The Shanghai Paper Hunt

This Thursday (April 4), we’ll explore the stories of Hongqiao, Shanghai’s fanciest suburb, on our Historic Hongqiao walk…including the legendary Shanghai Paper Hunt. The paper hunt, you ask? Grown men on horseback chasing bits of paper across the countryside. Read on … it’s weirder and more wonderful than you could ever imagine! To book the walk, click here.

“In the beginning, as we can well understand, means of recreation were somewhat limited. Indeed, an old resident has described wheelbarrow races up and down the Bund as an after dinner amusement on summer evenings!”

F.L. Hawkes Pott, A Short History of Shanghai, 1928

When foreigners arrived in Old Shanghai, they found themselves with rather an excess of free time. Eventually, they moved on from wheelbarrow races on the Bund and organized a multitude of recreational activities  – so many, in fact, that the “Clubs and Associations” listing in the 1936 Shanghai Hong List (directory) runs to nearly 10 pages!

Paper Hunt, near Shanghai, c.1920: Ruxton Collection. Source: Visualising China

Possibly the most unique of these organizations was the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club, founded in December 1863. The British, who feel the need to go hunting wherever they find themselves, were disappointed to find that Shanghai did not have the relevant animals for a proper hunt. At first, they tried to hunt members (!) wearing red cowls on their heads, but when–perhaps predictably–this did not end well, they created the paper hunt – the next best thing to a good old fashioned fox hunt.

“Paper-hunting is a popular sport among cross-country riders, and well attended meets under the auspices of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club are held at week-ends during the season.”

All About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guidebook, 1934.

Left: “Paper Hunt at Shanghai”, 1874 by William Simpson. Source: H.M. Fletcher. Right: Stewards of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club. Source: Treaty Port Sport

One member of the team would ride ahead to act as the hunted prey, marking the trail with colored paper. (Later, this task was entrusted to a mafu, or groom). The hunt took place in the countryside around Shanghai–today’s Hongqiao–on the small Mongolian ponies referred to as “China Ponies”. Club rules actually forbade the use of ponies over 14 hands high. The first recorded paper chase at the club occurred in December 1863, and was won by Augustus Broom on a pony called Mud.

As with other clubs, Chinese were excluded at the outset. But by the late 1920s, the club had relented and opened membership to Chinese. By September 1937–crucially, just a month after the Bloody Saturday bombings of downtown Shanghai led to an exodus of foreigners–the Paper Hunt had liberalized so much that Cambridge-educated Stanley Wang became the first Chinese man to be elected a steward.

Women were slightly less excluded: they could be honorary members, but were not permitted to hold office. In response, the womenfolk went ahead and created a Ladies Paper Hunt Club (riding sidesaddle). In 1929, the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club modified their rules to be more accepting of women, though there is no record of a female steward.

Shanghai society came out to the races, sometimes making a weekend of it at country homes like Sir Victor Sassoon’s Rubicon estate. (Well, maybe not Sir Victor’s: he famously had no guest bedrooms so people wouldn’t stay over!).

Bernardine Szold Fritz, whose salon connected figures in the literary and arts world, came with her friends to watch her husband Chester ride; Edmund Toeg, broker from a fabulously wealthy Sephardic Jewish family, was an avid rider, whose charming illustrations of the sport survive in Noel Davis’ book on the history of the club.

German businessman Fritz Kaufmann, who lived in Shanghai from 1931-49, was an avid horseman and Paper Hunt Club member. Kaufmann had arrived in Shanghai in 1931, and after working as a sales representative, joined import-export firm Reuter Brockelmann and Co.. In 1940, he started his own firm, Merchants and Traders. By 1941, Kaufmann, who was Jewish, had been stripped of his nationality. He was part of a committee established to help refugees fleeing Nazi Europe. Kaufmann won the Paper Hunt in 1939, and donated his trophy and along with other riding paraphernalia to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Top: Kaufmann’s riding jacket and breeches. Bottom: Shanghai Paper Hunt Club (SPHC) pin and the 1939 Paper Hunt trophy. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial

Trails were established through local farm lands from November to March, when the lands lay fallow. Riders complained of hostility from the local Chinese farmers, who resented this presumptuous encroachment on their lands and occasionally threw rocks or sabotaged the trails. Some trails ran perilously close to ancestral grave mounds, forcing riders to swerve around or leap over them. The Club made payments to local officials to placate the disgruntled farmers, pay for damaged farmland, and rebuild bridges and trails in amounts ranging from $18 in 1889 to $5000 annually in the late 1920s. According to his granddaughter, Club member John McGregor Gibbs was in charge of meeting with and compensating farmers, thanks to his Shanghainese language skills and diplomacy.

There seems to have been a breakdown in diplomacy by 1940, though, as the Club began its season with riders faced by demonstrating farmers carrying sticks to block their way!

It’s a wonder, really, that no one has revived the Paper Hunt Club …

To see the Paper Hunt in action, check out this video of the Paper Hunt from 1934, featured on Historic Shanghai’s YouTube account!

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References:

1. Bickers, R. (2012, May 25). A hunting we will go. In Visualising China Blog. Retrieved from <http://visualisingchina.net/blog/2012/05/25/a-hunting-we-will-go/>. Accessed 13 Aug 2014.

2. Ditmanson, P. B. (2008). Scholar’s Commentary: The Paper Chase by Joseph Swan. <http://www.movingimagesincontext.org/collections/branch/paperchase/>. Accessed 13 Aug 2014.

3. Djordjevic, N. (2009). Old Shanghai Clubs & Associations: A Directory of the Rich Life of Foreigners in Shanghai. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books.

4. Hawks Pott, F. L. (1928). A Short History of Shanghai. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh Ltd.

5. (1934) All About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guidebook. Shanghai: Shanghai University Press.

6. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Shanghai Paper Hunt Club silver trophy cup awarded to a German Jewish businessman in Shanghai. <http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn518150> Accessed 13 Aug 2014.

Bernardine Fritz photos courtesy of Nancy Lilienthal.