世界日報
- Beijing French Commercial College
- The First Stage
- Books Sold on Commission by This Paper's Publications Department
The legible parts of this 30 September 1926 page of Beijing's Shijie Ribao (World Daily) are commercial notices, not news reports. A small advertisement for the Beijing French Commercial College gave the date term would open, October 1, and the school's address at No. 144 Mishi Dajie in the Dongcheng district. Beside it, the Deji Trading Company announced that it had stopped the film screenings it had been running at the First Stage, one of the city's big modern theatres. The new films it was waiting for had not arrived in the capital, so the company suspended the shows and cancelled its contract. A third notice introduced the paper's own publications department, which sold books and magazines on commission and printed an abridged list of titles recently placed with it. This translation covers only these three legible passages and does not include the book list itself or the medicine advertisements on the right edge.
This reading covers only three legible notices. Heavy ink spread makes the medicine advertisements on the right edge and the narrow masthead columns unreadable. The book list under the publications-department notice and the small rate tables are only partly legible and are not translated. The college advertisement is cut off at its start, and the Deji notice runs straight on from it in the transcription. Nothing reliable could be found about the Beijing French Commercial College, so it has no background section.
Translation
Beijing French Commercial College
[?] opening of term) October 1 (School address) No. 144 Mishi Dajie, Dongcheng. Notice: The Deji Trading Company had been screening films at the First Stage. Because the new and novel films have been unable to reach the capital, screenings are suspended for the time being and the original contract is cancelled. We hereby make this declaration.
The First Stage
[?] Notice: The Deji Trading Company had been screening films at the First Stage. Because the new and novel films have been unable to reach the capital, screenings are suspended for the time being and the original contract is cancelled. We hereby make this declaration. [?]
Books Sold on Commission by This Paper's Publications Department
[?] This paper's publications department sells on commission all kinds of worthwhile books and magazines from across the country. The titles entrusted to this paper for sale over recent days are listed below in abridged form. [?]
Context
What was the First Stage, where Deji's films were shown?
The First Stage (Diyi Wutai) was not an ordinary Beijing opera house. It opened on 9 June 1914 outside Qianmen, on the site of today's Zhushikou West Street, and was one of the city's earliest new-style theatres. The martial-role opera star Yang Xiaolou had seen Shanghai's new-style stages, and he built it with the dan performer Yao Peiqiu and the merchant Dian Langxian. It held about 2,500 people and was then the newest and largest theatre in the city, which is how it got its name. It had an elliptical stage with a manually turned revolving section and a modern front curtain. Mei Lanfang and Yang Xiaolou premiered famous works there, including Farewell My Concubine in 1922. The founders did not keep it. The bank loan taken out to build it was never repaid. After the theatre's manager offended the bank's Chinese comprador, Sun Jinqing, a court judgment that Sun reportedly got by bribing a judicial official handed the theatre to him, and it changed owners in 1919. By 1926, then, the First Stage belonged to a businessman rather than the actor who founded it. It also had a record of drawing crowds with novelties, such as putting a real car and horses on stage for a topical play. That may help explain why a trading firm like Deji used it for films, though the theatre's history says nothing about screenings there. The theatre burned down in November 1937 and was never rebuilt. The notice itself says nothing about the contract's terms or how long the screenings had been running.
Why might new films fail to "reach the capital"?
Deji blamed the cancellation on new films that had not arrived in Beijing. That fits the way film reached China at the time. Motion pictures were introduced in 1896 by foreign exhibitors in treaty ports such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. Beijing had its own early moment: the first Chinese film, a recording of the Peking opera Dingjun Mountain, was made there in November 1905. But for the next decade the production companies were mainly foreign-owned, and the domestic film industry was centred on Shanghai. The first Chinese-made films to succeed financially came out in 1921. After the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, Chinese studios turned increasingly to costume dramas and martial-arts (wuxia) films. A Beijing exhibitor offering "new and novel" pictures would most likely have been waiting on prints sent north from Shanghai or brought in from abroad. A late shipment could stop a run of screenings. This background explains the kind of risk the notice describes, but it does not show which films Deji expected or why they were held up. The notice gives no reason beyond saying the films had not arrived.
Who ran the World Daily, and why would it sell books?
The World Daily had been going for only about a year and a half. Cheng Shewo started the World Evening News in Beijing in 1924 with 200 silver dollars of his own savings and a staff of three. He used it as the base for the World Daily, which he founded in February 1925 and ran as president. Later that year he also spun off the paper's pictorial page as a separate World Pictorial. A publisher building several papers from such a small start may well have looked for income beyond advertising and sales. A publications department selling books and magazines on commission is one such business, although the only evidence here for how it worked is the paper's own notice. It was also a dangerous time to publish in Beijing. Accounts of Cheng's life record that Shao Piaoping of the Jing Bao and Lin Baishui of the Shehui Ribao were both killed after angering the warlord Zhang Zongchang. The World Evening News mourned them under a black-bordered front-page headline. Cheng was then jailed and nearly shot before the former premier Sun Baoqi secured his release.
Original
北京法文商業專門學校
[?] 開學） 十月一日 （校址） 東城米市大街一四四號啓者德記商行原在第一舞台開演電影茲因新奇片未能到京暫行停演將原合同撤銷特此聲明
第一舞台
[?] 啓者德記商行原在第一舞台開演電影茲因新奇片未能到京暫行停演將原合同撤銷特此聲明 [?]
本報出版股代售書目
[?] 本報出版股。 代售國內各種有價值之圖書雜誌。 茲將連日委託本報代售之書目。 摘要錄左。 [?]