Peiyang Press (fl. c. 1928 - 1949)

The Peiyang Press (fl. c. 1928 – 1949) was a Chinese publisher active in Tianjin and Beijing before and during World War II. The press focused on books and maps for the western traveler in China, including works in English, German, and Dutch. It is likely that the press was owned and operated by ex-pat westerners, although we have no evidence to support this theory. Among these publications were British authors Alice Leighton Cleather and Basil Crump’s English-language book Buddhism: The Science of Life (2nd ed., 1928), Robert M. Duncan’s Peiping Municipality and the Diplomatic Quarter (1933), a Chinese-Dutch dictionary (1935) and a 1937 album of black and white photographs of British military exercises in China. They also issued a detailed city plan, Map of Tientsin, with editions published in at least 1928 and 1941. They are known to have published at least two influential pictorial maps in English during the 1930s, Frank Dorn's iconic A Map and History of Peiping and John Kirk Sewall's A Pictorial Map of Peiping.