19th century Archives - Blacksmith Books

Early Golf in China, 1870-1950: How Modern Golf Spread from Scotland to China

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The modern game of golf, which originated in Scotland, gradually spread across the globe from the mid-19th century, first to Asia and then to Europe, North America, Oceania and Africa. It has become a popular outdoor sport, a national and international competitive game, and an Olympic event.

The spread of the modern game of golf was a by-product of the British Empire. Golf courses were constructed and clubs established as early as 1829 in India, long before they appeared in mainland Europe. As the British colonial empire expanded into China, Scots arrived in the country as naval officers, consular and customs officials, engineers, doctors, architects, merchants, bankers and accountants, and settled in China’s opening trading ports. Scottish missionaries reached into the Chinese interior to seek new converts for the Lord.

As they became residents in China’s trading ports, they brought along their national game. Almost without exception, early Chinese golf courses and clubs appeared first at the trading ports. Those behind the courses and clubs were overwhelmingly Scots, with some coming directly from the birthplaces of modern golf such as St. Andrews and Carnoustie.

According to our research, the earliest golf course in China appeared in Hankou (Hankow) in 1870 and the earliest golf club was the Hankow Golf Club, incorporated in 1878. This indicates that China was the third country, after only India and France, where the game of golf spread outside the UK. Later, courses and clubs appeared in other Chinese ports: Hong Kong in 1889, Yantai (Chefoo) in 1890, Shanghai in 1894 and Tianjin (Tientsin) in 1895, followed by many others.

The pioneer of the Hankow Golf Club was a Scotsman, James Ferrier. His father had been the founder and captain of the Carnoustie Golf Links. James played from an early age and had honed his golfing skills to the level of a zero handicapper when he arrived in China in the late 1860s. As a marine engineer employed by the China Merchants Steamship Company, Ferrier travelled with his ship up and down the Yangtze River between Wuhan and Shanghai. In 1870, together with a few Scottish friends, he built China’s first rudimentary golf course with only a couple of holes in Hankou and started playing the Royal & Ancient game. Ferrier also built Shanghai’s first golf links of a few holes inside the Shanghai Race Course in 1871.

With the aid of plentiful illustrations, this book tells the story of the first 80 years of golf in China.

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中国早期高尔夫 1870-1950 — 现代高尔夫运动如何从苏格兰传入中国

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起源于苏格兰的现代高尔夫运动从 19 世纪中叶逐渐传播到全球，首先是亚洲，然后是欧洲、北美、大洋洲和非洲。它已成为一项流行的户外运动、国内和国际竞技比赛以及奥运会项目。

现代高尔夫运动的传播是大英帝国称霸全球的副产品。早在 1829 年，印度就建造了高尔夫球场和俱乐部，远早于它们出现在欧洲大陆。

随着大英殖民帝国向中国扩张，苏格兰和英格兰人以海军军官、领事和海关官员、工程师、医生、建筑师、商人、银行家和会计师的身份抵达中国，并在中国开放的贸易口岸定居。苏格兰宣教士进入中国内陆，为主寻找新的归信者。

当他们成为中国贸易港口的居民时，他们带来了他们的国民运动——高尔夫。几乎无一例外，早期的中国高尔夫球场和俱乐部首先出现在贸易港口。球场和俱乐部背后的人绝大多数是苏格兰人，其中一些直接来自现代高尔夫的发源地，如圣安德鲁斯和卡诺斯蒂。

据我们研究，中国最早的高尔夫球场1870年出现在汉口（Hankou），最早的高尔夫球会是汉口高尔夫俱乐部，成立于1878年。这说明除印度和法国外，中国是高尔夫运动从英国传向全球的第三个国家。接着，中国其他港口的球场和俱乐部相继出现：1889 年的香港、1890 年的烟台（芝罘）、1894 年的上海和 1895 年的天津（天津），等等。

汉口高尔夫俱乐部的先驱是苏格兰人詹姆斯·费利尔。他的父亲是卡诺斯蒂高尔夫球场的创始人和队长。詹姆斯从小就打球，在 1860 年代后期抵达中国前，已经将自己的高尔夫球技巧磨练到零差点的水平。作为招商局轮船公司的一名轮机工程师，费利尔经常往来于武汉和上海之间。1870年，他与几位苏格兰朋友一起，在汉口建造了中国第一个只有几个洞的简易高尔夫球场，并开始打皇家古老游戏。费利尔 1871 年又在上海赛马场内，建造了只有几个洞的高尔夫球场。

本书借助大量的插图，讲述了中国高尔夫运动最初80年的故事。

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China Revisited: a series bundle

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China Revisited is a series of extracted reprints of mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century Western impressions of Hong Kong, Macao and China. The series comprises excerpts from travelogues or memoirs written by missionaries, diplomats, military personnel, journalists, tourists and temporary sojourners.

They came to China from Europe or the United States, some to work or to serve the interests of their country, others out of curiosity. Each excerpt is fully annotated by Paul French to best provide relevant explications of Hong Kong, Macao and China at the time, to illuminate encounters with historically interesting characters or notable events.

Save 20% by buying this bundle which includes the following items in the series. Please click on their titles below to read full details.

1 x Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey's 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton Sojourns

1 x Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879

1 x LING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s

1 x Roving Through Southern China: An American’s Explorations of Hong Kong, Macao and Canton in the early 1920s

1 x The Mystic Flowery Land: A Curious Imperial Maritime Customs Officer’s Roamings in Hong Kong and Canton in Southern China’s Plague Year

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The Mystic Flowery Land: A Curious Imperial Maritime Customs Officer’s Roamings in Hong Kong and Canton in Southern China’s Plague Year

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By Charles JH Halcombe, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 5 in the China Revisited series

Charles Halcombe served for much of the 1880s and 1890s with China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service. His career included sojourns in both Canton and Hong Kong. Halcombe long harboured dreams of becoming a journalist. Unusually he married a Chinese woman, Liang Ah Ghan, the daughter of a Chefoo merchant during his stay. His seven-year career in China, his writing ambitions and his marriage all strongly inform his impressions and the retelling of his experiences.

In these excerpts from The Mystic Flowery Land we join Halcombe arriving by sampan at Hong Kong’s old Pedder’s Wharf before accompanying him on an extended literary stroll along Queen’s Road. With him we enter the “rum-mills” and Chinese theatres, meet the Sing-Song girls, indigent Europeans, and inveterate gamblers of the colony. On Hollywood Road Halcombe explores the fascinating Man-Mo Temple.

In Canton Halcombe investigates the riverine life of the city - the infamous “flower boats”, the working river and coastal steamers, the numerous temples to the sea Gods.

But it is perhaps Halcombe’s description of the terrible bubonic plague that hit Hong Kong in 1894 that stands out to the reader today as both shocking in its tragedy and pertinent to our own times.

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Paul French’s Destination series: a book bundle

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Bestselling author Paul French travels to the most storied cities in China to tell the true tales of fascinating people who visited or lived in these places in the 19th and 20th centuries.

With a special focus on the glamorous years between the two world wars, the Destination series describes the local and international assortment of adventurers, writers, spies, artists, socialites and scoundrels who inhabited Macao, Peking and Shanghai during that golden age.

Save 20% by buying this bundle which includes the following items in the series. Please click on their titles below to see full details and read excerpts from each book.

1 x Destination Macao

1 x Destination Peking

1 x Destination Shanghai

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Destination Macao

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A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity.

Rococo images of Saint and Saviour
Promise her gamblers fortunes when they die;
Churches beside the brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behaviour.

This city of indulgence need not fear…

— WH Auden, Macao: A Sonnet

For the third in his acclaimed Destination series, Paul French journeys to the former Portuguese enclave of Macao, for him as much a place of the imagination as of reality. Constantly portrayed as the louche, sinful sister of Hong Kong, it was also a key trading post and early melting pot on the South China Sea.

From the Macao of artists George Chinnery and George Smirnoff, the writers Deolinda da Conceição and Maurice Dekobra, to the pulp fiction fantasies and cinematic fever dreams of Josef von Sternberg and Jean Delannoy; from those like Dr Pedro Lobo and Ian Fleming who came to Macao to chase gold, as well as those who sought refuge from war and the combatants who sought secret passage through ‘neutral' Macao; from the earliest days of the China coast trade and its assorted cast of innkeepers and adventurers to the bizarre tales the changing times in the colony created. Did Japan really try to buy Macao in 1934? Who really sailed with Macao's pirate queen Lai Choi San? Who were the Portuguese rebels who sought to declare Macao a republic in the 1920s?

Following the format of Destination Shanghai and Destination Peking, Destination Macao tells the true stories of fascinating people who lived in or visited Macao in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Click on the following link to read pages from Destination Macao.

Contents and Introduction

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LING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s

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By Benjamin Couch 'BC' Henry, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 3 in the China Revisited series

Benjamin Couch “BC” Henry was a missionary in Hong Kong and southern China in the second half of the 19th century. He arrived in 1873 and remained until 1894. Yet he was much more too – a keen observer, a skilled naturalist and an intrepid explorer. His fascination with the flora and fauna of Hong Kong and southern China are obvious throughout the pages of LING-NAM.

The bulk of his career in China was spent in what was then commonly known as “Ling-nam”, the Pearl River Delta and environs of Guangzhou. These excerpts of Henry’s travelogue LING-NAM, published in 1886, contain one of the most detailed walking tours of Guangzhou that has survived. Similarly so his travels through the silk, tea and market garden regions adjoining the metropolis. Abd finally, we have Henry’s ground-breaking account of his expeditions around Hainan Island in 1882, then the most extensive undertaken to date by a foreigner. He was also a keen anthropologist interested in the island’s various ethnic groups, such as the Lois, as well as the various languages and dialects of Hainan. Henry’s portrait of southern China was built up over 20 years work and exploration in the region and provides one of the most in-depth looks at southern Chinese life from the growth of Hong Kong, to the bustling streets of Guangzhou, to Hainan’s “Island of Palms”.

“Drifting slowly by a large collection of flower-boats, gay with lamps and mirrors, and richly furnished with black-wood sofas and embroidered curtains… Dire confusion is often created among the slipper-boats, whose anchorage adjoins, by the surging of the steamer against their outer lines, causing them to jump, and sputter, and dart about like a swarm of ants, shell-like craft, whilst they vociferously hurl maledictions at the great steamer.”

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Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879

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By Constance Gordon-Cumming, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 2 in the China Revisited series

Inveterate Victorian traveller and prolific artist Constance Gordon-Cumming, born in Glasgow in 1837, roamed far and wide from the Scottish Highlands to the American West; the islands of Hawaii to southern China. Even among her many adventures, her 1878/1879 trip to Hong Kong was momentous. Gordon-Cumming arrived just before Christmas 1878 to inadvertently witness the terrible “Great Fire” of Hong Kong that swept devastatingly through the Central and Mid-Levels districts.

She then moved on to explorations of the streets, temples and Chinese New Year festivities in Canton (Guangzhou). Her detailed descriptions of the teeming streets of the city’s commercial districts and New Year temple fairs contrast with her temporary residence in the relative calm of the foreign enclave on Shamian Island. Venturing out of the city on expeditions, Gordon-Cumming gives us perhaps one of the most complete descriptions of the now long-gone market gardens of Fa-tee with the famed nurseries that cultivated a bewildering variety of flowers and ornamental trees.

Finally Gordon-Cumming returns to Hong Kong to observe the annual "Derby Day" races at Happy Valley in February 1879, a major event on Hong Kong’s Victorian-era social calendar. Gordon-Cumming is at one and the same time that rare travel writer who, while plunging into the throngs and crowds, manages to observe the minutiae of life around her.

“The flames rapidly gained the mastery, suddenly bursting from fresh houses here and there, where least suspected, and spreading from street to street. That night we stood watching this appallingly magnificent scene – the flames rising and falling, leaping and dancing, now bursting from some fresh house, shooting up in tongues of fire, now rolling in dense volumes of black smoke.”

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The Peak: An Illustrated History of Hong Kong’s Top District

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Part of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series

The Peak is Hong Kong’s top residential district, where property prices are as high as the altitude. How did it become an exclusive enclave in the bustling business centre of 19th-century Asia?

The British wanted relief from summer heat and the Peak was the obvious place to escape it. When the Governor adopted Mountain Lodge as a summer getaway, development accelerated and the opening of the Peak Tram in 1888 made access easier. Gradually a community developed and a church, a club and a school were established.

This fully illustrated book describes how the now-popular tourist area developed over time and adapted as needs changed.

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Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941

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Kwan Lai-chun was sick of being made to feel second-class by her husband’s concubine; sick of her mother-in-law’s endless carping about the money she spent; sick of the whole family. Late one sticky, humid night, something snapped in her – and she grabbed the meat chopper. Within minutes, three people were dead: the concubine with over 70 gashes, many of them to the bone.

Kwan was found guilty and became the second and last woman in Hong Kong to suffer the death penalty. But behind her story, and those of the city’s other female murderers, lie complex webs of relationships and jealousies, poverty and despair.

Taking the first 100 years of Hong Kong’s colonial history, this book unravels the lives of women – Chinese and Westerners alike – who found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Hong Kong’s female prison population was a tiny fraction of that in Britain or America, but there are still plenty of tales from its women kidnappers, smugglers, bomb-makers, thieves and cruel mistresses.

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Click the following link to read excerpts from the book.

Introduction

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Trading Places: A photographic journey through China’s former Treaty Ports

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With a foreword by Professor Robert Bickers

China’s treaty port era extended from the 1840s to 1943, during which time foreigners had a significant presence. This book contains more than 700 photographs of many buildings from this period, most of them commissioned by foreign interests. Many argue that they should never have been built, let alone still be standing. But this book is not concerned with the rights and wrongs of how these buildings came to be. It simply celebrates their existence. A significant number are innately beautiful and all of them embody a history that has clear and present links to our own time and thus remain relevant.

This book was driven by the author’s interest in the history of China’s treaty port era, in which several generations of his family played a part. It is a tribute to the buildings that remain as a reminder of the past, and a guide to where to find them.

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Lost Hong Kong: A history in pictures

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The story of Hong Kong is one of almost constant change. From a sleepy fishing community, Hong Kong – now a Special Administrative Region following its return from Britain to China in July 1997 – has grown into one of the most significant financial and trading centres of the world.

Hong Kong Island itself has witnessed massive rebuilding over the years, with the result that much of the colonial-era architecture has been swept away and replaced by skyscrapers. Moreover the first high-rise buildings constructed from the late 1950s onwards are now themselves under threat as the constant requirement for more accommodation – both for people and for businesses – continues.

The Kowloon peninsula and the New Territories have also experienced development, whilst the construction of the new airport saw the destruction of an entire island to create the foundations of the new facility. The pressure for land has seen reclamation schemes extend the coastline of Hong Kong Island far to the north.

Over the years photographers have recorded the changing face of Hong Kong: its street scenes, buildings and people. This new book – drawing upon images from a wide range of sources, many of which are previously unpublished – is a pictorial tribute to this lost Hong Kong. Once familiar but now long-gone scenes are recorded, offering a tantalising glimpse back at an era which in chronological terms may be relatively recent, but given the rapidity of change, seems like a distant age.

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The Mercenary Mandarin: How a British adventurer became a general in Qing-dynasty China

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Jersey-born William Mesny ran off to sea as a boy and jumped ship at Shanghai in 1860 when he was just 18. Amid the chaos of foreign intrigue and civil war in 19th-century China, he became a smuggler, a prisoner of the Taiping rebels, a gun-runner and finally enlisted in the Chinese military.

After five years of fierce campaigning against the Miao in remote Guizhou province, Mesny rose to the rank of general and used this privileged position to travel around China – to the borders with Burma, Tibet and Vietnam – writing opinionated newspaper articles, collecting plants and advising government officials on the development of railways, telegraphs and other modern reforms.

Mesny eventually settled in Shanghai with a 16-year-old concubine and published Mesny's Chinese Miscellany, a weekly magazine about his experiences. But his story was not to end well. After his implication in an illicit arms deal, his fortunes never recovered, and when he died in 1919 he was working as a desk clerk.

David Leffman has spent over 15 years footstepping Mesny’s travels across China, interviewing locals and piecing together his life story from contemporary journals, private letters and newspaper articles.

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Click on the following links to view sample pages from The Mercenary Mandarin. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts. Foreword

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