Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom

by Carl Crow

  Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom

  By Carl Crow

  With a new foreword by Paul French

  ISBN-13: 978-988-99633-3-0

  © 2007 China Economic Review Publishing (HK) Ltd. for Earnshaw Books.

  Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom was first published in 1940.

  This edition with a new foreword is published by

  China Economic Review Publishing (HK) Limited for Earnshaw Books

  1804, 18/F New Victory House,

  93-103 Wing Lok Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

  Series Editor: Andrew Chubb

  HISTORY / Asia / China

  First printing April 2007

  Second printing September 2007

  Third printing November 2008

  Fourth printing June 2009

  Fifth printing April 2011

  Sixth printing July 2014

  EB002

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in material form, by any means, whether graphic, electronic, mechanical or other, including photocopying or information storage, in whole or in part. May not be used to prepare other publications without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information contact info@earnshawbooks.com

  Published by Earnshaw Books Ltd. (Hong Kong)

  Contents

  Foreword by Paul French

  Preface

  The China Coast Language

  I Followers of Marco Polo

  II The Princely Tradition

  III The Lordly Compradore

  IV Those Who Made Fortunes

  V The Land of Adventurers

  VI “Master Can Sign Chit”

  VII The Table Pounders

  VIII The Protection of the Flag

  IX Foreign Flags for Sale

  X Beachcombers, Beggars and Sailors

  XI American Saints and Chinese Sinners

  XII Two Missionaries and Two Soldiers

  XIII The City the Foreign Devils Built

  XIV Dogs and Chinese Not Allowed

  XV Prestige of the White Man

  XVI West Meets East and Likes It

  XVII Hatred for the Foreigner

  XVIII The Roast Duck of Old Cathay

  XIX The China Coast Housewife

  XX Land of the Lonely Bachelor

  XXI Foreign Devils at Play

  XXII Hands Across the Sea

  XXIII The End of an Era

  Foreword

  by Paul French

  Between the two world wars, when China shifted traumatically from the Qing Dynasty to a republic through the warlord period, world war, civil war and then revolution, no other foreigner explained China to as many people worldwide quite so eloquently as Carl Crow. That his name slipped from history for the best part of fifty years was perhaps inevitable – Carl was a China coast man between the two world wars and after 1949 his knowledge, contacts and experiences seemed redundant as foreign business exited and the Cold Warriors replaced the Old China Hands in controlling America’s China policy. Then in the 1980s, as China began to open up to the world and foreign business again, some remembered Carl while a new generation born long after his death have rediscovered him and found in the process that China is all too often a market of eternal truths and constants as much as one (of the more oft reported) dizzying pace and new horizons. Carl reminds us that there is an awful lot of the “New” China that is not quite so “New” upon closer inspection.

  Carl’s achievements in his 25 years in China were legion and in many cases long lasting – establishing one of the longest running English-language newspapers on the China coast; deeply influencing Shanghai’s advertising and marketing culture as well as writing several of the best selling books on China of the twentieth century – but when he arrived in Shanghai in the summer of 1911 fresh off the boat from America he was just another Griffin – that wonderful term that has slipped from usage now but was then widely used to describe a recent arrival to China, a ‘newbie’ in the current parlance. And like all China Griffins he could but wonder at the strange land he had pitched up in.

  Herbert Carl Crow (though nobody ever called him Herbert and he hated the name) was born in rural Missouri in 1883. After apprenticing as a printer the lure of the journalist life called and he enrolled in the newly established Missouri University School of Journalism. A combination of financial penury and a thick streak of entrepreneurialism meant he sat in the classroom for a grand total of 12 hours before setting out to seek his fortune. Reporting stints with the Columbia-Missouri Herald and on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s crime beat followed before a summons to the International Settlement of Shanghai and a job on a newly formed, American-run newspaper – the China Press.

  In the summer of 1911 Carl found Shanghai hot, humid, fascinating but lacking in hard news of global importance. All that changed following the nationalist revolution of 1911 and Carl, barely three months in China, found himself in the centre of one of the great stories of the first half of the century as the 267-year old Qing Dynasty passed into history and the Nationalist Republic of Dr Sun Yat-sen took control of China. For the next few years Carl was to follow the rise of Dr Sun, the power struggles that bedevilled China, the rise of the warlords and the impact of the First World War on China as Japan first bared her teeth menacingly towards Peking.

  The First World War was also the catalyst for Carl’s entrepreneurial inclinations. The post-war economic boom in Shanghai encouraged him to establish Carl Crow Inc – China’s first and largest western style advertising agency and the business that was to make him a rich and respected member of Shanghai’s foreign community. Carl Crow Inc was a business, but for Carl it often appears to have been a way to indulge his hobbies as an amateur anthropologist and sociologist of Chinese manners and culture (and, by way of which, foreign manners and cultures on the China coast too). This deeper understanding of China meant that Carl not only came to influence Chinese advertising through promoting the blending of Chinese and western styles into the images of attractive modern Shanghai women that were so successful in selling a host of consumer goods to the Chinese, but also led him to become involved in a host of escapades from helping rescue hostages from a warlord in Shandong and witnessing most of the epoch shaping events in China of the period from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 to the so-called First Shanghai War in 1932. Many of these eyewitness accounts and experiences are recalled in Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom.

  However, it was to be the Second Shanghai War in 1937 that ended Carl’s China coast sojourn but also led to his writing Foreign Devils. Though you’d never know it from his light touch, the book was written at a low point in Carl’s life. In August 1937 following Black Saturday and the bombing of Shanghai, Carl had been forced to leave not as a successful businessman returning home a conquering hero but as a refugee with one suitcase and an overcoat. He had had to leave most of his money, his possessions, his business and his property to an uncertain fate in Shanghai. Arriving back in America he claimed that for the first time he knew real poverty. His answer to this predicament was to throw himself into his writing and in the following years published several books including his classic account of the misfortunes of foreign business in China, Four Hundred Million Customers. Foreign Devils was originally published in 1940 as part of his attempt to stay afloat financially as it became increasingly apparent that he would not be able to return to Shanghai and would never see his home and his business again.

  Foreign Devils spans Crow’s time in Shanghai from his arrival in 1911 to his forced departure in 1937. In Foreign Devils he noted that as he had sailed a
way from Shanghai he realized that an epoch had ended. Crow and the other China Hands who left Shanghai in 1937 had been a product of a particular period in China’s history – the period of extraterritoriality, treaty ports and foreign influence – that was now over. Crow likened the Old China Hands after 1937 to aging gold miners in California who hung around in ghost towns long after the money had run out. He remarked in Foreign Devils that those who now did little but reminisce about the old days and bemoan the future were both mournful and sometimes bitter – “I know how they feel for I am an old China Hand myself.” However, Carl was different; when he sat down to recall his quarter century in China and the people he had met and the things he had seen, he neither moaned nor became bitter. Rather, as China fought for its life against the Japanese invasion, Carl recalled a wonderful era among a people whose way of life and culture he came to appreciate and respect. That effort to understand, to dig beneath the surface of China, and his respect for the Chinese people are the qualities that over half a century later mark Carl Crow out as the greatest of the Old China Hands.

  Paul French

  Shanghai

  February 2007

  Preface

  This is a rambling and somewhat illogical account of how the West met the East on the shores of the China Coast; of how the representatives of the two civilizations bickered and quarreled and tried to outsmart each other in business deals and in the end got acquainted and learned to like each other. It is rambling and illogical because that is the way of life - especially of the life of the foreigner on the China Coast where old conventions were left behind and new ones were of slow and erratic growth. Though it may not be very obvious, there is a thread of sequence running through the story - a sequence of growing friendship which was often interrupted but never broken until a third party, recognizing no human kinship to either the East or the West, appeared on the scene.

  Though those of us who were living in China at the time did not know or suspect it, the Japanese attempt to conquer the country marked the close of an epoch, the epoch during which both China and Japan emerged from their isolation. Japan, with a calculating eye, surveyed the West and adopted and adapted the things she thought would be useful to her. China changed in more leisurely and less calculating fashion. The amalgam of West and East in China was a natural one, brought about by the contact of people and with a minimum of official interference or coercion. When foreigners and Chinese first met each despised the ways of the other and each was encased in all manner of prejudices. Very slowly these prejudices were broken down and each found in the other qualities to admire and respect. The westernization of China was slower but more thorough than that of Japan. In the latter country Western ways were adopted by orders of the rulers. In China they became a part of China’s national life for they were adopted by the people themselves.

  Life in China was enjoyable and stimulating to the foreign resident and his life there made him a different person with many Chinese traits of which he may have been unconscious. But the old China which we loved is gone and nothing can bring it back to life. A great people who were developing a new life in a way which did not upset their old traditions have been compelled to organize along military lines and to take up a mode of life which is as strange to them as it is distasteful. Perhaps the new China of the future may be a better place, but it cannot be the same.

  The day of the old China Hand is gone. His story must be told in the past tense. No matter what the outcome of the war in China may be, the old days of special privileges for the foreigner are ended. They were doomed when the Chinese cut off their queues, though it was many years before this gesture was followed by any evidence of a change. The old China Hand was the creation of a certain age and environment. He could never have existed in any previous time and there is no place for him in the future. The world in which he lived has been destroyed. It is hard for him to realize this and he sits around his clubs on the China Coast talking about the good old days of the past - days which at the time he cursed with liverish bitterness. Somehow he reminds me of the old miners of California who stayed on in the ghost towns long after the pay streak had played out. I know how he feels for I am an old China Hand myself.

  Carl Crow

  The China Coast language

  Strange and curious words have not been introduced in this book for the purpose of providing local color. Their use is unavoidable for they comprise a part of the language of the China Coast and there are no other words which mean exactly the same thing. Most of the words are Chinese, as faultily pronounced by the foreigner. Others are Malay or Hindustani or products of pidgin English. The use of many of these words is largely confined to the China Coast, but a constantly increasing number is to be found in English dictionaries.

  Abacus – A frame on which a number of wooden beads are strung. The grandfather of all calculating machines.

  Aiyah! – An exclamation of astonishment, wonder or disgust, depending on the inflection of the voice.

  Amah – A general term for all women servants. The baby-amah is a nurse maid, the sew-sew amah is a seamstress, while the weed-amah is supposed to keep the lawn free from weeds.

  Chit – A memorandum of indebtedness and also a brief note. In every hong there are chit-coolies whose sole occupation is the delivery of these notes.

  Chop – A trademark or brand.

  Chota hazra – A cup of tea with toast and jam - the China Coast equivalent of a Continental breakfast.

  Chota-peg – A Hindustani word meaning a small drink.

  Compound – Grounds of a factory, business house or residence enclosed by a high brick wall.

  Compradore – The Chinese manager of a hong.

  Compradore shop – The China Coast equivalent of an American grocery store.

  Cumshaw – A tip or present.

  Ding hao – The Chinese equivalent of “the best possible.”

  Fankwei – Foreign devil.

  Griffin – A pony which has not yet won a race and a foreigner whose first employment contract has not yet been renewed.

  Hong – Any large mercantile establishment but not applied to retail shops.

  Joss – A corruption of the Portuguese word dios, and meaning either god or luck. A joss-man is a priest, and “no-joss” is the equivalent of “no dice.”

  Lam pidgin – Literally learn-business or apprentice.

  Likin – A transit tax levied on goods being moved from one point to another in the interior of China.

  Ma foo – A Chinese groom or stable boy.

  Maskee – A very useful word which means all right, never mind, however, but and nevertheless. It is the China Coast equivalent of the Russian “nichevo” or the Japanese “escataganai.”

  Missie – The term of respect used by all Chinese servants when addressing their mistresses.

  Mow – A Chinese land measure equal to one sixth of an acre.

  Olo – Old.

  Outport – Any place in the interior where foreigners were allowed to reside and carry on business.

  Picul – A measure of weight, 133 pounds. The Chinese equivalent of a bushel.

  Poo bah – An official of unlimited authority.

  Sampan – A small Chinese boat propelled by the use of a single oar.

  Savvy – Knowledge or understanding.

  Shroff – A native clerk or collector. It is also used as a verb which means “to audit” as in “shroff an account.”

  Tael – A measure of weight, being approximately one ounce. It is most generally used in connection with silver.

  Taipan – The foreign manager of a big business concern.

  Taotai – An important Chinese official who deals with foreigners on local affairs.

  Tiffin – A Persian word for the midday meal.

  Tipao – A local Chinese official having charge of the transfers and registry of real estate.

  Walkee – Any form of movement or action.

  Walla Walk – Garrulous and useless conversation.
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br />   Yuloh – The single oar by which Chinese boats are both propelled and steered.

  I

  Followers of Marco Polo

  “One generation opens the road upon which another generation travels.”

  Marco polo was a wealthy man when he returned to Venice from China after an absence of twenty-six years. That was the most important fact about his strange and adventurous journey. Had it not been for the jewels and silks and musk that he brought back he would probably have died a forgotten man - just another Venetian adventurer who had wandered off to some distant part of the earth and returned home penniless to die in poverty and obscurity. His neighbors would not have started off to make their fortunes in China. The need for a shorter route to that country would not have developed. Columbus would have lacked incentive for his historic voyage which was not made to prove that the world was round but to provide a better trade route to the rich countries of the Orient.

  Messer Marco had many stories to tell when he returned home in the summer of 1295. He told of many cities he had seen with suburbs larger than the whole city of Venice or its hated rival Genoa; of massive walls surmounting mountaintops, stretching away as far as the eye could reach; of canals which were hundreds of miles long and as straight as the flight of an arrow. He told of pieces of printed paper which circulated throughout the country in the place of money and were as valuable as coins of gold; of a people so refined and cultured that they might settle serious differences of opinion without sticking each other in the back with daggers.

  Nothing like this had ever been heard of in Europe. Most of the things he told about were unbelievable because they were far beyond the imagination of the Europeans of that period. Everyone thought he was a liar who did not have wit enough to be plausible. The story about printed money was entirely unbelievable because no one in Europe had ever seen a piece of printing of any kind. Equally absurd was his insistence that he had seen with his own eyes a curious black rock which the Chinese dug from the ground and burned, producing flames hotter than that from well-seasoned wood. He said there were more people in China than in all the rest of the world, but that even the common people ate off plates and almost everyone had at least one silk gown for holiday wear. His name became a symbol for falsehood. When small boys thought they had caught a playmate in an exaggeration they would taunt him with the provocative singsong; “and so says Marco Polo.” He was in fact one of the most truthful travelers in all history but his reputation as a liar lasted as long as he lived and for generations afterward. Because of his tales he was not even allowed to die in peace. On his death-bed in 1324 he was exhorted to prepare himself for absolution of his sins by retracting some of his lies; but as long as there was any breath in his old body he continued to whisper, “I have not told the half of what I saw.”