Obituary annoucing the death of an old man who lived in Beijing. Woodblock printed in black and red ink on paper.
Collected by the donor's great uncle, Christopher Bass Mears II, in China where he worked from 1882 to 1912 for the Imperial Chinese Customs. These had been taken into the control of foreign nationals after the first Opium War of 1839-42, under the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842. This led to many foreign nationals, mostly British, working in the major port cities of China. The items collected by C. B. Mears II and donated to the Horniman Museum were principally acquired soon after 1900, when all his original possessions were destroyed in the Boxer Rebellion. Many of the items appear in photographs of his home in Peking in 1907, and are typical of the 'curios' purchased by British overseas workers and tourists in the period leading up to the Sun Yat Sin revolution of 1912. Upon retirement in 1912 Mears and his wife returned to England and settled in Brighton.
