About The Chinese Mail

The Chinese Mail

The Chinese Mail (香港華字日報, pinyin Huazi Ribao, the "Chinese-Character Daily") was a major Chinese-language daily newspaper published in Hong Kong in the late Qing and early Republican eras. Founded in 1872 and edited by Chen Aiting and his son, it declared itself "the first Chinese newspaper ever issued under purely native direction" — a claim of independence that set the tone for a publication which, although it originated in connection with the English-language China Mail, maintained an editorial policy of its own and was regarded as more independent than its parent. It published until the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in 1941, and unlike several of its peers it did not revive after the war.

Origins and the question of 1864 or 1872

The Chinese Mail was founded in 1872 — its founding date is generally given as 17 April 1872 — though some sources claim it was founded in 1864, a discrepancy that reflects the tangled early history of Hong Kong's Chinese press, in which titles, editions and printing houses frequently shaded into one another. For many years the paper — known in Cantonese as Wa Tsz Yat Po — was published in connection with the proprietors of the English-language China Mail, the Hong Kong evening paper published from Wellington Street; early twentieth-century surveys of the Hong Kong press list "for many years the proprietors of the China Mail have published a vernacular paper, the Wa Tsz Yat Po (Chinese Mail)". Yet despite the link, the Chinese Mail had its own editorial policy that rendered it more independent, and it became fully independent of the China Mail in 1919.

"Under purely native direction"

The paper's self-description as the first Chinese newspaper issued under purely native direction marked its significance in the 1870s. At a time when public opinion in Hong Kong was basically controlled by Western press owners, Chinese editors were fighting to voice opinions of their own. The original materials of the paper's early years, rediscovered and studied by modern press historians, exemplify the suffering and hardship those pioneers of the Chinese press underwent in the turning period of 1872–1874, and revealingly show the coexistence of the traditional Peking Gazette — the old official bulletin — with the modern Chinese newspaper. The first editor was Chen Aiting, who ran the paper together with his son.

The rivalry that made two dailies, 1874

In 1874 the Chinese Mail entered into a rivalry with Wang Tao's newly founded Universal Circulating Herald. The competition was consequential out of proportion to its scale: it led to both newspapers being published daily, a step that helped establish the daily rhythm of the Chinese press in Hong Kong. The paper reached beyond the colony quickly — by March 1874 the Chinese Mail was being distributed to foreign countries such as the United States, carrying Hong Kong and Canton news to the overseas Chinese world. It guaranteed a circulation of at least one thousand copies.

News of Guangzhou, free of Guangzhou's censors

The Chinese Mail provided news on Guangzhou (Canton) thanks to the close proximity of the great Cantonese metropolis to Hong Kong. Just as importantly, because it was published in the British colony it was free from censorship from Guangzhou and from the Qing authorities on the mainland. That combination — a Chinese-language paper, edited by Chinese journalists, reporting freely on the affairs of Guangdong from just beyond the reach of the officials it covered — made it a characteristic product of colonial Hong Kong's press environment and a bridge between the treaty-port world and Chinese readers at home and abroad.

The parent: the English-language China Mail

The Chinese Mail grew up in the orbit of one of Asia's most durable newspapers. The China Mail, its English-language parent, was created as a weekly in 1845 by Andrew Shortrede, became a daily in 1867, and was published until 1974 — the longest-lived of any Hong Kong newspaper — from its head office in Wellington Street. For years it was the exclusive publisher of the Hong Kong government gazette, and its proprietors built a small publishing stable around it that included a humorous illustrated paper, a scholarly review and an overland weekly edition, as well as, "all along", the vernacular Wa Tsz Yat Po — the Chinese Mail. George Murray Bain, who became proprietor of the China Mail in 1872, the very year of the Chinese Mail's founding, presided over both sides of the business. The Chinese paper's separate editorial identity within that stable, and its eventual formal independence in 1919, mark the growing weight of the colony's Chinese readership, which by then sustained a press of its own.

Independence, final years and closure

In 1919 the newspaper became independent from the China Mail, standing on its own for the last two decades of its life. Its run through the late Qing and the early Republic made it one of colonial Hong Kong's principal Chinese dailies, serving the territory's Chinese merchant and general readership. In 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Army captured Hong Kong, the newspaper stopped publication. Although many other major Chinese-language newspapers managed to make a recovery after the occupation, the Chinese Mail did not: its seven-decade history ended with the fall of the colony.

Survival in the archives

The paper's issues are preserved and digitised in the Hong Kong Public Libraries' Old Hong Kong Newspapers collection, whose digitised run of the Chinese Mail covers 31 January 1895 to 31 December 1940. The same collection preserves a related Chinese Evening Mail, published from January 1937 to January 1938 — evidence of the paper's extended family of titles in its final decade. Together with the other titles in that collection — among them the Universal Circulating Herald and the Kung Sheung Daily News — it forms one of the principal surviving records of Hong Kong's Chinese-language press before the Second World War. Modern research on newly found original materials of the paper's earliest years has been published in the Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication, correcting long-held consensuses about the paper and fixing the actual date of its conversion into a daily. For historians, the Chinese Mail matters both for what it reported and for what it represented: a Chinese-edited daily asserting, from its first years, that Chinese readers could be addressed by Chinese journalists under their own direction.

Rediscovery and modern research

Interest in the paper is not only antiquarian. The study of newly found original materials from the Chinese Mail's first years, published by the press historian Zhuo Nan-Sheng in the Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication in 2014, reconfirmed findings that corrected some long-held consensuses about the newspaper and fixed the actual date of its turning into a daily. The materials exemplify the hardship the pioneers of the Chinese press underwent in 1872–1874, a turning period in Chinese journalists' fight to voice their own opinions when the public opinion of Hong Kong was basically controlled by the Western press owners there. They also reveal, tellingly, the coexistence in the same years of the traditional Peking Gazette and the modern Chinese newspaper — a juxtaposition that makes the Chinese Mail an unusually rich source for researchers tracing the development of modern Chinese press history.