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"[This article] examines the potent symbol of the sign placed in Shanghai's Huangpu Park that allegedly read: "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted." This symbol has secured a totemic position in the historiography of the Western presence in China before 1949 and is deeply embedded in contemporary Chinese and Western perceptions and representations of that era, and of the whole question of Western imperialism in China. It is the subject both of popular discourse and official fiat in China today... the true facts of the case are both beyond dispute and irrelevant, but that the legend survives undiminished.
For over 60 years before June 1928 most Chinese certainly were barred from the parks administered by the foreign-controlled Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) of the International Settlement in Shanghai... Han Chinese had for centuries used the "dog" radical in characters referring to members of ethnic minorities living in China's frontier regions, and "running dog" (zougou) has been a potent political epithet since the 1920s...
The park at the centre of the dispute is now known as Huangpu Park, and lies at the northern tip of Shanghai's Bund. Initially known as the Public Garden, or Recreation Ground, it was also later known (in English and Chinese) as the Bund Garden (Waitan gongyuan)... Complaints from foreigners about Chinese use of the park can be found during the very first months of its existence. From its early days until 1881 the park was barred to Chinese except, at the discretion of the police, to those who were "respectable and well-dressed" (servants of Westerners, particularly amahs, as long as they were accompanied by foreigners, and city employees, such as the Chinese police constables, were also admitted). Complaints from Europeans about the numbers admitted led to the Council changing this policy in 1881, an action which angered of some of the Settlement's leading Chinese residents...
The 1903 regulations of the Public Garden included the following items:
1. No dogs or bicycles are admitted.
5. No Chinese are admitted, except servants in attendance upon foreigners.
The 1913 "Revised Regulations," however, began:
1. These Gardens are reserved exclusively for the foreign community.
2. No dogs or bicycles are admitted
... the phrase "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted" did not appear on any officially-sanctioned sign...
This statement of the facts concerning the regulations itself follows in a long tradition, perhaps best exemplified by a 1927 pamphlet issued by the Tianjin British Committee of Information, which attempted to counter "once and for all" what it called a "mischievous slander" by printing the 1917 rules, offering a suggestion as to the origin of the legend, and also providing some of the widely circulated excuses for exclusion offered by foreigners in Shanghai. As Pu Yi's tutor Reginald Johnston perceptively wrote in the same pamphlet, however, "... it is the kind of slander which takes a lot of killing, and survives even the most authoritative denials"...
The story received its biggest single burst of publicity in recent years with the simultaneous publication of an article, " 'Huaren yu gou bu de runei' wenti de lailong qumai" ("The entire story of the 'Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted' question") on 7 June 1994 in Shanghai's mass circulation evening paper Xinmin wanbao [and a few others]...
The article was concerned with rebutting a recently published note which had challenged one aspect of the myth; more generally, it was targeted at the growing tendency among Shanghai's leading historians, both older and younger, to ignore or openly rebut the accepted story of the sign, and related items such as the "park sign" (worded as in the legend) that was displayed in the Shanghai History Museum at its old site." This debate was also replayed in Guangming ribao and in Chinese newspapers overseas. For all its scholarly apparatus, the "entire story" neglects to prove that a sign ever existed with the alleged wording, relying on the cumulative effect of unsubstantiated claims that it did. It is hardly surprising that the story has its critics, if little proof can be found by even its most ardent defenders. The article also neglects to mention that after 1928 the parks were opened to all who could afford tickets.
The extraordinary publicity accorded this issue in June 1994 must be understood with reference to its contemporary uses, not just its historicity. Shanghai's economic development in the years 1993-94 reached breakneck speed, and was accompanied by a rapid acceleration in its opening up to the outside world...
Commenting on the sign issue in Guangming ribao, Ye Qing reminded his readers that "Western colonialists in China committed monstrous crimes, too many to mention in fact; the sign placed at the entrance to the parks reading "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted" is prime evidence of their guilt." He went on to caution historians explicitly: "Some people do not understand the humiliations of old China's history, or else they harbour sceptical attitudes (huaiyi taidu) and even go so far as to write off a serious historical humiliation lightly; this is very dangerous." The sign is as much a symbol, then, of a new-found relativism expressed towards official discourse by historians in China as it is an icon of the country's "historical humiliation." It is a contested symbol...
When Westerners hear or read about "Old Shanghai," one of the first images that is likely to spring to mind is the alleged sign that read "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted." This is because for decades, novelists, journalists, popular historians, academics and travel writers based in the West have been assuring their readers that a notice existed with these precise words or some very close approximation (such as "No Dogs or Chinese Allowed" or "Dogs and Chinese Not Allowed"). References to this icon first began appearing in English language texts in the first decades of this century, and within a relatively short time had become a commonplace feature of Western works on China. The earliest reference can be found in a novel by treaty port journalist Putnam Weale (B. L. Simpson) that appeared in 1914...
One reason the notice is especially well known [in Hong Kong] is that it plays a prominent role in a pivotal scene in Jing wu men (The Chinese Connection), an enormously popular kung fu film starring Bruce Lee (Li Xiaolong), made in 1973 but set in turn-of-the-century Shanghai. The scene in question begins with Lee's character becoming angry when a Sikh policeman attached to the SMC-run Shanghai Municipal Police draws attention to the infamous sign. The policeman tells Lee that he cannot enter the Public Garden, even though it is made clear to the audience that kimono-clad Japanese and even Westerners with dogs are allowed to pass the gate freely. Lee's character is taunted with the suggestion that if he pretends to be a dog the policeman might let him pass. The highlight of the scene, and perhaps the film as a whole, takes the form of a slow motion sequence that shows Lee destroying the hated sign with a powerful kick. It is said that when the film was first shown in Hong Kong, this scene was greeted with enthusiastic shouts of approval from the audience.
Ed: The hilarious scene from Fist of Fury:
... the place it is best known is Shanghai itself. This is in part because the CCP throughout its first decades in power made concerted efforts to keep the standard story of the notice alive, and made extensive use of it as a symbol of imperialist exploitation. On an international level it has also used the issue to counter Western criticisms of human rights in China. Virtually every textbook, popular history, academic work and guidebook dealing with Shanghai published in the PRC between the early 1950s and the early 1980s contained at least a few lines about the sign and the history of Public Garden, which is often described as having been "reborn" in 1949 when the CCP took control of and renamed the grounds. In the 1950s, the local representatives of the Party took an extra step to ensure that everyone who visited Shanghai would be reminded of the city's most infamous artifact, erecting a commemorative plaque in Huangpu Park that read in part as follows:
Before liberation the park bore silent witness to the imperialists' aggression against China and their wanton trampling on her sovereignty. The gate of the park was guarded by police of the "International Settlement" and Chinese were refused admittance. To add insult to injury, the imperialists in 1885 put up at the gate a board with the words "No Admittance to Dogs and Chinese" written on it. This aroused among the Chinese people popular indignation and disgust, which finally compelled the imperialists to remove the board
It is further indicative of the recent importance attached to the issue that it has been suggested that the city government intends to replace the sign, or put a similar one, in the renovated Huangpu Park...
Guo Morou [in 1923 wrote that] Chinese could enter if they donned Western clothing. He states that when his wife suggested he do this he refused, arguing that to have worn Western clothes for this purpose would have been to become a "pretend-Oriental-Westerner," which would in a sense have been to accept the status of being a dog. Throughout the essay he continues to play upon the imagery of dogs and clothing choices, and insults to the humanity of Chinese. Noting that since, even though officially banned from entering the park, dogs were in fact often allowed in, Guo points out that if a Chinese wanted to enter all he would need to do would be to "change himself into a dog." He complains that it was perfectly acceptable for those wearing Indian clothes to enter the park, and also comments on his dislike of Western clothes, which make people look like dogs. In fact the first time he saw someone wearing such apparel he thought that he had seen a strange dog...
[Many] memoir writers point to coming across the sign as a radicalizing experience... The sign has also formed a prominent part of the vocabulary of PRC critics of Western concerns with "human rights"...
Japanese and Koreans were able to use this "Western" park... Early Shanghai guidebooks simply describe the topography of the Public Garden, and then state that Chinese were not ordinarily permitted to enter, or Chinese were not allowed to enter unless accompanied by Westerners, or that Chinese could not enter unless they wore Western or Japanese clothes. The frequency with which the latter point occurs does seem to suggest that Chinese did indeed often enter the park in the guise of Japanese. Indeed, the SMC's Parks Committee minutes record the exasperation of the Municipal Engineer in 1911 at the "difficulty of differentiating between Chinese and others dressed in the European manner." This may also account for the fact that Chinese guidebooks, even in the era of exclusion, still tended to include sections on the foreign parks.
The earliest Chinese reference that resonates with later accounts is the 1907 Shanghai xiangtu zhi (Gazeteer of the Shanghai Region) which states that "Orientals and Occidentals from all countries, even ... Indians, who are the chattels and slaves of the Westerners, are able to enter the gates, only Chinese are barred from entering," only they are thus treated "like slaves, like dogs, like horses." In Lao Shanghai (Old Shanghai) (1919) the park regulations are discussed in a passage worth quoting at length:
The Public Garden regulations are very strictly enforced on Chinese by the police. At the Huangpu Public Garden, Chinese and dogs are not allowed to enter for recreation (bu zhun huaren ji gou runei youwan). They put the Chinese and dogs together. It is a great insult. But some of our country fellows do not know self-respect, they spit all over the place and also break twigs off trees and pick flowers, all forbidden by the park keepers
... If Ye Xiaoqing's thesis that the myth of the sign was "spread by educated people in order to spread nationalist ideology" is to be accepted, then this is only in the knowledge that while it was undoubtedly true for the period after the rumour had gained currency, say from 1923 on, in fact the most likely people to have played a role in spreading the story prior to this point were those Chinese who were allowed partial access to the parks. The urban legend may have taken hold as amahs and other servants, who could not read English but "knew" what the signs said point by point, told other Chinese about the notice: point one, no Chinese; point two, no dogs. The strength of dog as an epithet in China deepened the insult. The story of the "Dogs and Chinese" sign might, in short, lie in the "scandalous tales" recounted by amahs which, it was feared by one correspondent in 1911, "are disseminated, and of course, grow in the telling." Such fears were normally related to gossip about the behaviour of foreign masters and mistresses, but stories about park rules could easily have spread in the same fashion...
The conventional treatment of the notice does distort some aspects of Chinese and treaty port history, largely because it fits in a bit too nicely with the caricature of Western inhabitants of the Settlement as a group united by a common outlook (the 'Shanghai mind") that was narrow-minded, provincial and racist in the extreme...
The first is that it presents the attitudes of the International Settlement's foreign community as much more homogenous than they actually were. There were some Western residents of the International Settlement who were openly critical of policies that excluded the Chinese from using local parks. Some criticisms came from predictable sources, such as J. B. Powell, who often satirized the policies of the SMC and mocked positions taken by the publishers of the British-owned NCH. Occasionally, however, even ardent defenders of the status quo expressed displeasure with this particular feature of local policy. For example, Major General J. Duncan, the commander of the British Shanghai Defence Force in 1927-28, could not stomach the exclusionary policies.
Secondly, businessmen were certainly too pragmatic to "spend our time deliberately insulting our Chinese friends," as one put it in 1927. Old Shanghai's cosmopolitan egalitarianism has certainly been much exaggerated by propagandists of the foreign regime; however, trade was not likely to function to anybody's advantage in an atmosphere of conflict. In fact, without the establishment of a pragmatically equal relationship with the local Chinese elites, foreign Shanghai would have been ungovernable... after 1881 the SMC knew full well that admission to the parks was a very sensitive issue. The Parks Committee itself described exclusion in 1909 as "undoubtedly a source of friction."
The third problem with the caricature Ransome created lies in its implication that Western residents of the International Settlement were somehow unique, a breed apart even from their counterparts in other treaty ports and Shanghai's own French Concession. Foreign administered concessions in Hankou and Tianjin, for example, had regulations relating to native use that were much like those found in Shanghai... One Briton objected in 1927 to opening the parks to all as inviting in "the scum of this City." "Scum" was deliberately vague. Restriction on entry to the parks was never merely a question of race, and focusing on the sign may lead one to forget how far class and/or cultural prejudices were as much an element as racial or ethnic ones. Europeans in Shanghai themselves were far from homogeneous: there were strictly observed class divisions even within British society in the city. The White Russian and, later in the 1930s, the Jewish refugees were low down the social scale. The Chinese elite too, hardly wanted to share its quiet moments with labourers or rickshaw coolies.
--- Shanghai's "Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted" Sign: Legend, History and Contemporary Symbol / Robert A. Bickers and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom