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    • Not to Be Ministered Unto
    • War & Reunion
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  • RAPID STRIDES
    • Return to the East
    • Networking
    • Career Moves
    • Ho Hong Bank
    • Marriage to Mo-li How
    • The How Empire
    • Setting Up House
    • Extended Family
    • Han Ho & Family in Amoy
  • BOILING POINT
    • Under One Roof
    • Brief Service
    • The Clamor of the Financiers
    • Merger & Dissolution
    • Laid to Rest
  • ZING WEI
    • New Silk Town
    • Tsunghua Girls' School
    • Room & Board
    • St. Elizabeth's Hospital
    • She Married Him
  • WAR YEARS
    • Children At Last
    • Back to Business
    • Fleeing the Japanese
    • Hong Kong Roots
    • Return to Shanghai
    • Escape to Hong Kong
  • TO THE US & CODAS
    • The Children's Schooling
    • A Circle of Friends
    • Family Milestones
    • Han Ho & His Family
    • Cousins & Their Families
    • Mo-li & Her Family
  • EXTRAS
    • Love-Love: Tennis Anyone?
    • Who's Who
    • Family Tree
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出版巨人

The How Empire

From 1897

        The story of Mo-li’s father’s rise illustrates both the golden opportunities of the period and the promise for Han Liang in making such a match.

        The Commercial Press’ top sellers included its Complete Library series (萬有文庫 Wanyou Wenku), magazines such as the biweekly Eastern Miscellany (東方雜誌 Dongfang Zazhi), which had a circulation of 15,000, Women, English Weekly, and countless other periodicals. It eventually had over twenty stores around the country, operated a library in Shanghai, and was also an early producer of popular movies. The Press was arguably the CBS or Amazon of its day, both creating and meeting the demand for new forms of information and entertainment for a fast-changing populace. In becoming a son-in-law of the How family, Han Liang also became a director of the company.

        By the time Han Liang and Mo-li were married, her father ZF How had been dead for a decade – shot down on the streets of Shanghai in 1914 amid the complex cross-currents of early Republican politics. He had been a completely self-made man. Thanks to an American Presbyterian pastor who employed his mother as a servant, How became an English-speaker and a Christian. The pastor had decided an education was in order for the promising eleven-year-old after How made his way from the family village on the outskirts of the city to the pastor’s home in Shanghai in order to find his mother.


        For a time, How worked at St. Luke’s Hospital as a medical orderly, a new occupation that initially attracted mainly young men associated with the church. He then found employment as an English-language typesetter with the influential North China Daily News (字林西報 Zilin Xibao) and China Gazette (捷报 Jie Bao). Most linotype setters knew no English at all.
Picture
ZF How and his family, presumably photographed in a studio around Easter 1913 (courtesy of J Suez)

        In 1897, How, former classmate Bao Xian’en (鮑咸恩), a brother of Bao, and a few others were working as printers’ apprentices. They decided to set up their own press. Initially, they were a pure print shop, producing such items as account books, ledgers, and also bibles. Then in 1898 the company found its niche when it published a bilingual primer for English-language learners – 華英初階 Huaying Chujie. It became a runaway bestseller. As the government revamped schools, How’s press became the country’s premier textbook publisher and soon branched out into all kinds of general publications and magazines that targeted the public’s insatiable demand for knowledge of the world.

        How built an extensive production facility on a compound in the northeast Hongkew area that was home to so many of America's original missionaries and the institutions they established. The Press compound extended over an area equivalent to many city blocks and included the How house. (An old postcard view of the corporate campus may be seen on the Taiwan Commercial Press website.)

        Further consolidating the business, How married a Bao sister (at the time, their surname was romanized as "Bau"). Her family members were also practicing Christians.

        When How was assassinated in 1914, his death and subsequent lavish funeral cortege were reported in The New York Times.
Picture
The widowed Mrs. How (nee Bao/Bau) and her eight daughters. Mo-li is back row left with glasses. They stand outside the family home which was on an enormous Commercial Press campus in Hongkew (albums of LH Quon)
Picture
The girls are lined up by age, with #1 Mo-li at the far right in glasses, even though in future photos, it would always be Ruth who wore glasses (albums of LH Quon)

SOURCES
  • Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Harvard University Press, 1999) by Leo Ou-Fan Lee
​
  • 民國大出版家夏瑞芳 |A Pioneer Remembered – A Biography of How Zoen Fong (2014年臺灣商務印書館) 趙俊邁著
  • The Birth of a Republic: Francis Stafford's Photographs of China's 1911 Revolution and Beyond (University of Washington Press, 2010) by Hanchao Lu – this is a beautiful book based on photography commissioned by the Commercial Press and including the photo of ZF How and his family, pictured above

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  • Home/Prefaces
    • A Granddaughter's Preamble
    • Eulogy for a Grandmother
    • In Her Own Words
    • His Official Biographies
    • New on This Site
  • HAN LIANG
    • A Widow & Her Sons
    • Treaty Port City
    • First Lessons
    • Provincial Capital
    • Imperial City
    • Cream of the Crop
    • Last Stop Shanghai
  • US STUDIES
    • A Midwestern Start
    • This Land Belongs to You & Me
    • In Wilson's Footsteps
    • Not to Be Ministered Unto
    • War & Reunion
    • PhD Years
    • Dr. Huang & Mrs. Hyde
    • Professional Practice & Alliance
  • RAPID STRIDES
    • Return to the East
    • Networking
    • Career Moves
    • Ho Hong Bank
    • Marriage to Mo-li How
    • The How Empire
    • Setting Up House
    • Extended Family
    • Han Ho & Family in Amoy
  • BOILING POINT
    • Under One Roof
    • Brief Service
    • The Clamor of the Financiers
    • Merger & Dissolution
    • Laid to Rest
  • ZING WEI
    • New Silk Town
    • Tsunghua Girls' School
    • Room & Board
    • St. Elizabeth's Hospital
    • She Married Him
  • WAR YEARS
    • Children At Last
    • Back to Business
    • Fleeing the Japanese
    • Hong Kong Roots
    • Return to Shanghai
    • Escape to Hong Kong
  • TO THE US & CODAS
    • The Children's Schooling
    • A Circle of Friends
    • Family Milestones
    • Han Ho & His Family
    • Cousins & Their Families
    • Mo-li & Her Family
  • EXTRAS
    • Love-Love: Tennis Anyone?
    • Who's Who
    • Family Tree
    • Huang Genealogy & Xiamen
    • Tang Genealogy & Wuxi
    • Timeline
    • Inspiration & Acknowledgments
    • Further Quests & Questions
    • Site Map