Shipside View of Drab Shanghai

Item

derivative filename/jpeg
363-05916 to 363-05921.pdf
Digital Object Identifier
363-05916 to 363-05921
Title
Shipside View of Drab Shanghai
Description
Article by Beverly Keever for the AP about her experience in Shainghai Port. While Keever was not allowed off her ship as an American, she interviewed the sailors who went onshore and wrote about these interviews. Since so little was known in America about China under Mao, publishers were interested in the article, despite the fact Keever was unable to go ashore
Transcript
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026.
Croft.
SHANGHAI Shanghai is a bustling city of junks, Russian-made jets, old
U. S.-made ships and an industrial mass that is overpowering to an American
visitor.
Russian-made jets in solitary flight buzzed overhead as my ship
glided up the Whampoo River past two dozen U. S.-made destroyers, landing craft, troop
ships and mine sweepers left behind by Chang Kai-Shek when he departed fro
for Formosa.
These grey or smoke-smudged blue U. S. made vessle were complete with
guns, some of which were covered with canvas. The crew of the ships, not in military
uniform, wore a hodge-podge of billowing white shirts, baggy blue trousers
or shorts.
One foreigner called the ships "agression boats to keep the people
from running away," and laughed that the planes were "only practicing."
My first sight from the porthole was muddy current boilding like a gigantic cho
chocolate pudding as the early morning sunlight accented a solitary junk.
But Shanghai is far past the era of living totally in the junk age.
A maze of industrial plants--much of it left over from the years of
foreign control, stretched upstream for 14 miles from the south shall channel
of the Yxx Yantze River to the Bund, the wharf-line in front of the old
British Concession, which still looked like the skyline of Londong with tall-towered
buildings of European design.
As our ship moved upstrea, I kept saying to myself, "This is incredible."
The surprise came in the extent of the industrial mass--and not in the mass itself.
During the voyage upstream for 1 hours, on both sides of the river lay large
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large oil storage tanks, starved-tjom spokestacks of an industrial plant, old factorie.
obviusly rejunvenated from the days of the "foreign devels", and new buildings-
here a low-slung cluster of four-storied apartment houses of red brick/with
three tiers of windows, tere a new warehouse dated 1950. Two crumbling windowless
churches.....
I remember one building that from a distance looked like an arrogant
medevial castle. But when closer, it became a long narrow yellow compound with a
watchtower containing a loudspeaker from which a stream of commands were issued.
At 7:30 a.m. a whistle signaled the bigging of the working day.
Interspersed with the industrial buildings were fairly large areas of
trees and grass, presumably swampland unsuitable for holding heavy buildings,
where four cows grazed among elongated pyramids of stacked hay.
T
An official of the
I was the only passenger on board ship for two days.
"Fontier Police" in an oversized drab green army suit explained my confinement
"Your passport says it is not valid for Communist China.
There is only one China. In that we are resolute."
from prepared notes,
Two events werexsmbut taking place in Shanghai while our ship
was in port that impressed the visitors allowed to xixx go to shore.
primarily for students and visitors,
circus, which one foreigner explained,
bettern than the Russians.
One was the
"is the greatest in the world, even
This is the first time I'd seen a man turn five sommersault
in the air at one timax leap."
The second event was an indystrial exhibition in the 140-meter building
Palace of Culture built by the Russians in 10 months.
One East European Communist said: "The Chinese will be an economic
danger to the white race in 10 or 20 years. They're making many different
kinds of engines, electrical turbines and even six-cylinder cars that
a hybrid between a German and U. S. auto./
look like
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3.
"If the Chinese andmanganesem with their muscles and the Japanese with
their technical skill ever get together, they can undersell the whole world."
Thexxx products of the exhibition were only for exhibition and for export;
and not ta for sale to the ordinary Chinese.
"There were chemicals and cosmetics on display,"
explained one visitor,
#but you never see women on the street wearing lipstick. And there was beautiful
silk, but 95% of the women look just like a man in trousers. If a woman wore on the
street a silk dress, the police would stop her and ask her why she was dressed
so nice."
THE
One sailor asked if he could buy some silk.
"Not for sale," he was told.
He asked the price of a car.
"Not for sale."
He asked what he could buy at the exhibition.
"Onyx ice cream and lemonade," he was told.
MAIO
ДНЕ
"So I bought four ice creams and threw them away. No good," he recalled.
But there are few cars on the streets. Mostly there are busses, with a
few taxis, cargo rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws and a few "human horse" rickshaws.
The river contained myriads of junks, the home for a whole Chinese family.
The wife and husband maneuvered the billowing sails of the gracefully gliding
vessel remembling a miniature clipper of the past centurny, which opened Shanghai
to hax the West. (check.) Two persons tugged at the rudder, which both propelled and
guided the craft--they moved on step forward, one back with a knee bend inbetweent
for a Chinese cha-cha-cah. Sometimes two women shamankimm called "water girls",
by the Chinese, did the work; sometimes small children helped.
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p. 4.
"All they do is eat and work," said one European Communist, observing the
"She can row for 12 hours, eat and then row for 12
women below on small crafts.
more."
At night, a small fire in bucket is the stove to cook the dinner; a line
of laundry flapping in the sultry breeze.
"They are boats from before Chris', used for 2000 years," said one foreigner
looking at a series of junks without hoisted all sails.
"a B scene from a mystery novel."
Another called them
On river, may ferry boats carrying passengers between points and a tug
pulling 6 motorless barges to form a "water train." Flying crane and locomotive
ferry.
Since the "liberation,"
13 years ago, there have been changes in
Shanghai. xix "It used to be East New York, axxit sailor's paradise," said
one.
"Now it is nothing."
It is the only port It is one of the few ports whze money will buy
neither a shore pass or prostitute.
One sailor, who has visited Shanghai a number of times since the
revolution, explained the change this way.
"In 1950, one year after the revolution, there were plenty of cafes,
moneychangers, shops, neckties, money girls and dance halls--all unofficial."
"In late 1950, 5000 money girls were shot. That ended the prostitutes.
Now if you even look too long at a Chinese girl, you get two years in jail."
"In 1951-52-53, the police tightened upp peopl didn't talk; no shops.
"In 1960-61, its a little better. Police loosened up.
More shops.
I asked if people talk now.
"Maybe in 1975," he laughed.
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5.
Near the Garden Bend of the old Bund area, the Seaman's Club with
bar, movies and shops has taken over the quarters of the old British Naval Officers
* Club. "The Yacht Club used to be a beautiful building;" said one foreigner,
"now its smelly-nelly. The Chinese don't keep it very clean."
Thw 23-story Cathay Hotel has been renamed the Peace Hotel; the old racetrack
is now the People's Square, used for demonstrations on national holidays.
The small-two-story homes with xx big gardens in the old French Settlement now
houses some Chinese, and the Polish, Russian, Norwegian, Indoesnia consular
officers.
Adongmbiummiumr
In the commercial center of town along Nanking Road, the Russian-built
Palace of Culture, with flassing red star--an additional star f to the Shanghai
skyline.
Along the wharfs, the era of the coolie is gone, replaced with old
d the coolie, who used to carry on his back cargo from ship to warehouse, is
gone, replaced with old dilapidated trucks, tractors, trailers, carts and lifts.
Shanghai, with its 7 million population, 10 million including th suburbs,
is a city of shortages, but not of starvation as in some parts of China.
lack of electricity.
At night, the Bund area of Shanghai is dark, except for the red flasing star
of the Palace of Culture. The only lights are from the bobbing ships stretching
for miles down the wharfline like a gala Boardwalk.
Tractors discharging
cargo have high roofs, like old fashioned Model-T, all with billowing pillows
filled with gas made of wood to substitute for the Chinese shortage of gasoline.
One visitor to Shanghai in the late 1930's recalled, "People were dying on the
You don't see that now. They are given enough food to
street from starvation.
live, but too much to die."
Thana
not
Among European communists, talked considerably about the seriousness of
the drouth in North China.
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6.
There's been a
"ou must know that North China is in a very bad way.
drouth there for 2 hours. It's like a desert. The Trees and wells have dried up.
People are dying like flies."
But as one Chinese warned,
"You will find other countries with a better
standard of living, but you won't find a more shigh high-spirited working people.
Foreign imperialists have tried to isolate China in an economic blockade. They
have captured Taiwan. But our people are working hard to make our country
strong; we will rise against them. Time will tell the facts.
The Chinese watch carefully the sailors from other Communist nations.
The Russians have as much, trouble as other, nationalities about discharging
discharging
sugar from Cuba
cargo etc.
One Russian ship near the one I was on wanted to exchange movies.
With the Poles. The Chinese would allow it only with compliated permission of
habor police.
One Polish sailor was taking pictures ofxxx poor living conditions
of the Chinese. When he returned to ship, the police wanted to know why
he wanted the photographs.
And they still laugh about the time
lost his watch.
several years ago a Polish sailor
Ache Chinese policeman x folloiwing him returned it to the
peopler proper ship before the sailor came back.
Date
1961, Dec. 17
Subject
Shanghai, China; International travel; Travel restrictions; Ocean travel; Merchant mariners
Location
Shanghai, People's Republic of China
Coordinates
30.6265; 122.0649
Size
20 x 26 cm
Container
B174, F2
Format
dispatches
Collection Number
MS 363
Collection Title
Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
Creator
Keever, Beverly Deepe
Collector
Keever, Beverly Deepe
Copyright Information
These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
Publisher
Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
Language
English