Edited and written by Graham Earnshaw, another old China book from Earnshaw Books Tales of Old Shanghai is “a scrapbook of words and images bringing to life the glorious past of China’s greatest city” (says the jacket).
A scan from the book, and you can see the kind of thing that Earnshaw is trying to document. The image on the upper left wants to show “the vitality of 1930s Shanghai. See the pride and confidence of the Shanghainese stride”.
In juxtaposition though, below the image is an extract from The Cathay Hotel magazine 1932 entitled “Pidgin phrases for tourists”.
A selected few are:
I want some tea at once / Catchee tea chop chop
I want a bath / My wanchee bath
Is that the lowest price? / No can cuttee?
Do you mean it? / Talkee true?
Pidgin English referred to the shortened phrases that foreigners who didn’t speak Chinese used, reflecting the sounds that Chinese people made when they spoke English.
The book is an impressive historical record of a range of phenomena such as opium addiction and foreigners in the city, and uses a large selection of fragments from books, photos, maps, cartoons, bills and more.