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Hangzhou honeymoon in 1925
By Xu Wenwen |
November 17, 2009, Tuesday
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EIGHTY-FOUR years ago an American couple in China took their honeymoon in Hangzhou. Their remarkable photos and detailed diary entries are on exhibit. Xu Wenwen reports.
Hangzhou has long been famous as a honeymoon destination, and 84 years ago newlywed Americans Benjamin March and Dorothy Rowe visited the city and eloquently recorded their trip in words and photos.
An exhibition of the couple's 67 photos and diary entries is underway at the Art Museum of Tang Yun on Nanshan Road through November 30. The pictures and commentaries record 32 days from July 3 to August 4, 1925. It's titled "1925: Benjamin March's Honeymoon in Hangzhou - 100 Years of Photography of West Lake." The exhibit also includes pictures by other photographers.
There's the unspoiled West Lake, little creeks that vanished years ago, rickshaws and sedan chairs, and other sites.
Benjamin March (1899-1934) was an expert on Eastern art, a writer, curator and lecturer. The Chicago native was one of the foremost authorities on Chinese art during the 1920s and 1930s. From 1925-27 he worked at Yenching University in Beijing as an instructor in English, a librarian and a lecturer in Chinese art.
While in China, March met and married Dorothy Rowe, the China-born daughter of a Methodist missionary living in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.
They spent their wedding trip mostly in Hangzhou, with a side-trip to Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
They visited virtually every scenic spot at that time: Baochu Pagoda, Three Pools Mirroring the Moon, Dragon Well, Tiger Spring, Jade Spring, Solitary Hill and other sites.
March recorded his sights and impressions in a diary in a bright, delicate style.
He wrote of boating on the West Lake and listening to music:
"Many boats were on the lake and there was much sweet music as we circled around toward the Imperial Island. The Chinese know what music fits a scene like this and the many various instruments work together for beauty to them that love the lake and the night and the moon.
"If I had started when I was a small boy as many Chinese small boys start, I might now be able to play the long slim bamboo flute that is made for a man to play when he sits alone in the moonlight and whose sound is so delicate that only a few can listen and hear it, and so plaintive sweet, beauty walks around on feet that leave pink fragrant lotus in her train."
March recorded his experience in many small lanes and shops.
"We have found a fairly clean and very elaborately tiled and white-painted barber shop ... The young fellow cut my hair with great care and nice precision, he also did the shave ... Having finished the space normally allotted to the razor, gleaning until not a bit of recognizable stubble was left, he started off in the manner of Chinese barbers making smooth the surface of their Chinese customers.
Close shave
"First it was all around my ears, then the ears themselves. Inside and out he went, back and front. Then he got back onto my face and wandered up around my forehead ... I had watched it happening to someone else but never before had I subjected myself to such treatment, and I was the more surprised since this particular barber shop proclaimed themselves as barbers in the foreign manner."
Hangzhou was a popular tourist and honeymoon resort praised in two widely read books: "Hangchow Itineraries" (1922) by Robert Ferrie Fitch, president of Hangchow Christian College (Hangchow is the old English translational form for the present Hangzhou, Hangchow Christian College was one of the 13 most well-known Protestant universities in China before 1951); and "Hangchow, the City of Heaven" (1906) by Frederick D. Cloud.
"In the early 19th century, many foreign missionaries came to Hangzhou for its capital position, transport convenience and beautiful scenery, and they promoted Hangzhou to the world," says Professor Shen Hong of Zhejiang University, who translated the Hangzhou part of March's diary.
The photos and diary kept by March were donated by his daughter Judith March Davis in 1995 to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. They are part of the American Smithsonian Institution's museums of Asian art.
This year the gallery took those photos and diary entries to a cultural activity, "Making an Appointment at the West Lake of Hangzhou in China," as the main exhibition.
Shen said he had learned from Smithsonian staff on the Internet about the old photos, and that led to the current exhibit.
Though most scenic spots visited by March can still be found, many other things like wooden bridges, rickshaws and that barbershop are gone.
"March's photos show many places?like Wenjin Fang on Zhongshan Road, which we had thought disappeared long before, and the famous Eighteen Arhats Statues in Shengyin Temple," says Shen.
"I'm so happy and grateful because this is the first time we took objects back to China and I hope more artworks, not only Chinese ones, can come in the future," says Keith Wilson, associate director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries.
Besides March's photos, the Smithsonian Institution also has brought photos by Robert Ferrie Fitch and Sidney Gamble. Gamble is best known for his remarkable and extensive photographs of Beijing and northern China.
The Art Museum of Tang Yun also exhibits old Hangzhou photos, the earliest of them taken in 1870.
Date: through November 30
Address: 45 Nanshan Rd
Admission: Free
How to get there: Bus 102, 12, 4, 809, J9, Y9, Y6, 808, 809 to Wansongling Road stop.
Hangzhou has long been famous as a honeymoon destination, and 84 years ago newlywed Americans Benjamin March and Dorothy Rowe visited the city and eloquently recorded their trip in words and photos.
An exhibition of the couple's 67 photos and diary entries is underway at the Art Museum of Tang Yun on Nanshan Road through November 30. The pictures and commentaries record 32 days from July 3 to August 4, 1925. It's titled "1925: Benjamin March's Honeymoon in Hangzhou - 100 Years of Photography of West Lake." The exhibit also includes pictures by other photographers.
There's the unspoiled West Lake, little creeks that vanished years ago, rickshaws and sedan chairs, and other sites.
Benjamin March (1899-1934) was an expert on Eastern art, a writer, curator and lecturer. The Chicago native was one of the foremost authorities on Chinese art during the 1920s and 1930s. From 1925-27 he worked at Yenching University in Beijing as an instructor in English, a librarian and a lecturer in Chinese art.
While in China, March met and married Dorothy Rowe, the China-born daughter of a Methodist missionary living in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.
They spent their wedding trip mostly in Hangzhou, with a side-trip to Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
They visited virtually every scenic spot at that time: Baochu Pagoda, Three Pools Mirroring the Moon, Dragon Well, Tiger Spring, Jade Spring, Solitary Hill and other sites.
March recorded his sights and impressions in a diary in a bright, delicate style.
He wrote of boating on the West Lake and listening to music:
"Many boats were on the lake and there was much sweet music as we circled around toward the Imperial Island. The Chinese know what music fits a scene like this and the many various instruments work together for beauty to them that love the lake and the night and the moon.
"If I had started when I was a small boy as many Chinese small boys start, I might now be able to play the long slim bamboo flute that is made for a man to play when he sits alone in the moonlight and whose sound is so delicate that only a few can listen and hear it, and so plaintive sweet, beauty walks around on feet that leave pink fragrant lotus in her train."
March recorded his experience in many small lanes and shops.
"We have found a fairly clean and very elaborately tiled and white-painted barber shop ... The young fellow cut my hair with great care and nice precision, he also did the shave ... Having finished the space normally allotted to the razor, gleaning until not a bit of recognizable stubble was left, he started off in the manner of Chinese barbers making smooth the surface of their Chinese customers.
Close shave
"First it was all around my ears, then the ears themselves. Inside and out he went, back and front. Then he got back onto my face and wandered up around my forehead ... I had watched it happening to someone else but never before had I subjected myself to such treatment, and I was the more surprised since this particular barber shop proclaimed themselves as barbers in the foreign manner."
Hangzhou was a popular tourist and honeymoon resort praised in two widely read books: "Hangchow Itineraries" (1922) by Robert Ferrie Fitch, president of Hangchow Christian College (Hangchow is the old English translational form for the present Hangzhou, Hangchow Christian College was one of the 13 most well-known Protestant universities in China before 1951); and "Hangchow, the City of Heaven" (1906) by Frederick D. Cloud.
"In the early 19th century, many foreign missionaries came to Hangzhou for its capital position, transport convenience and beautiful scenery, and they promoted Hangzhou to the world," says Professor Shen Hong of Zhejiang University, who translated the Hangzhou part of March's diary.
The photos and diary kept by March were donated by his daughter Judith March Davis in 1995 to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. They are part of the American Smithsonian Institution's museums of Asian art.
This year the gallery took those photos and diary entries to a cultural activity, "Making an Appointment at the West Lake of Hangzhou in China," as the main exhibition.
Shen said he had learned from Smithsonian staff on the Internet about the old photos, and that led to the current exhibit.
Though most scenic spots visited by March can still be found, many other things like wooden bridges, rickshaws and that barbershop are gone.
"March's photos show many places?like Wenjin Fang on Zhongshan Road, which we had thought disappeared long before, and the famous Eighteen Arhats Statues in Shengyin Temple," says Shen.
"I'm so happy and grateful because this is the first time we took objects back to China and I hope more artworks, not only Chinese ones, can come in the future," says Keith Wilson, associate director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries.
Besides March's photos, the Smithsonian Institution also has brought photos by Robert Ferrie Fitch and Sidney Gamble. Gamble is best known for his remarkable and extensive photographs of Beijing and northern China.
The Art Museum of Tang Yun also exhibits old Hangzhou photos, the earliest of them taken in 1870.
Date: through November 30
Address: 45 Nanshan Rd
Admission: Free
How to get there: Bus 102, 12, 4, 809, J9, Y9, Y6, 808, 809 to Wansongling Road stop.
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