A DANCE WITH THE DRAGON: PEKING'S FOREIGN COMMUNITY 1860–1949

Abstract

For nearly a hundred years, to many foreigners “Peking” meant the foreign legation quarter and its colourful western inhabitants. The article gives details of the extraordinary life they led a stone's throw from the Emperor's palace in a city that remained virtually untouched by the modern world. After the Boxer Rising of 1900, the legation quarter became a Treaty Port with its own laws and administration. That status continued through the First World War and beyond. But just as the foreigners were at last beginning to value Peking's uniqueness, the end was in sight. Life changed a lot after the 1937 Japanese invasion of China and, for many, internment followed the attack on Pearl Harbour. But the end came when Treaty port status was abolished for good at the end of the War

Notes

Alice Green Hoffman, 21 November 1924; J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, MS/127.

Sir Alexander Hosie, ‘Travels Abroad’, No. 12, RSAA/M/214.

Lord Elgin to Lord Carnarvon, 31 October 1860. Private Collection, London.

Quoted in S.C.M Paine, Imperial Rivals, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpem, c.1996, p. 79.

Quoted in The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907, Edited by John King Fairbank and others, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975; vol. 1, p. 264.

D.I. Abrikosov, Revelations of a Russian Diplomat. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964, p. 163.

Author's collection.

The I.G. in Peking, Letter 1185, 26 November 1900, vol. 2.