Shanghai’s Hen-Lee Regatta Is Scratched

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6864, 21 May 1932, Page 13

Shanghai’s Hen-Lee Regatta Is Scratched

CHINESE STUDENTS OBJECTED TO SOURCE OF BETTING! Shanghai’s Hen-Lce Regatta will not lake place this June, notes a correspondent of an English paper. Hen-Lee is the popular river resort_ of Shanghai’s rowing enthusiasts. Situated on a branch of the Suchow Greek, a few miles outside the International Settlement, it is a little village near which stretches a mile of muddy water wide enough to give room for four boats abreast. There is a foreigners’ clubhouse, and there arc cosy houseboats in which the whites camp during summer week-ends. The village’s real name is something quite different, which nobody bothers to remember. Years and years ago it was christened Hen-Lee, and Hen-Lee it has been called ever since. Two or three years ago a group of disgruntled Chinese students, desirous of annoying the foreigners, persuaded the mandarin who had jurisdiction in that district to issue a solemn proclamation banning the regatta, which bad been held for many a year without any threat of interference, on the grounds that it was a source of demoralising betting. This, coming from a people whose national pastime is playing for money, was sheer cheek, of course, and was intended to be. But in consequence of the edict the event was transferred to the part of the Whangpoo River, just below Shanghai, known as The Point. No objection has been taken to the practice rowing at Hen-Lee. The authorities were content to see the regatta itself transferred to a place which the rowers consider much less suitable and pleasant for the event. Thereby those authorities doubtless felt that the foreigners were humiliated and “lost face.”