時報
- International Athletic Meet Opens Today
- Jiangwan Races
- Yinxiangxiang Races
On National Day, 10 October 1926, the Shanghai paper Shibao carried notices about the city's holiday sport. The Shanghai International Athletic Meet Committee announced that a meet of eight nations, among them China, the United States, Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands, would open that afternoon at the Zhonghua Sports Ground in the French Concession, with three ticket classes, separate gates for each class and a Western band. Two racing bodies advertised meetings on back-to-back days: the Chinese Jockey Club of Shanghai raced ten events at its Far Eastern Racecourse in Yinxiangxiang on National Day itself and offered members numbered sweepstake tickets, while the International Recreation Club set its Jiangwan races for the next afternoon. Around the athletic notice, fragments show a holiday gift offer that excluded foreign goods and an invitation to an insurance company's new building.
This reading covers three notices transcribed from the page images: the international athletic meet notice, together with the adjoining fragments of a gift offer and an insurance company's invitation, and the Jiangwan and Yinxiangxiang race notices. Illegible characters are marked [?]. The Xiangdao Zhoubao contents summary, the subscription and advertising rate tables, and most of the small print in the Guanshengyuan and jasmine-cream advertisements are too small or degraded to transcribe. The race-meeting number in the Yinxiangxiang notice can be read as either ninth or nineteenth on the image, so 'ninth' is not a settled reading. The commentary covers the racing and advertising background; the organization of the athletic meet and its eight participating nations is not covered.
Translation
International Athletic Meet Opens Today
Gifts: for purchases of commemorative foods totaling one yuan, one five-color tin of Zhongshan olives is given; for purchases totaling fifty cents, one box of Patriotic Fruit Sweets is given. Foreign goods are excluded. Period: the 9th through the 10th.
International Athletic Meet Open [?] 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 Tianwentai Road in the French Concession. Taking part are China, the United States, Britain, France, [?] Portugal, the Netherlands and others, eight nations in all. Competition begins promptly at 2 p.m. Stands have been set up on all four sides of the grounds with comfortable seating, and a Western band has been engaged to play for the occasion. Admission tickets come in three classes, one yuan, sixty cents and forty cents, all on sale at the basketball hall at the corner of Malang Road. Forty-cent ticket holders enter by the east main gate; one-yuan and sixty-cent ticket holders enter by the west main gate. All circles are requested to take not [?]. —Shanghai International Athletic Meet Committee
The new building of the Hua'an Hequn Life Assurance Company is completed; we respectfully request the honor of your presence. Our company has respectfully chosen the solar-calendar day (lunar calendar ninth month, Tenth Festival, National Day commemoration
Jiangwan Races
On October 11 by the solar calendar, that is, the fifth day of the ninth lunar month, racing begins at 1:15 p.m. On that day all vehicles run directly to the grounds, and Western meals, tea and refreshments are provided inside. Notice is hereby given. —International Recreation Club
Yinxiangxiang Races
On October 10 by the solar calendar, National Day, that is, the fourth day of the ninth month of the traditional calendar, a Sunday, this Club will hold its ninth race meeting at the Far Eastern Racecourse in Yinxiangxiang. Racing begins at 1:15 p.m., ten races in all. Members' sweepstake taotou tickets, numbered 1 through 300, may be reserved at this Club's office at No. 181 Avenue Foch. This meeting's race cards will again be sold on our behalf by Kelly & Walsh on Nanking Road. Western meals, tea and refreshments are provided inside. Public notice is hereby given. —The Chinese Jockey Club of Shanghai, respectfully
Context
Why Shanghai had a Chinese-founded racecourse at Jiangwan
The Jiangwan notice advertises a course that was created because Chinese were shut out of Shanghai's main racing club. The Shanghai Race Club, which ran the racecourse in the city centre, at first admitted only foreign residents, and it was not until 1908 that select Chinese nationals could join as honorary, associate or social members. According to a 2015 history in The Paper, Ye Yiquan, fourth son of the wealthy merchant Ye Chengzhong, took Japanese nationality in 1908 in order to apply for membership and was still refused; in 1909 he raised funds and bought land at Jiangwan to build a racecourse of his own. The Jiangwan Racecourse opened in 1911 as an alternative to the Race Club that did not accept Chinese clientele, and The Paper describes it as a venue where Chinese spectators and riders alike could take part. In the 1926 notice the course appears as a routine fixture, with a 1:15 p.m. start, vehicles running straight to the grounds and Western meals on offer, fifteen years after its opening.
The International Recreation Club and the breakaway Chinese Jockey Club
The Jiangwan notice is signed by the 萬國體育會, the International Recreation Club, not by the Chinese founders. That club bought a controlling share of the Jiangwan course in 1910, and the club, which was also involved in the Shanghai Racecourse, ultimately became Jiangwan's majority shareholder. By 1924 it was regarded as highly exclusive, and in November of that year a group of people who had been denied entry founded the Chinese Jockey Club in Yangpu; this appears to be the 上海中國賽馬會 whose notice runs beside Jiangwan's on this page. The Paper lists the Yinxiangxiang course alongside Jiangwan among the racecourses that Chinese ran themselves. On this page the two bodies divided the holiday: the Chinese Jockey Club announced ten races at its Far Eastern Racecourse on 10 October, National Day, and the International Recreation Club announced Jiangwan racing for the following afternoon. The sums at stake were large; Chen Yangyang of Sports Research estimates that the Jiangwan course earned some 26 million yuan in 1926.
What the members' sweepstake tickets in the Yinxiangxiang notice drew on
The Chinese Jockey Club's notice invites members to reserve sweepstake tickets numbered 1 to 300 at its office on Avenue Foch, and says Kelly & Walsh will again sell the race cards. Raffle-style tickets had by then become central to Shanghai racing. At the Shanghai Race Club, raffle tickets introduced after 1909 quickly outstripped betting on horses. Because they were purely a game of chance and required no knowledge of racing, the raffles were very accessible and proved extremely popular with Chinese residents. The Yinxiangxiang notice shows a Chinese-run club using the same device, restricted to members and to a numbered run of 300 tickets. The notice gives neither the ticket price nor the prizes.
Patriotic gifts on National Day and the national goods movement
The fragment printed just before the athletic notice offers holiday gifts, a tin of Zhongshan olives for one yuan of commemorative foods and a box of Patriotic Fruit Sweets for fifty cents, and states that foreign goods are excluded. The page also carries an advertisement for the Shanghai confectioner Guanshengyuan, much of it illegible, but the transcribed fragment itself does not name its seller. Guanshengyuan's founder, Xian Guansheng, started out hawking snacks he made himself, such as preserved plums and dried beef, and opened a small shop on Dajing Road in 1918. Offers of this kind match what David Embrey Fraser's 1999 Berkeley dissertation describes in the National Goods Movement, whose leaders used goods to sell nationalism and nationalism to sell goods. Fraser also concludes that the movement's attempts to steer urban consumption toward patriotic purchase faltered as Shanghai's cosmopolitan consumers bought what they wanted, so holiday slogans like these record what sellers promoted rather than how shoppers behaved.
Original
今日萬國運動會開會
贈品購滿紀念食品一元贈五彩聽中山橄欖一罐滿五角贈愛國果子一盒外貨不在此例日期九號至十號止今日萬國運動會開 [?] 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 [?] 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 [?] 上海萬國運動會委員會啟華安合羣保壽公司新屋落成恭請光臨敝公司謹擇陽日 (陰歷九月十節國慶紀念
江灣賽馬
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引翔鄉賽馬
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