A fascinating run spanning two years of this weekly newspaper, providing a wealth of detailed information about the legal and current affairs, politics, commerce, and cultural activities in China. Every issue contains entries on birth, marriages, and deaths, arrival and departures of passengers, news on the outports (Tientsin, Foochow, Hiogo, Yokohama, Hongkong, Canton, Macao), public meetings, extracts from the Peking Gazette (the official Qing newspaper), law reports, international news, as well as ‘Commercial Intelligence’ (incl. prices for tea, silk, cotton, and opium). The motto of the newspaper was “impartial, not neutral”.
“The North China Herald was founded as a weekly at Shanghai in 1850 by Henry Shearman… an auctioneer and, by his own advertisement, agent for Pulvermacher’s Patent Portable Hydro-Electric Chain for Personal Use. A ‘Daily Shipping and Commercial News’ was introduced in connection with The Herald, and in 1864 was enlarged as the ‘North China Daily News’. The Herald was continued as its weekly edition, and the combination came to rank as the chief foreign newspaper institution in China if not indeed in the entire Far East, with a combined circulation in 1931 approaching 10,000… always independent and always British, representing however the commercial viewpoint and often in disagreement with British official viewpoint…” (Britton: The Chinese Periodical Press, p.49).
