Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai

2. The China Press Man

2 The China Press Man Shanghai's Newest Newspaper Production of the China Press (known as the Ta Lu Pao in Chinese) started in the summer of 1911, with Crow paid $300 per month and officially employed as the associate city editor with special responsibility for covering diplomatic affairs and Tom Millard as editor-in-chief. Despite this initially extensive remit and glamorous job title, in reality he was the night editor at first and was immediately responsible for making up the front page every day - a job that filled him with dread at the prospect that there would not be enough decent news. This would leave him with an empty front page and prove the pessimistic local British press corps correct in their predictions that an American-style newspaper in Shanghai was doomed to failure. The hours were anti-social: 10 p.m. till2 a.m. daily. Often he was forced to retire to the China Press's private staff bar for a stiff drink to consider how to fill that blank front page. Sometimes stories did have to be embellished to justify their position above the fold as news from abroad was often scant. He shared the problem of filling the front page with another Millard recruit to Shanghai 18 CARL CROW - A TOUGH OLD CHINA HAND The China Press soon emergedas a majorEnglish language newspaper on the China Coast THE CHINA PRESS MAN 19 and former Fort Worth newspaperman, Charles Herbert Webb, who was the managing editor. Both wou1d sit around at night trying to keep coo1 by 10itering near the open windows, drinking cups of cooling green tea and smoking an end1ess number of cigarettes. Crow was based in ramshack1e offices in a crowded bui1ding with no airconditioning at Lane 126, 11 Szechuen Road, a b10ck back from the Bund. He had few sources to call upon beyond a free, and rather paltry, German newswire that reflected Berlin's increasing1y belligerent view ofthe world, and a Reuters' report which was ed自d in London and dispatched east, targeted main1y at the British community in India. Even this Reuters' dispatch reached Crow in a shortened form, being firstly edited in Bombay before being sent a10ng to the further reaches of empire in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Despite the editing process, Crow was still faced with an unhealthy and boring se1ection of stories. They dea1t with the minutiae of life in British India and, in particu1ar, the commercia1 center of the R旬， Calcutta - salt taxes, the coming and goings ofvarious British regiments, triba1 unrest in Kashmir. All foreign news, including news from America, was by-lined from London to stress the ro1e of the British capita1 as the center of the world and a1so to reflect the secondarγstatus of America in world affairs. Only after America entered the First World War in 1917 was news from America by-1ined from Washington or New York rather than London. Though Crow scoured the 10ca1 news for tidbits, he had litt1e 1uck at first and was 1ater forced to he1p set up a trans1ation agency to do the job, as well as using some of the China Press's Chinese joumalists as sources. Of course, hindsight is a wonderfu1 thing. The somewhat sedate, comfortab1e and profitab1e though slow-moving world ofthe far fringes of empire were about to change with the Wuchang uprising of October 1911, the imminent collapse of the Qing dynasty, the fall of the Manchus and the Nationalist revo1ution of 1911. However, Crow, though sensing something in the wind and be1ieving that domestic Chinese affairs were about to become more intemationally important, cou1d not foretell the fall of a dynasty. Until it 那個ally collapsed, he was 1eft in a small, 1argely insignificant enclave. Though increasing1y intemationa1, Shanghai was still effective1y an outpost of the British Empire, in the shadow of India and of little interest to most readers - even those living in Shanghai. As a newspaperman, Crow began to circu1ate in a British-dominated society that found his mid-westem Missouri accent amusing (Crow tended to say Warshington as well as afeared instead of“afraid" and a-fixin rathe 20 CARL CROW - A TOUGH OLD CHINA HAND court that they generally believed it to be an ossi日ed institution capab1e of litt1e more than collecting taxes to support the wealth of the Court of the F10wery Kingdom. Besides, as his fellow journalist the Scot...