The Pipe Organ in China Project Website: Updates for August 2023

31 August 2023

Minor fixes have been made to HKG1933a.

The Project understands that the erection of the new organ in the Cathedral of St. Ignatius at Zikawei (Xujiahui), Shanghai has reached the tuning and voicing stage. A dedication is planned for the last week of September.

Photo(s) of the Month: The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Guangzhou (Canton) in 1973. Prof. Urrows writes:

“I came across this photo in a September 1973 magazine, published exactly fifty years ago. This shows, in the background, the Cathedral, finished in 1888. The photo was taken in April 1973, on the occasion of the first Export Commodities Fair to be held in Canton since the start of the Cultural Revolution (which ended only in 1976). A large contingent of Western business people attended the fair, coming up by train from Hong Kong, which took 4 hours in those days. They were probably lodged at the 28-story Guangzhou Hotel on Haizhu Square, completed in 1968 and the tallest building in the city at that time.

The purpose-built one-story exhibition building was doubtless near the hotel, somewhat WNW of the Cathedral. This places it on Qiyi Street, near the commerical area of Gaodi Lane. [In March 2025 I had a opportunity to photograph what I believe to be the same site.] The ramshackle neighborhood in the background between the exhibition and the Cathedral, was essentially the same when I first visited the cathedral church in October 1989, sixteen years later. When I visited again in 2010, the neighborhood was under total demolition, a telling example of the domicide movement of the 1990s and 2000s (see second photo). The church had been renovated, with some tasteless stained glass added in 2008 (see fourth photo, with the Project’s invaluable RA, Florence Cheng, standing next to me.) 

“We have never been able to trace an organ in this church, but a 1917 report mentioned one. I have long thought this was probably a large harmonium.”

Organs in the Census: 203

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