A Chinese Boat Trip with an Onboard Performance and Views of Shanghai

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

A Chinese Boat Trip with an Onboard Performance and Views of Shanghai

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
Shanghai
1934-01-01
Silent
8m

The famous waterfront of 1930s Shanghai is the star of this tantalising film which captures the bustling street life of China's most cosmopolitain city.

Filmed on the deck of a ship, we see child performers displaying their martial arts skills followed by crew members engaged in a lifeboat drill. A man exercises with Indian clubs. Once in Shanghai the film shows the famous Bund as well as amazing views of daily life on the bustling streets and waterfront. Traders of all sorts, some afloat, can be seen as well as washerwomen, rickshaws, junks and traffic in this remarkable snapshot of China's most cosmopolitan city.

Leslie Leigh, who made this film while on a trip to China with his wife Ellen in 1934, had dealings with the Chinese government of the time regarding the supply of bristles which were to be used in the manufacture of paint brushes.

Shanghai - Pearl of the Orient

Western filmmakers captured the first moving images of one of the world's great cities. These remarkable films preserve a metropolis whose streets and waterways teem with life.

When cinema first came to China's shores, Shanghai was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The new technology was exhibited at the city's Xu Gardens in August 1896 (just months after the Lumière Brothers' first demonstration in Paris), and the earliest ever filmed images of the city were captured - by Western filmmakers - soon after.

Some of the oldest surviving footage of Shanghai was shot by a British war correspondent, dispatched to China to cover the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. It captures the teeming multi-national traffic on the central Nanjing Lu thoroughfare, from gliding bicycles and rattling rickshaws, to a Sikh police detachment and German soldiers enjoying a cigarette. Shanghai's famous waterfront, the Bund, captivated numerous filmmakers in the 20s and 30s, and several films here show a remarkable thronging harbour life, with sampans clustering beneath the Bund's baroque temples of commerce and leisure.

Also featuring in this collection of newsreels, travelogues and home movies are scenes of the Japanese occupation of the city in 1937, and the death and destruction that followed. These are sombre, even harrowing scenes, but a crucial chapter in Shanghai's history.