時報
- International Athletic Meet Opens Today
- Jiujiang Calm as Usual
- Military News from All Quarters
The Shibao front page of 9 October 1926 set Shanghai notices beside war news from Jiangxi. A notice announced that the international athletic meet, with teams from China, the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Portugal and the Netherlands, would open that afternoon at the Zhonghua sports ground on Observatory Road, with tickets at three prices; in the same notice block an insurance company invited the public to the opening of its eight-storey head office on Bubbling Well Road. The war reports set a British gunboat's wireless claim that Jiujiang had fallen to the Southern Army against a Japanese warship's message that the city was quiet, and judged the rumour groundless. Other items described a near-truce on every front except Xiushui, the Revolutionary Army's capture of De'an, Southern plain-clothes units disguised as students, merchants and beggars, a troop steamer reportedly sent by Sun Chuanfang waiting midstream at Jiujiang, and a Red Cross station there overwhelmed by wounded.
This reading covers three passages from the page: a notice block with an insurance company's announcement and the athletic meet notice, the Jiujiang reports, and the start of the military news column. The OCR was badly corrupted, so the text was read from the page images, and several items survive only as fragments marked with ellipses and [?]. The smallest type could not be transcribed, including the subscription rates in the date box, most of the reports on the Revolutionary Army's capture of De'an and on its tactics as reported by the Japanese, and parts of the Nanjing dispatches. The left edge of the page is torn. The background sources at hand do not cover the athletic meet or the insurance company's new building, so the commentary addresses only the war reports.
Translation
International Athletic Meet Opens Today
y. October. 9. 1926. THE
[Shang]hai: Our eight-storey new head office building on Bubbling Well Road will hold its completion ceremony. Tea and refreshments will be served, and we respectfully invite people from all walks of life and our policyholders to visit. At twelve o'clock that day, local officials and notable figures from political, military, industrial, commercial and educational circles have also been invited to speak. Besides sending invitations, we fear that some may have been overlooked, and so we once more announce it in the newspaper and ask you all to come together. We earnestly hope you will attend. — Respectfully announced by the Hua'an Hequn Life Assurance Company
International Athletic Meet Opens Today
The international athletic meet, months in preparation and the talk of all Shanghai, will be held this afternoon at the Zhonghua Sports Ground on Observatory Road in the French Concession. Eight countries are taking part: China, the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Portugal and the Netherlands. Competition starts promptly at 2 p.m. Stands have been set up all around the ground with comfortable seating, and a Western band has been hired to play for the occasion. Tickets come in three classes, one yuan, sixty cents and forty cents, all on sale at the basketball hall at the corner of Route Mallet. Holders of forty-cent tickets enter by the east gate; holders of one-yuan and sixty-cent tickets enter by the west gate. We ask the public to take note. — Shanghai International Athletic Meet Committee
... no ... whatsoever ◎ Yesterday ... army ... by the Southern Army ... warship ... no ... report of the fall ◉ ◎ The losses at Gao'an and Xiushui also ... outside the riverbank
Jiujiang Calm as Usual
Jiujiang Calm as Usual
For two days, rumours of every [?] about Jiujiang have been rife here. But according to a report from Jiujiang received this morning by the local [?] military, nothing whatever has changed there. (Eastern News Agency, Shanghai, 8th)
◉ Yesterday a British gunboat's wireless reported that the navy at Jiujiang had been bought over by the Southern Army and that Jiujiang had fallen. Today a Japanese warship's wireless says that Jiujiang is as quiet as usual. Clearly the report of its fall is groundless. (Dentsu wire, Shanghai, 8th)
North ... Party Army retreating ... the Southern Army in the vicinity has already withdrawn at will; along ... the Southern Army is at present in defeated retreat. The Allied Army no longer has the strength to pursue it to the end. At present, apart from Xiushui, the battle lines everywhere are almost entirely in a state of truce.
◉ Revolutionary Army Occupies De'an. Jiujiang dispatch, 6th: Ever since Xunyang heard of the Revolutionary Army, it has been in a state of utter panic. According to military circles, the Revolutionary Army occupied ... a full hundred li from [Jiu]jiang; the area is mountainous. Zhao's brigade went to Nanchang as reinforcements; just as Zhao's brigade had not yet ... [they] stirred up the villagers to guide them and made a small attack from Ruichang. Our army had not taken defensive measures in time; suddenly gunfire was heard ... a scene ... of command ... seized the opportunity to attack; in an instant ... unit ... seriously wounded ... at once ordered a retreat ... Laomen ... became fact ... In that action, soldiers of the Fourth Division, killed and wounded ...
◉ The Revolutionary [Army] as reported by the Japanese. Eastern News Agency, Jiujiang dispatch, 5th: The Southern Army's use of ... the retreat of the ... army and the fall of De'an were all extraordinary and perilous affairs, yet fortunately it has succeeded again and again ... the activity of its plain-clothes units. The Southern Army often uses plain-clothes troops, that is, troops who do not wear uniforms. They are often [disguised as] students or merchants, even dressed up as beggars, and mingle ... during frontal attacks they threaten the enemy's rear so as to harass ... rely entirely on the activity of these plain-clothes units, and ㊀ the general population's goodwill toward the Southern Army, China ...
Military News from All Quarters
... fixed for tomorrow ... draw lots ... steamer, residents ... from the Ninth Division ... divided ... over a thousand ... Sha ... ◉ Military News from All Quarters ▲ Jiujiang, 5th: The steamer Jiangyu arrived at Xun from upstream, fully loaded with [?]-odd men. It is said that, because the situation toward De'an and Shahe was urgent, Sun Chuanfang [sent them] from [?]. On the morning of the 6th it was still lying in midstream awaiting orders. ▲ The wounded soldiers arriving grow more numerous by the day, and there has long been too little room for them. The Red Cross Society has put up sheds and set up a temporary relief station, but still more keep being brought in. According to the Red Cross, if another thousand arrive, it will in the end be impossible to take them in and treat them. ▲ A great many officers' families have gone to Xun. On the afternoon of the 5th, Jardine's Longhe ...
Context
Why Jiujiang's fall was rumoured in early October 1926
The rumours the paper dismissed had a recent basis. The National Revolutionary Army crossed into Jiangxi in September 1926, and by 19 September Jiujiang and Nanchang had both come under Kuomintang control, helped by the defection of one of Sun Chuanfang's generals. Sun then arrived from Nanjing with reinforcements on 21 September, forced the offensive into retreat and retook most of what he had lost. In early October, when the British and Japanese wireless messages contradicted each other, Jiujiang was most likely back in Sun's hands. Kuomintang troops moved to capture Jiujiang again only in early November, so the Japanese message that the city was quiet fits the later record better than the British claim. The page's own front reports pull in two directions: one item has the Southern Army in defeated retreat and the fronts largely quiet except at Xiushui, while a Jiujiang dispatch dated the 6th reports that the Revolutionary Army had taken De'an. The lull did not last, for by the end of October Sun's forces were again retreating across Jiangxi.
Sun Chuanfang and his 'Allied Army'
The commander on the defending side was Sun Chuanfang. He set up his headquarters in Nanjing as military governor of Jiangsu on 25 November 1925 and over the next two years extended his rule to all of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi; at the height of his power his army numbered over 200,000 men. The Guangzhou government had offered him a non-aggression pact, but he would not subordinate his administration to Kuomintang rule, which is why the Northern Expedition turned on Jiangxi once Wu Peifu's forces were in retreat. The page names Sun as the commander who shipped troops toward the De'an–Shahe sector, and the 'Allied Army' (聯軍) that, by the paper's account, no longer had the strength to pursue the retreating Southern Army was his coalition. That remark suggests that Sun's own forces had been worn down by their successful counterattack in late September, though it is the paper's assessment rather than an established figure.
Plain-clothes units, civilians and reprisals
The Eastern News Agency dispatch, which the page itself labels as a report spread by the Japanese, credits the Southern Army's successes to its plain-clothes units, men out of uniform who passed as students, merchants or even beggars and struck at the enemy's rear, and to the goodwill of ordinary people. The dispatch gives no names, numbers or specific engagements, so it reads as a general assessment rather than a battlefield report. Independent histories record how dangerous it was at this moment to be a student or a suspected sympathiser in Sun's territory: when Sun retook most of the territory he had lost in late September, he killed hundreds of students, teachers and suspected Kuomintang members. Popular support for the Northern Expedition did appear elsewhere that autumn, when NRA troops entering Fujian were welcomed by many locals, including the Hakka.
Foreign warships and steamers on the Yangtze
Both conflicting reports about Jiujiang came from the wireless sets of foreign warships, a British gunboat and a Japanese warship, which shows that Shanghai newspapers drew on the foreign naval presence on the river as a source of war news. That presence was itself caught up in the fighting. Yang Sen had used British commercial shipping to move his troops on the Yangtze, and on 5 September 1926 three British vessels tried to recapture river steamers held by his men at Wanxian and opened fire on the Chinese troops. Commercial steamers also served the war around Jiujiang in the paper's reports: the Jiangyu arrived loaded with troops sent by Sun Chuanfang and waited midstream for orders, many officers' families travelled to Jiujiang, and a Jardine steamer appears in the column's final line, which breaks off. Such traffic carried its own dangers. On 16 October 1926, a week after this issue, ammunition exploded aboard the Chinese troopship Kuang Yuang near Jiujiang.
Where De'an and Shahe lay
De'an and Shahe were points on the route south from Jiujiang toward Nanchang. According to the paper, Sun shipped troops to Jiujiang because the De'an and Shahe sector was urgent, and the Jiujiang dispatch of the 6th describes the area the Revolutionary Army reached as mountainous country a hundred li from Jiujiang. A later campaign shows the same corridor clearly. In the 1938 Wuhan campaign, a Japanese division that had taken Jiujiang tried to push south along the Jiujiang–Nanchang railway to capture De'an, and was badly mauled at Shahe, just south of Jiujiang. The line from Jiujiang through Shahe to De'an was thus a principal route between the river port and the provincial capital, and fighting at De'an in October 1926 meant that the war stood close to the city whose fall the rumours had announced.
Original
今日萬國運動會開幕
y. October. 9. 1926. THE 海靜安寺路總公司八層新屋舉行落成典禮備茶點恭請各界人士並保壽諸君參觀是日十二時並請當地長官及政軍工商學各界聞人演說除具柬奉邀外誠恐或有未周用再登報啓請諸君連袂惠臨毋任盼禱華安合羣保壽公司謹啓今日萬國運動會開幕籌備數月轟動全滬之萬國運動大會於今日下午在法租界天文台路中華運動場舉行參與者有中美英法日俄葡萄牙及荷蘭等八國准下午二時起賽會場四周均設看台座位舒暢且雇有西樂隊吹奏助興入場券分一元六角四角三等均在馬浪路口藍球房出售四角券由東首大門進場一元及六角券由西首大門進場至希各界注意上海萬國運動會委員會啓並無何 ◎ 昨日軍被南軍艦無失守說 ◉ ◎ 高安修水之損失亦河岸外
九江平靜如常
九江平靜如常二日來本地關於九江方面種 [?] 傳、 甚囂塵上、 然據今晨本地 [?] 軍所得九江發報告、 謂該地並無何等之變化、 （東方社八日上海消息） ◉ 昨日英國炮艦之無線電傳九江海軍被南軍收買、 九江失守、 今日日本軍艦無線電云、 九江安靜如常、 可見失守說係無根、 （上海八日電通電） 北黨軍退却中附近之南軍已隨意退却、 沿南軍目下正在敗退中、 聯軍、 已無窮追之力、 現除修水各處戰線幾全在休戰狀態、 ◉ 革軍佔領德安九江六日通訊、 潯陽自聞革軍驚惶萬狀、 據軍界所述革軍佔江有一百里之遙、 其地多山、 趙旅赴南昌往援、 方趙旅尚未人、 鼓惑鄉人引導、 由瑞昌小擊、 我軍未即防衛、 陡聞槍砲指揮之一劇、 乘機攻擊、 霎時部負重傷、 當指令退責老門、 成事實、 該役四師兵士、 死傷 ◉ 日人所傳之革東方社九江五日通信、 南軍用動軍之敗退及德安之陷落、 皆奇危事而幸能屢邀成功、 其軍便衣隊之活動、 南軍常以便即不穿軍服之軍隊也、 彼等常學生或商人、 甚至喬裝乞丐、 混在正面攻擊時脅敵之後、 以擾下、 全恃此便衣隊之活動、 而 ㊀一般人民對南軍好感、 中國
各方軍事消息
定准明天開籤輪船、 居民距九師、 分千餘沙 ◉ 各方軍事消息 ▲ 九江五日江裕輪由上游抵潯、 滿載 [?] 餘人、 傳係孫傳芳以德安沙河方面緊急、 由 [?] 者、 六日晨尚傍江中候命、 ▲ 傷兵逐來日衆、 早已不敷收容、 紅十字會蓋棚設臨時救濟處、 然仍陸續運來、 據紅會再有千人、 則終將無法收容醫治、 ▲ 軍官家屬赴潯者極夥、 五日下午怡和隆和