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

17. Final Days in the City of the Dead

17 Final Days in the City of the Dead The old British merchant told me many stories Black Saturday and Real War The last days of old Shanghai found Crow dealing with his advertising agency and WTiting enthusiastic communiq的s to his foreign clients on the continued growth of their businesses in China. In his book China Takes Her Place, Crow recalled sitting in his fourth floor Jinkee Road office on Saturday August 14, 1937. With a breeze blowing in from the nearby Bund signaling the end of a recent typhoon, he wrote to his client, the Colgate toothpaste manufacturing company in New Haven, reporting that sales were up despite there being more than 60 brands oflocally-made competitor toothpaste on the market, all ofwhich were cheaper than the American brand. While sales had been slower than expected, they were growing. Crow informed Colgate that prosperity was continuing to rise in Shanghai, the recent warlord-induced disruptions in neighboring Jiangsu appeared to have dwindled and the govemment was as stable as any Chinese govemment could be expected to be given recent circumstances. Crow wrote quickly as he had to catch the noon mail, but in his report he was bullish and optimistic about business in China, noting the growth in the sale of 204 CARL CROW - A TOUGH OLD CHINA HAND small cameras as a sign of increased purchasing power - 1936 had been a record year for retail sales. With hindsight, perhaps Crow should have seen the storm brewing and the end coming. However, he tended to share the general Shanghailander opinion that there was always trouble somewhere in China and to put out oftheir minds that it would all eventually reach a disastrous climax. He also had personal reasons for feeling a renewed sense of bullishness despite his observations of the previous few years conceming the threat 企om Japan and the problems facing the govemment. Apart from the massive celebrations across Shanghai to celebrate the Coronation of King George VI in May 1937, all Crow's major clients were intending to increase their advertising expenditure in China over the remainder of the year, which would mean more commissions and profits for Carl Crow Inc. He was feeling prosperous enough to have started investigating property prices in Qingdao, with a view to possibly owning a summer home in the Shandong seaside resort. By 1937 Qingdao, known as the “Riviera of the Far East," was a relatively wealthy and prosperous town of 450,000 peop1e, thanks to the popularity of its beaches as a holiday destination. During 1937 Crow had a1so been working on a book to be called The Chinese Are Like That. It was to be another attempt by Crow to win over American public opinion to the cause of China, to highlight the dangers of Japanese militarism, and to try to engender additional respect for China in the US among mainstream readers. Though the book was not pub1ished until1943, it does reflect how enthusiastic Crow was regarding China and Shanghai in 1937. Ta1king about Japanese militarism and expansionist aims was still, as 1ate as the summer of 1937, unfashionab1e and considered m由巳1pfu1 to Westem business interests. In Janua句， Crow had been rebuked in a 1et1er 企om the US Commercia1 Attaché in Shanghai who asked him to soften his public criticisms of Japan.1 He drew a distinction between the actions of the Westem powers in China such as creating extraterritoriality and 仕eaty ports and what he saw as “the studied system ofterrorism"2 that was practiced by the Japanese in China in the 1930s. Consequently, the Chinese came to hate the Japanese to a far greater extent than other foreign powers meddling in China. In the preface to The Chinese Are Like That, Crow declared: “... in the spring of 1937 the country was enjoying the greates The tired or lustful businessman will find here everything to gratify his desires. You can buy an electric razor, or a French dinner, or a well-cut FINAL DAYS IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD 205 suit. You can dance at the Tower Restaurant on the roof of the Cathay Hotel, and gossip with Freddy Kaufmann, its charming manag缸， about the European aristocracy, or pre-Hitler Berlin. You can attend race meetings, baseball games, football matches. You can see the latest American films. If you want girls or boys, you can have 也巳m， at all prices, in the bathhouses...