In 1931-1932, journalist Andree Viollis performs a series of reports on events drama that crosses the China occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese student riots calling for resistance, anti-Japanese boycott and political uncertainties within the Kuomintang. Although the British colony is away from the violence, the journalist does not feel less like other Western travelers, the Chinese community as a potential threat.
Figure famous committed journalism, Viollis Andree (1870-1950) investigated the USSR in 1927, the Afghan civil war in 1929 and published India against the British in 1930. In 1935 it will publish Indochine SOS, prefaced by André Malraux, to denounce the abuses of the colonial administration. Malraux sees Andree Viollis a representative of the "new journalism" whose purpose is no longer "[...] to search for characters, but things. Andree Viollis is now one of very few female senior reporters.
From December 1931 to March 1932, journalist "cover" the events in China for the Petit Parisien. En route to Shanghai, she arrived in Hong Kong at the end of the year: "So, I forget China, because it is a wonderful spectacle. Never more so than in the conquest of this rock England has shown its power and tenacious energy. Above, the city of pleasure with its white tiled palaces in parks, and below, the city labor and business. It piles up to a width of less than 600 meters from the base of the rock at the port, its monuments, its squares, lawns ensure the same sad statues of rulers in London, dressed in finery same bronze. It aligns along the streets and docks its banks, trading houses, shops with names proud, that sound the same throughout the Empire [...]. "
Unable to visit the shops closed on Saturday, she attended a movie. If the decor of the room surprised him by its luxury, it is especially sensitive to the separation between the two communities: "Families in crowds get inside it, press it, it loll: English families, fathers flourished , briar in the face of a ham, well planted on large yellow leather shoes, mothers lean and anxious, brooding look of sturdy children, hair straw hat in the club or school Chinese families, fathers to the long neck, displaying their belly in a long black dress or suit European, thin girls mannered, with bright hair short rouged cheeks and saffron, rolling in silk tunics clear gains closely ears to the hips; boys extraordinarily elegant, lacquered black heads, sober jackets and tortoiseshell glasses. All the world is ready and happy. The English groups exchange signs, Chinese groups interpellate. We talk, we joke, we laugh. But between English and Chinese, no contact, no mixing. Sitting side by side, they remain distant, impenetrable, grouped by blocks in this room that no current links. "
His evening is devoted to the Chinese city:" It is huge, bright and yet mysterious [...] These are sinkholes of blinding clarity, deafening and frightening tumult. All stores are open wide. Everywhere men leaning on the iron tap, carve or sawing wood, carried fabrics, cut or embroider leather. When do they sleep? They work, work tirelessly, night as day. [...] What a crowd! This is not the slippery softness of eastern India but people with strong shoulders, manly-looking, not at the farm. In the hard faces flat net, this is not the leak sly gaze Annamese the Annamite who sees himself as a slave, but a bold eye, sharp scans and you fathom you without fear or amenity. [...] Suddenly, a group is formed and grows around a freshly pasted poster: under large Chinese characters red, a drawing shows two small Japanese soldiers, one with a gun, the other with a bayonet, rushing to a giant Chinese shock that awaits them, despising law and its great curved in hand [... ] And I think that suddenly in this city of Hong Kong, they are a million of Chinese against a handful of Europeans who have come home. " As Marc
Chadourne, another famous journalist, who spends himself as Hong Kong in 1931 she perceives the Chinese community as a veiled threat that he recalls the words of a Chinese diplomat to the Peace Conference in 1919 " [...] Did you know that four men there is always a Chinese? Did you know that we are four hundred million, one quarter of humanity? Four hundred million in 1919, four hundred and fifty million today! These figures I saw then in an abstract way, how they seemed to me terrible eloquence that night, I was lost in the crowd stirred this city frightening tumult and splendor! "
This distrust, it does not feel it during a brief visit to Canton:" Like Hong Kong, cinemas, theaters, restaurants, peeps, music, clapping sound of wooden clogs on pavers. But yet, strangely, no animosity in looks and yet I do not encounter a single European. "
early January, she went to Shanghai and has witnessed the bloody battles of January-February between Chinese and Japanese troops around the chapei neighborhood. In mid-March, wanting to pursue its investigation of "reactions happened in Manchuria and Shanghai, she sailed for Japan.
From December 1931 to March 1932, journalist "cover" the events in China for the Petit Parisien. En route to Shanghai, she arrived in Hong Kong at the end of the year: "So, I forget China, because it is a wonderful spectacle. Never more so than in the conquest of this rock England has shown its power and tenacious energy. Above, the city of pleasure with its white tiled palaces in parks, and below, the city labor and business. It piles up to a width of less than 600 meters from the base of the rock at the port, its monuments, its squares, lawns ensure the same sad statues of rulers in London, dressed in finery same bronze. It aligns along the streets and docks its banks, trading houses, shops with names proud, that sound the same throughout the Empire [...]. " Unable to visit the shops closed on Saturday, she attended a movie. If the decor of the room surprised him by its luxury, it is especially sensitive to the separation between the two communities: "Families in crowds get inside it, press it, it loll: English families, fathers flourished , briar in the face of a ham, well planted on large yellow leather shoes, mothers lean and anxious, brooding look of sturdy children, hair straw hat in the club or school Chinese families, fathers to the long neck, displaying their belly in a long black dress or suit European, thin girls mannered, with bright hair short rouged cheeks and saffron, rolling in silk tunics clear gains closely ears to the hips; boys extraordinarily elegant, lacquered black heads, sober jackets and tortoiseshell glasses. All the world is ready and happy. The English groups exchange signs, Chinese groups interpellate. We talk, we joke, we laugh. But between English and Chinese, no contact, no mixing. Sitting side by side, they remain distant, impenetrable, grouped by blocks in this room that no current links. "
His evening is devoted to the Chinese city:" It is huge, bright and yet mysterious [...] These are sinkholes of blinding clarity, deafening and frightening tumult. All stores are open wide. Everywhere men leaning on the iron tap, carve or sawing wood, carried fabrics, cut or embroider leather. When do they sleep? They work, work tirelessly, night as day. [...] What a crowd! This is not the slippery softness of eastern India but people with strong shoulders, manly-looking, not at the farm. In the hard faces flat net, this is not the leak sly gaze Annamese the Annamite who sees himself as a slave, but a bold eye, sharp scans and you fathom you without fear or amenity. [...] Suddenly, a group is formed and grows around a freshly pasted poster: under large Chinese characters red, a drawing shows two small Japanese soldiers, one with a gun, the other with a bayonet, rushing to a giant Chinese shock that awaits them, despising law and its great curved in hand [... ] And I think that suddenly in this city of Hong Kong, they are a million of Chinese against a handful of Europeans who have come home. " As Marc Chadourne, another famous journalist, who spends himself as Hong Kong in 1931 she perceives the Chinese community as a veiled threat that he recalls the words of a Chinese diplomat to the Peace Conference in 1919 " [...] Did you know that four men there is always a Chinese? Did you know that we are four hundred million, one quarter of humanity? Four hundred million in 1919, four hundred and fifty million today! These figures I saw then in an abstract way, how they seemed to me terrible eloquence that night, I was lost in the crowd stirred this city frightening tumult and splendor! "
This distrust, it does not feel it during a brief visit to Canton:" Like Hong Kong, cinemas, theaters, restaurants, peeps, music, clapping sound of wooden clogs on pavers. But yet, strangely, no animosity in looks and yet I do not encounter a single European. "
early January, she went to Shanghai and has witnessed the bloody battles of January-February between Chinese and Japanese troops around the chapei neighborhood. In mid-March, wanting to pursue its investigation of "reactions happened in Manchuria and Shanghai, she sailed for Japan.
DVR.
Sources: Viollis (Andre), "Shanghai and fate of China", Paris, Editions Correa, 1933. Credits: http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de
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