世界日報
- Bound Volumes of the World Daily Supplement
- Peking–Hankow Railway Administration, Important Notice
- Notice from Lawyer Gao Rang
This partial reading of the Beijing World Daily for 20 October 1926 covers three items. An advertisement promoted monthly bound volumes of the paper's supplement, edited by Dr. Liu Bannong of Peking University, offering about 120 pages a volume, careful printing and binding unlike crudely stitched old newspapers, and a balance between interest and a partly illegible second quality, and urging every student to own a copy. The Peking–Hankow Railway Administration's Notice No. 246, dated 11 September 1926, announced that special express trains 7 and 8 between Beijing and Shijiazhuang were suspended and replaced by ordinary trains 21 and 22 hauling freight cars, citing the need to adjust rolling stock. A block headed as a notice from the lawyer Gao Rang survives mainly as fragments of a face-cream advertisement.
This reading covers three excerpts from the 20 October 1926 page, transcribed from the images rather than the garbled OCR. [?] marks characters that could not be read; they were not reconstructed. The block headed as a notice from the lawyer Gao Rang is legible mainly as fragments of a face-cream advertisement, and its own notice text could not be identified, so the reading establishes nothing about a Beijing Securities Exchange debt collection. The opening fragment of the railway item belongs to a neighbouring advertisement. Small-print tables, book lists, medicine advertisements and the Sibu congkan prospectus are only partly legible and are not covered.
Translation
Bound Volumes of the World Daily Supplement
World Daily, Bingyin [?] No. 1 [?] No. 2 [?] No. 3 [?]
Bound Volumes of the World Daily Supplement
The World Daily Supplement is edited by Dr. Liu Bannong of Peking University [?], and those who take on [?] are likewise mostly men of solid learning of the day [?]. The [?] bound volume gathers everything printed in one month into [?] one volume. Its printing and binding are both extremely [?], entirely different from the usual old newspapers bound together, [?] crude. Each [?] runs to 120 pages, with works numbering more than one [?] ten; the contents are rich, [?] and interest given equal weight. Young people, in their hours after class, [?] should each have a copy in hand. Each volume, actual price, plus postage, lunar eighth [?]
Peking–Hankow Railway Administration, Important Notice
…entirely different … … is part of the address: west end of Langfang Ertiao, telephone South 3321
Peking–Hankow Railway Administration, Important Notice No. 246
Notice is hereby given: In order to adjust rolling stock and facilitate transport, this railway will, from this day forward, suspend Special Express Trains Nos. 7 and 8 running between Beijing and Shijiazhuang, and will instead make up ordinary passenger trains Nos. 21 and 22, with freight cars attached, to run daily between Beijing and Shijiazhuang carrying passengers and goods. It is fitting that this be promptly announced for general information. This is the announcement.
September 11, 15th Year of the Republic of China
Notice from Lawyer Gao Rang
…pills, handed down for more than a hundred … inflamed sores, blood threads, fish-flesh rashes, mildew, shine [?] sunken; those with serious eye ailments … yuan … not sent; black [?] [?] color, drinker's acne, pimples [?] [?] [?] [?] wrinkles, blemishes, cracks [?] wind and frost, every facial [?] [?] [?] can change the complexion [?] face lovely [?] no [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] can remove, no [?] for [?] safe [?] [?] [?] apply [?] [?] [?] boast [?] Try rubbing it on, sir, and you will know these words do not deceive. Trial: each pair extra strength; medium size 4 mao, large bottle 1 yuan (, No. ▼ Hai Wu [?] Shang [?]
Context
Why the Peking–Hankow line cut its Beijing–Shijiazhuang expresses
The Peking–Hankow Railway Administration gave only one reason in Notice No. 246: it needed to adjust rolling stock and make transport more convenient, so it replaced the Beijing–Shijiazhuang express pair 7 and 8 with a daily pair of ordinary trains, 21 and 22, that also hauled freight cars. The line was one of north China's main arteries. It opened on 14 November 1905 as a 1,214-kilometre route with 125 stations, and was bought back from its Belgian-backed builders and placed under Chinese control on 1 January 1909. By the 1920s it was also an instrument of warlord power: in 1923 Wu Peifu sent military police to break up the founding of the railway workers' federation. In 1926 the line ran through active war zones. In March the American minister in Peking reported that Wu had captured Zhengzhou, the junction of the Peking–Hankow and Longhai railways, and that the two daily trains each way between Tianjin and Peking were often late and might soon be interrupted. In 1926 Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu also formed a joint government in Beijing, which the foreign legations refused to recognise, and in July the Canton Nationalist government launched the Northern Expedition. These records show that the notice appeared while war was being fought along and around the railway. None of them, however, documents what happened to the cars and engines that had run trains 7 and 8. A link to military requisitioning is therefore a plausible inference, but neither the notice nor these records proves it.
Liu Bannong's supplement and its scholarly bent
The bound-volume advertisement sells the supplement on Liu Bannong's name, on contributors described as men of solid learning, and on giving equal weight to interest and a partly illegible companion quality. According to Yuan Yidan's study of Liu, he took charge of the World Daily Supplement soon after returning to China in 1926, at the invitation of his old friend Cheng Shewo, and the paper's preview claimed that old friends from New Youth and new ones from Yusi had agreed to send in a steady stream of contributions. That promise lies behind the advertisement's boast about its writers. Not every friend welcomed the venture. Qian Xuantong saw the preview and protested that he did not want his writing to keep company with the Mingzhu supplement and the serial Chunming waishi, and Liu answered that his supplement had nothing to do with the World Daily's Mingzhu supplement edited by Zhang Henshui. Yuan argues that although Liu positioned the supplement as instruction through entertainment, he leaned toward scholarly lecturing over interest, and concludes that the editorship lasted only a little over half a year. The October advertisement's appeal to students' after-class reading therefore comes from a supplement that its historian sees as tilted toward scholarship rather than evenly balanced.
Why the advertisement calls him 'Dr.' Liu Bannong
The phrase 'Dr. Liu Bannong of Peking University' carried a personal history. Zhou Zuoren recalled that Liu, who taught Chinese and grammar in the university's preparatory course without formal qualifications, was looked down on by Hu Shi's circle, was stung by it, and after the May Fourth movement asked to study in Europe. Liu spent several years in France specialising in Chinese phonetics and came back with a French state doctorate, in Zhou's words to show the American PhDs, after which friends teasingly called him Dr. Liu. Zhou wrote this account long afterwards, and the study that quotes it notes that it was composed after the campaign against Hu Shi's thought, which may colour its portrait of Hu's circle. Even so, the recollection explains why a 1926 newspaper placed the title in front of Liu's name: the doctorate was a recent, hard-won credential, and the advertisement could use it to vouch for the supplement's seriousness.
Cheng Shewo, the publisher behind the World Daily
The supplement belonged to a newspaper built by the journalist Cheng Shewo. Cheng had gone to Shanghai in 1915 to found a company named, literally, the 'Selling Writing Company', and moved to Beijing in 1917. He studied Chinese literature at Peking University, graduating in 1921, and afterwards founded the World Evening News, the World Daily and the World Illustrated. It was Cheng who invited Liu Bannong to run the supplement in 1926. Both men were tied to Peking University, Cheng as a graduate and Liu as a teacher there, and the bound-volume advertisement put the university's name, together with Liu's doctorate, at the front of its appeal to young readers.
Original
世界日報副刊合訂本
世界日報丙寅 [?] 第一 [?] 第二 [?] 第三 [?] 世界日報副刊合訂本世界日報副刊， 爲北大 [?] 劉半農博士主編， 担任 [?] 者， 亦多一時績學之士 [?] 訂本乃彙集一月所載， [?] 一冊， 印刷裝潢， 均極 [?]， 與尋常以舊報裝訂， [?] 粗劣者， 完全不同， 每 [?] 一百二十頁， 作品在一 [?] 十種以上， 內容豐富， [?] 與趣味并重， 青年課餘 [?] 當人手一編也。 每本實加郵費陰歷八 [?]
京漢鐵路管理局緊要廣告
全不同 … … 是一部份的地址廊房二條西口電南三三二一京漢鐵路管理局緊要廣告第二百四十六號啓者本路現因調濟車輛便利運輸起見自即日起將往來北京石家庄之第七八兩次特別快車停止開行另組第二十一及二十二兩次尋常客車附挂貨車逐日往來北京石家庄間載運客貨合亟佈告俾衆週知此佈中華民國十五年九月十一日
律師高穰啟事
丸世傳一百餘炎瘡血絲魚肉疹黴光 [?] 陷內有眼科大症者元者不寄黑 [?] [?] 色酒刺粉刺 [?] [?] [?] [?] 紋疵裂路 [?] 風霜一切面部 [?] [?] [?] 能換容 [?] 面嬌 [?] 無 [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] 能去無 [?] 爲 [?] 安 [?] [?] [?] 施 [?] [?] [?] 誇口 [?] 君試擦方知言之不欺也試每雙加料中號四毛大瓶一元 （、 號 ▼ 海五 [?] 商 [?]