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Wild days of newspapering and print battlefield of ideas
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It was 4am, an ordinary morning in 1930s Shanghai, and 10-year-old Gu Dagang tagged along with his uncle to get the newspaper on Wangping Street. Though it was just 200 meters long, it was packed with thousands of people waiting for the day’s papers.
Time was everything for a newsboy. Gu grabbed a few dozen and quickly ran to his usual spot, the streets behind the Bund, to hawk the news. His uncle also grabbed a bundle and took off with his bike.
“Those were sensitive and unsettled times, when people worried constantly about the policies, the different battles, so papers were gone very fast,” says 92-year-old Gu, who now lives near Nanjing Road E.
“Sometimes you had to fight over the paper, especially when there was an extra edition, or hao wai (ºÅÍâ), which meant something big, often horrible, just happened,” he says.
After he sold all the papers, Gu strolled down the street to buy a dumpling for breakfast from a street vendor.
At 2pm, he and his uncle went back for the evening papers, and again the street was mobbed with distributors and anxious readers.
Famous journalist and writer Cao Juren (1900-72) recalled in his memoir that Wangping Street “was vivid all day long. All the influential figures whose writings shook the times left their mark there.”
The famous newspaper street was a small part of today’s Shandong Road M. between Hankou and Fuzhou roads. The area expanded to accommodate newspapers, publishers, printers and booksellers.
At one time the area housed almost all the city’s influential newspapers, Chinese and English. It was a buzzing center of rumor, information and disinformation, and a battlefield of printed ideas in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Fuzhou Road, then known as Fourth Street (Si Ma Lu) near Wangping Street, remains a busy book street today. The old Si Ma Lu area was half occupied by publishing houses, newspaper buildings and bookstores, while the other half was occupied by famous tea houses, entertainment venues and brothels. The phrase “a woman from Si Ma Lu” was the old term for prostitute.
In fact, some newspapers carried brothel advertisements and even promoted many competitions to choose the most delightful ladies, their charms extolled in verse; photos and sketches were often published. Readers would vote.
Newsmen have always liked their saloons, and Shanghai had plenty to choose from.
At Hankou Road and Shandong Road M. stands the former headquarter of the famous Shun Pao, or Shanghai News, published between 1872 to 1949. It was one of the earliest and most widely circulated Chinese newspapers. Today it’s a commercial building.
After Shanghai’s port opened in 1843, modern newspapers were early imports. At first they published shipping schedules and business news.
Many early papers were established by expats and published in English, French, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese and other languages.
The English-language North China Daily News, known as Tzu Lin His Pao, was one of the earliest modern newspapers. It was founded by British auctioneer Henry Shearman in 1850, published for more than a century and closed in 1951.
At first it was published weekly, featuring shipping and commercial news; it went daily in 1856, with a weekly supplement of current affairs, fiction and opinions. Editors and correspondents were mainly early settlers, or Shanghailanders, including Frederic H. Balfour (1871-1908), famous for his writings and translations of Taoist texts.
For a long time, the paper was the major information source for expats, especially British officials and merchants. Chinese officials and merchants also paid close attention to the paper to understand foreign attitudes. At its peak, daily circulation reached 7,817.
Its former 10-story building, No. 17 on the Bund, was designed as the tallest office building in the city in 1921, but when it was finished in 1924, the record was already broken.
The publisher of the North China Daily News launched a Chinese newspaper in 1861, one of the city’s earliest Chinese papers.
That inspired a group of British merchants, including Ernest Major, to found Shun Pao in 1872.
In 1909, Shun Pao was sold to Chinese comprador Xi Yufu and became one of the three most influential papers in the city.
Its two major competitors were Xinwen Bao (literally News Newspaper) and Shi Bao (literally Times Newspaper), all in the Wangping Street area.
Xinwen Bao was co-founded by Chinese and foreigners. One of the major investors was merchant Zhang Shuhe, owner of the Zhang Garden, the famous public entertainment venue featuring short films, magic shows, cameras and roller coasters.
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