The Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby by Elsie McCormick Page A
Authors: Elsie McCormick
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house the hundreds of thousands of workers pouring in from the countryside to work in factories owned by people like the babyâs father.
The foreigners spent their time at home or the club, where they could sign for everything. Cash did not change hands. They went to afternoon tea dances at the Palace Hotel or the Astor. They attended race meets at the race track which is now the Peopleâs Park in the center of the city. They got drunk a lot.
There are some references in the book which need to be explained.
On the first page, the baby refers to Opal Whitely and Daisy Ashford, names that mean nothing to us today but would have been instantly recognizable to Elsieâs readers in the 1920s. Opal Whitely was a woman who published a book in 1920 called
Opal, the Journal of an Understanding Heart
, which she claimed was her diary written when she was a child, growing up in Oregon. It was a best-seller for a time, and then Opal was accused of making it up, and she spent most ofthe rest of her life in a mental institution in England.
Daisy Ashford, meanwhile, was an English writer who published a book in 1919 called
The Young Visiters
. She had written it at the age of nine, and it took digs at upper-class English society in the late 19 th century. It was a big success, and remains in print today.
The baby and Elsie were obviously inspired by these two books by young writers, and decided to go one better.
We never find out the name of the baby, but it is male. We also know that the baby takes a definite dislike to a Japanese baby he meets in Hongkew Park. This piece of geographical information is useful because it indicates where the family was living â in the Hongkou district north of the Bund, beyond the Garden Bridge over the Soochow Creek, in what had once been the American Settlement.
The baby conducts his own little war against the Japanese baby, which is not
precisely
how the baby refers to its rival, reflecting the geopolitical situation of the times. Japan was on the rise through the 1920s and 1930s, leading in the end of the horrors of the China and Pacific theaters of the Second World War. Even in the early 1920s, westerners were mostly uncomfortable with this aggressive, militaristic and focused Oriental power, a sharp contrast to the messy, lovableand totally unfocused world of China where westerners seemed to feel very much at home.
Many of the foreigners of old Shanghai used to communicate with the swirling mass of Chinese people around them with pidgin English, a quite ridiculous mish-mash of words in which chop-chop meant âhurryâ and âNingbo more farâ meant âa long way awayâ. Carl Crow, the pioneer of the advertising industry in China in those years and author of
Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom
, actually wrote some childrenâs books in the dialect. He would have known Elsie McCormick for sure. Elsie thoughtfully provided a glossary of pidgin terms used in the book at the end.
Towards the end of the first chapter, one of the Chinese servants playing his
erhu
in the basement of the familyâs house inspires a reference to Mischa Elman, who was a very famous classical violinist who had just moved from Germany to the United States when this book was first published in 1923.
In Chapter Three , there is a reference to Jack Dempsey, a boxing champion and a sports superstar of his day, and a few chapters on to another famous boxer of the day, Jess Willard.
The roads of old Shanghai mostly had foreign names. Todayâs Huaihai Lu was Avenue Joffre, the main thoroughfare through the French Concession.Edinburgh Rd is now called Jiangsu Lu. Dongdaming Lu, in the area of Hongkou in which the family lived, was then called Broadway for a portion of its length and Seward Road beyond. Nanjing Rd West, as it is today, was then called Bubbling Well. Dixwell Rd, which gets a mention in Chapter 3 , was another important road in the Hongkou area; it is today called
The foreigners spent their time at home or the club, where they could sign for everything. Cash did not change hands. They went to afternoon tea dances at the Palace Hotel or the Astor. They attended race meets at the race track which is now the Peopleâs Park in the center of the city. They got drunk a lot.
There are some references in the book which need to be explained.
On the first page, the baby refers to Opal Whitely and Daisy Ashford, names that mean nothing to us today but would have been instantly recognizable to Elsieâs readers in the 1920s. Opal Whitely was a woman who published a book in 1920 called
Opal, the Journal of an Understanding Heart
, which she claimed was her diary written when she was a child, growing up in Oregon. It was a best-seller for a time, and then Opal was accused of making it up, and she spent most ofthe rest of her life in a mental institution in England.
Daisy Ashford, meanwhile, was an English writer who published a book in 1919 called
The Young Visiters
. She had written it at the age of nine, and it took digs at upper-class English society in the late 19 th century. It was a big success, and remains in print today.
The baby and Elsie were obviously inspired by these two books by young writers, and decided to go one better.
We never find out the name of the baby, but it is male. We also know that the baby takes a definite dislike to a Japanese baby he meets in Hongkew Park. This piece of geographical information is useful because it indicates where the family was living â in the Hongkou district north of the Bund, beyond the Garden Bridge over the Soochow Creek, in what had once been the American Settlement.
The baby conducts his own little war against the Japanese baby, which is not
precisely
how the baby refers to its rival, reflecting the geopolitical situation of the times. Japan was on the rise through the 1920s and 1930s, leading in the end of the horrors of the China and Pacific theaters of the Second World War. Even in the early 1920s, westerners were mostly uncomfortable with this aggressive, militaristic and focused Oriental power, a sharp contrast to the messy, lovableand totally unfocused world of China where westerners seemed to feel very much at home.
Many of the foreigners of old Shanghai used to communicate with the swirling mass of Chinese people around them with pidgin English, a quite ridiculous mish-mash of words in which chop-chop meant âhurryâ and âNingbo more farâ meant âa long way awayâ. Carl Crow, the pioneer of the advertising industry in China in those years and author of
Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom
, actually wrote some childrenâs books in the dialect. He would have known Elsie McCormick for sure. Elsie thoughtfully provided a glossary of pidgin terms used in the book at the end.
Towards the end of the first chapter, one of the Chinese servants playing his
erhu
in the basement of the familyâs house inspires a reference to Mischa Elman, who was a very famous classical violinist who had just moved from Germany to the United States when this book was first published in 1923.
In Chapter Three , there is a reference to Jack Dempsey, a boxing champion and a sports superstar of his day, and a few chapters on to another famous boxer of the day, Jess Willard.
The roads of old Shanghai mostly had foreign names. Todayâs Huaihai Lu was Avenue Joffre, the main thoroughfare through the French Concession.Edinburgh Rd is now called Jiangsu Lu. Dongdaming Lu, in the area of Hongkou in which the family lived, was then called Broadway for a portion of its length and Seward Road beyond. Nanjing Rd West, as it is today, was then called Bubbling Well. Dixwell Rd, which gets a mention in Chapter 3 , was another important road in the Hongkou area; it is today called
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