Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times and Adventures of an American in Shanghai
by Paul French
Hong Kong University Press, HK$250
Carl Crow couldn't have picked a better time to arrive in Shanghai. His ship docked in the small trading enclave on the Huangpu River in August 1911; two months later the 28-year-old US journalist was covering the uprising that would bring down the Qing dynasty.
He was a hardened reporter, but five years on the crime beat in Texas hardly seem an appropriate background for his new job, covering diplomatic affairs for the recently launched American-style daily China Press.
China was seething and the Qing tottering but few foresaw the end of Manchu rule. French captures well the mood of the day with his account of the uprising that brought an era to its end. In the Russian concession in Hankow, 850km up the Yangtze, a careless revolutionary dropped a cigarette and set off a bomb. A nervous German butcher heard the explosion and called police. Probing the blast, they discovered a plot by soldiers in the twin city of Wuchang and, faced with arrest, torture and beheading, the conspirators rose in rebellion.
Crow swiftly became known among expats in Shanghai as pro-Chinese. He neither ignored the millions of people who surrounded the 31 sq km of foreign settlement nor despised them. From the initial chaos of the 1910 uprising came the establishment of the first republic a year later, with Sun Yat-sen as president. Crow was to become a knowledgeable observer of developments, interviewing Sun during his brief presidency, then later spending time with Chiang Kai-shek and his bewitching, scheming wife, Soong May-ling.
