Studio re-enactment of an opening ceremony for a Sze Yuen Ming (Yao Hua Studio) (耀華) photographic shop/studio, Shanghai
Collection
Identifier
RA-m074
Notes
University of Bristol - Historical Photographs of China reference number: RA-m074. A scan of a magic lantern slide. Royal Asiatic Society Library reference: Glass Slide.00/(074). The banners celebrate the opening of the new shop/studio. For example, on the leftmost banner, the line of smaller characters on the right-hand side is 耀華寶號 開張之喜 (耀華) (= happy grand opening of the Yao Hua treasure house). The first character of the larger characters on the left-hand banner is out of the picture, but from the structure of the verse, it should be the same as the third, which is ‘month’. The last character is behind the back of a chair, but should be the one for ‘long’. The whole line is literally ‘monthly profit, monthly increases, can last, can prolong’. The cuboid container or ‘treasure bowl’ (聚寶盆) was for burning paper money, which was in the form of paper sycee silver ingots (元寶), which can be seen in the carrying basket nearby. The child is lighting a string of firecrackers to bring good fortune. As part of the ceremony, a beverage is being poured. The photograph was taken by Sze Yuen Ming (Yao Hua Studio) and most probably depicts a staging, or re-enactment, of a ceremony for the opening of the branch Sze Yuen Ming studio (‘West Yao Hua’) at 42 Nanking Road, Shanghai, in 1905. See “Revisiting ‘Ancestral Worship’” by Raymond Mann: https://royalasiaticsociety.org/revisiting-ancestral-worship/.
Caption in album or on mount
74 / ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
Caption on photograph
Sze Yuen Ming [...] / [...]
Location
Estimated Date
1905
Photographer
Material
Other
Media
Black and white photograph
Repository
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
