Yang-king-pang 洋涇浜

Yang-king-pang 洋涇浜 (Yangjingbang in Chinese Pinyin) used to be a tributary of the Huangppu River in Shanghai. It was a narrow creek that separated the British Concession and later the International Settlement and the French Concession. The Shanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents, written by Rev. C.E. Darwent, described the creek as follows.

“Beyond the [Shanghai] Club are a few other hongs, and then the boundary of the old British Settlement, the Yang-king-pang Creek–not exactly a beautiful waterway, but so useful for Chinese traffic and the conveyance of garbage, that it has resisted all proposals to arch it over and make of it a broad road out into the country.

A bridge leads over the creek into the French Settlement.” (Darwent 1904: 11)

The postcard above showed how busy the area was in the early 20th century. Due to problems of hygiene and smell, in 1915 the British and French Concessions agreed to fill in the creek and gave the new road the name Avenue Edward VII, after King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. The current name Yan’an Road East 延安東路 was designated by the government of the People’s Republic of China.

Since the French Concession was situated at the south of Yang-king-pang. After the First Opium War, foreign powers could enjoy free trade as well as other rights such as establishing their own postal services in China. There were two types of French post offices in China. The first type was run by France and used stamps of France with the overprint CHINE ‘China’. These offices were found in the major treaty ports: Shanghai, Tientsin, Chefoo, Hankow, Peking, Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo. The stamp on the above postcard bore the overprint HOI HAO (Haikou 海口). The Hoi Hao Post Office alongside Canton 廣州, Kouang-Tchéou-Wan 廣州灣, Mong-Tseu 蒙自, Pakhoi 北海, Tchongking 重慶, and Yunnanfu 昆明 belonged to the second type of post offices. These seven post offices were administered by French Indo-Chine and issued stamps with their own overprints.

The Chinese characters 芽此音寶四客 were stamped at the back of the postcard. 芽 means ‘sprout’ and 此音 means ‘this is pronounced as’. 寶四客 (po sy khah in Shanghai dialect) could be a transliteration of pousse de pois in French.

Though no longer referred to the creek, the name Yang-king-pang lived on as the name also stood for Pidgin English spoken in China. Pidgin English spread outside of its birthplace – Canton and was used in the treaty ports opened after the First Opium War. Pidgin English as a medium of cross-cultural communication was proven to be effective again. In Shanghai, Pidgin English was known as Yang-king-pang English (洋涇浜英語). By the middle of the 19^th century, Shanghai had became a cosmopolitan. Its modernity attracted not only businesspeople but also tourists from around the world. Rev. C.E. Darwent published the book Shanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents (1904) to help residents and travellers know the city better. Like modern tourist guidebooks, the handbook introduced the history, transports, services, and the must do/see/eat in the city. The book began by introducing the lingua franca – Pidgin English. As the author explained: “It is quite possible for the traveller to visit all the places and see all the sights mentioned in these pages without knowing a word of Chinese, but he will find that familiarity with pidgin-English will be of very great assistance.” (p. i) To get by, foreigners must master the pidgin. So, let’s look at a few examples from the book (Left: English; right: Pidgin).

Instead of adopting English question words: what, who, when, where, why, and how,question words in Pidgin English were more transparent – typically the word what followed by the thing being questioned, for example, what time for ‘when’; what side or what placee for ‘where’; what man for ‘who’, etc. The word can was used broadly to talk about anything related to ability or possibility, for example can do ‘That will do’; the opposite was no can do. To ask yes/no questions, simply added rising intonation to the end of declarative statements like the following sentences.

As you can see, the pidgin sentences were more reduced compared to the English counterparts. This is because the subject and/or the object were omitted.