Rabindranath Tagore, with group outside Sikh Gurdwara, Shanghai

Rabindranath Tagore, with group outside Sikh Gurdwara, Shanghai

Notes

University of Bristol - Historical Photographs of China reference number: Jn-s38.  Photograph mounted on card, with photographer's name (YOSHISAKA PHOTO CO SHANGHAI).  Large group of Sikh men and boys.  Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali polymath and poet, seated in the centre.  Tagore visited China three times in the 1920s, his first visit was in 1924, aged 63.  His second and third visits were in 1929.  "On 24 April 1924, Rabindranath Tagore arrived in Shanghai for a lecture tour of China arranged by Liang Qichao, China's foremost modern intellectual"  (Source: From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra).  The old Shanghai Sikh gurdwara is in the background. The old Sikh Gurdwara was on Tung Pao-hsing Road (now 326 Dong Bao Xing Lu; Dongbaoxing Lu), one block west of North Szechuen Road (Sichuan Bei Lu), and next to the railway tracks running to Woosung.  Kartar Singh Sangha (who served in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and was in China 1919 to 1960), is standing tall to the right of Tagore, wearing a light overcoat and a dark turban. Source: 'Sikhs in Shanghai' web site https://sikhsinshanghai.wordpress.com/).  See Jn-s39, Jn-s40, Jn-s41 and Jn-s42.

Location

Shanghai

Estimated Date

1920s

Photographer

Yoshisaka, I.

Material

Paper

Media

Black and white photograph