China around 1930
A collection of photographs taken by my grandfather, Frank Burrington, between 1927 and 1938 in China plus places they visited during that period.
- Swimming at the Country Club, Shanghai 1930s
My grandmother
The Marching Band of the Public School for Chinese
where my father taught, becoming deputy headmaster
My father with his Cathedral School cap on
My father with his Amah
Father making new friends on holiday in Japan
My grandparents and father in 1935
My father on holiday in Peitaiho, North China, 1937
Dad and Grannie by Lake Louise, Canada
on the final journey home to England
Shanghai
The story of my grandmother who at 23 travelled to China
to marry the man she loved…
Part One: The Perfect Grandmother
Part Two: An exciting new Life
Part Three: The journey home to Jessfield
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Hello…I’m looking for photos from 1930s of students from Cathedral Girls School Shanghai. Yvonne Cook was student and friend of Peggy Hookham ( Dame Margo). Any photos or info would be very much appreciated Thank you.
Hi David,
I’m sorry but I don’t think I can help you with that. My grandmother also worked as a teacher while in Shanghai but I don’t even know which school she worked at. As you can imagine, I regularly kick myself for not talking to her more about it when she was alive and writing it all down.
My mother and her brother and two sisters were all born in Shanghai between 1919 and 1926. My mother went to the Cathedral School and the family took their holidays at Peitaiho too. She attended ballet classes with Margot Fonteyn, who was a couple of years older than her. My mother left China in 1938 via the Canada route, but she and her mother departed from Shanghai on a Japanese passenger ship to Kobe , where they spent an anxious couple of weeks waiting for a Canadian ship to take them to Vancouver. My mother is still going strong, at the age of 96, although dementia has caught up with her and she is now living in a care home where she spends much of her time looking at photos of her childhood. She can still put names to all of the children in a photograph taken on her 13th birthday in the garden of their house.
Oh goodness! How interesting. Although I’m sorry to hear your mother has dementia. My father was born in 1927 so he may have known them. He passed away a few years ago but I’m so pleased he talked to me about his time in China before he died. His experiences in 1938 had a big impact on him and it was only in his eighties that he finally told me (or anyone else) about it. I assume you’ve read his and my grandmother’s story in the other posts I’ve published about their time in China.
Fabulous photos K. I have some of my grandmother from that era – she was a bit of a character and had a hat for every occasion!
There are so many more to add yet! I suspect most ladies then had a variety of hats. Now we tend to only wear them for pratical reasons rather than for fashion or fun.
By the way, there’s a really interesting comment on Shanghai Part 3 from James about his Chinese grandparents which you might find interesting if you’ve not seen it already.
What a great set of photos.
Thanks Debra. There’s loads more I’ve yet to scan which I will add as and when. 🙂