ....................................................... 203
18 Business Over: The Escape from Shanghai .......................................... 211
19 Through the Back Door into China....................................................... 223
20 Tea with Madame Chiang and Whisky with Zhou En-lai ....................237
21 War Service and Being Proved Right ................................................... 249
22 The Final Prolific Years ......................................................................... 261
Epilogue: Gone but Not Forgotten ............................................................... 269
Notes .............................................................................................................. 271
Select Bibliography and Further Reading .................................................... 297
Appendix ....................................................................................................... 301
Index .............................................................................................................. 303
Names and Spelling
To avoid confusing readers，的 far as possible Chinese names for places in this
book are rendered in pinyin for the sake of clarity and consistency. Any other
method is too problematic. Crow himself switched spellings throughout his
writings, confusing matters further. As the writer, and one time Shanghailander,
Emily Hahn once commented when tackling the question of rendering Chinese
into English,“This writer has done her best but knows it is not good enough,
and meekly bends her head before the inevitable storm."
Chinese names are used with the family name indicated first followed by
their patronymic, as is standard in China, e.g. Soong Ching-ling, Soong Mei-
ling and Soong Ai-ling all being members ofthe Soong family. Some exceptions
include those that are spelled in various ways but are well known to readers,
such as Sun Yat-sen (rather than Sun Zhongshan). Where they were commonly
used, the English names adopted by Chinese are included and where people may
be better or altematively known by other names these are included as endnotes.
Money
All figures quoted in the text are as quoted at the time.
Like many Shanghailanders at the time, Carl Crow used the Mexican dollar,
for many years the currency most frequently used by foreigners and sometimes
referred to as the Dollar Mex. According to Crow, 由th巳 eagle-headed Mexican
dollar was int仕roduced
[的ta， el叫'ss] 卸as spending moαn晦巳y弘， ••• and it remains the standard currency of most ports
... Local foreign banks issue paper notes payable in Mexican dollars and prices
at hotels and stores are quoted in them." The value of the Dollar Mex varied
from slightly more than a US silver dollar to about 50 percent of the US dollar's
value. At the same time, Chinese silver t正lels and other denominations also
circulated, including US dollars, British pounds and Indian rupees, among others.
Tael is originally a word from Malay pidgin that came to mean one ounce of
Chinese silver.

Acknowledgments
In the late 1990s 1 was the co-author of a guide to Asian consumers called One
Billion Shoppers. The title was primarily designedωgrab the attention of book
browsers but was also a sideways tribute to Carl Crow whose Four Hundred
Million Customers had been a major inspiration desp的 its being 60 years old.
Crow's writing about China still appeared fresh despite the tumultuous Chinese
half-century that had passed in the interim. During the writing of this book, many
people told me they had read and been inspired by Crow over 由e years and
wanted to know more about China, Shanghai and, in particular, Carl. They are
the real reason for this book.
However, some people must be mentioned by name. My partner at Access
Asia and occasional co-author Matthew Crabbe was supportive and giving of
his time. In Shanghai Tess Johnston and Lynn Pan, two of the city's most
thorough chroniclers, were obvious first stops and both were helpful and
encouraging from the start. Likewise Patrick Cranley at the Shanghai Historic
House Association was an early adopter of my Crow project and gave me a
platform to try to resurrect Crow to modern day Shanghailanders, as did Michelle
Garnaut and Tina Kanagaratnam at M-on-由e-Bund;Tania Matthews and Linda
Hoenig ofthe Shanghai Ex-Patriate Association; Anne-Cecile Noique; and the
Shanghai Foreign Corresponden尬， Club.
Robin Bordie and Andy Rothman enthusiastically pitched in with help when
1 was stuck on how to find the time and resources to access Crow's archive far
away from Shanghai in Missouri. Robin was kind enough to persuade her fath叮
John Bordie to visit the archive to help work out what the author Nicholas
Shakespeare once described as “seeking from the dead what they did not reveal
in life." John was a tenacious master at patching together fragments of
information. Dennis Gωrge Crow, Carl's great-nephew, was alsοimmediately
helpful and shed light on many areas of his esteemed ancestor法 life and times
as well as being generous with family records and his superb collection of
photographs of old China (笠笠}y.dennis georgecrow. cor)1). Without John and
Dennis's efforts, this book would have been simply impossible.
Clinton Dines, Peter Gordon, John Van Fleet, Mark O'Neill, Joe Studwell
and Chris Torrens were also all 企iends who urged meωget on and finish the