{"id":20067,"date":"2025-12-15T18:56:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=20067"},"modified":"2025-12-15T18:56:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:56:46","slug":"rare-diaries-and-marco-polo-travelogue-reveal-hidden-histories-of-china-at-hong-kong-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=20067","title":{"rendered":"Rare diaries and Marco Polo travelogue reveal hidden histories of China at Hong Kong fair"},"content":{"rendered":"


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History often revolves around grand, overarching narratives focusing on wars and treaties. What can get lost is the everyday texture \u2013 the street-level hustle, the business deals and the cultural nuances that truly shaped an era.<\/p>\n

At Firsts Hong Kong, a rare book fair held from December 5-7 at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum that featured 25 exhibitors from around the globe, granular descriptions of history were showcased through books and photographs such as two rarely seen diaries of Samuel Rawson.<\/p>\n

The British merchant and freemason stayed in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Chinese treaty ports during the turbulent mid-19th century. The diaries, exhibited by British dealer Peter Harrington, include entries that cover the pivotal period encompassing the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) and the aftermath of the second opium war<\/span> (1856-1860), but from a very different perspective from most history books.<\/div>\n

\u201cOfficial records are valuable for writing down a broad sweep of history, but diaries such as those of Rawson preserve information otherwise lost to time,\u201d says Matthew Wills, an Asia specialist cataloguer for Peter Harrington.<\/p>\n

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The diaries of Samuel Rawson are seen at Firsts Hong Kong, a rare book fair held at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Photo: Jonathan Wong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The journals include details ranging from business deals with big-name traders to day-to-day tensions on the streets as the Taiping rebels grew increasingly restless.<\/p>\n

What surprised Wills was that by Rawson\u2019s account, the popular image of 19th-century treaty ports as wealthy, secure enclaves for Western expatriates was far from the truth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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History often revolves around grand, overarching narratives focusing on wars and treaties. What can get lost is the everyday texture \u2013 the street-level hustle, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[832,13049,5016,3020,12388,3569,5231,13050,10419,7790,206,13051],"class_list":["post-20067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-china","tag-diaries","tag-fair","tag-hidden","tag-histories","tag-hong","tag-kong","tag-marco","tag-polo","tag-rare","tag-reveal","tag-travelogue","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}