Reading the news

First a quick update and then on to the post: I’m waiting in the airport to fly to Hong Kong for an 8-day research trip. Grace and her parents will be joining me in a few days to explore the city and surrounding areas but are currently stationed in Makati, the business center of Manila. They’re staying there for two nights to look at a different part of Manila. While I’ll be busy working in Hong Kong, I hope to join them for at least two days to get over to Macau and to check out the giant golden Buddha on Lantau Island. We’ll be posting news of our trip over the next week or so. Now on to the post:           

          I read lots of travelogues and memoirs of Europeans and Americans visiting or living in Asia for my dissertation. I’m always surprised at how we experience some of the same things that these travelers wrote about 80 to 100 years ago (except for, of course, all the incredibly paternalistic and racist thinking that was ubiquitous throughout colonial Asia).

One of these similarities is our addiction to reading newspapers from the U.S. Grace and I spend lots of time reading The New York Times and other newspapers online and Grace, in particular, seems to know more about what’s going on in the U.S. now than she did back when we were living in Wisconsin (and she was already a bit of a news junky then).

The desire for news from the U.S. was just as strong back in the 1920s, perhaps even more, since people couldn’t access the internet. In 1926, a group of American musicians in Shanghai wrote a song about the American newspaper there, The China Press (Here’s a video with a song by the band and here’s a link to the bandleader’s autobiography). This was a good move both in terms of expressing a commonly-felt sentiment and also because the newspaper was obviously thrilled and gave the song and the band a ton of extra publicity (tip for all of you struggling musicians: write a song complimentary of a major media source and see how that works out). The song, titled “The China Press,” features a chorus (below) that we could relate to a little bit and I imagine many ex-pats still feel today (although we don’t really have to wait at all to get news from the U.S. and half of the letters mailed to us seem to get lost…).

Here in Shanghai, we are so far away

We nearly die for word from home each day;

We look for letters, postcards, ANYTHING!

That to our hearts the fondest mem-ries bring;

And when we get, each morning of each day

An echo of the U.S. A.

We feel like standing on a table and cheering all we’re able, for the China Press!