Carl Crow (1884–1945) was a Missouri-born newspaperman, businessman, and author who managed several newspapers and then opened the first Western advertising agency in Shanghai, China, which he ran for 19 years, creating much of what is thought of today as the sexy China Girl poster and calendar ads.[1] In the 1930s and 1940s, Crow wrote 13 books, including his story about why he is a Confucian Master Kung: The Story of Confucius (1937), his anecdotal The Chinese are Like That (1938) (published under the title My Friends the Chinese in England), and his most popular work 400 Million Customers (1937).[2] Crow was also founding editor of the Shanghai Evening Post. He died in Manhattan.
Carl Crow arrived in Shanghai in 1911 and made the city his home for a quarter of a century, working there as a journalist, newspaper proprietor, and groundbreaking ad-man. He also did stints as a hostage negotiator, emergency police sergeant, gentleman farmer, go-between for the American government, and propagandist. As his career progressed, so did the fortunes of Shanghai. The city transformed itself from a dull colonial backwater when Crow arrived, to the thriving and ruthless cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1930s when Crow wrote his pioneering book 400 Million Customers, which encouraged a flood of business into China in an intriguing foreshadowing of today’s boom.
In 1935, the Shanghai Municipal Council published a map for visitors to the city which they commissioned Crow to produce. A reproduction of the map was printed in 2005 to help fund the copying of the archive of Crow's unpublished works, diaries and correspondence held at the University of Missouri.[3]
Among Crow’s exploits were attending the negotiations in Peking which led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty, getting a scoop on the Japanese interference in China during the First World War, negotiating the release of a group of western hostages from a mountain bandit lair, and being one of the first westerners to journey up the Burma Road during the Second World War. He met and interviewed most of the major figures of the time, including Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, the Soong sisters, and Mao Zedong’s second-in-command Zhou En-lai. During the Second World War he worked for American intelligence alongside Owen Lattimore, co-ordinating US policies to support China against Japan.
He was very anti-Japanese, and fearing retribution he left Shanghai for good in 1937, just days after the Japanese attacked as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War's Battle of Shanghai.[1]
He returned to Chongqing in 1939, entering China via the Burma Road from Rangoon to Kunming. He wrote a diary of this time which has been edited by Shanghai-based English writer Paul French, and published as Carl Crow: The long road back to China.
1913 – The Travelers Handbook for China, Hwa-Mei Book Concern, Shanghai, (1913)
1914 – America and the Philippines, Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, NY, (1914)
1916 – Japan and America: A Contrast, Robert M McBride & Company, New York, (1916)
1937 – I Speak for the Chinese, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1937)
1937 – Four Hundred Million Customers, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1937)
1938 – The Chinese Are Like That, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1938)
1939 – He Opened the Door of Japan, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1939)
1940 – Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1940)
1940 – Meet the South Americans, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1940)
1940 – Master Kung: The Story of Confucius, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1940)
1942 – Japan’s Dream of World Empire: The Tanaka Memorial, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1942)
1943 – The Great American Customer, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1943)
1944 – China Takes Her Place, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1944)
1945 – The City of Flint Grows Up, Harper & Brothers, New York, (1945)
2009 – The Long Road Back to China: The Burma Road Wartime Diaries (written 1939, pub. 2009)