(This is our fourth post about the films of diplo­mat John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray. See the first post for more background.)

To escape the heat and air of the city, diplo­mats in Peking (Bei­jing) spent their week­ends and sum­mers in the West­ern Hills, the hilly region to the north­west of Peking, where they often “rented a tem­ple.” Dur­ing his pre­vi­ous time in Peking as Sec­re­tary to the Lega­tion (1913–1917), Mac­Mur­ray expressed his love for the Hills in hun­dreds of pho­tographs of the area’s tem­ples and scenery. When he returned in 1925, he focused his motion pic­ture cam­era on peo­ple instead. In addi­tion to fam­ily and friends, Mac­Mur­ray filmed vil­lage and rural scenes dur­ing var­i­ous trips in the Hills, where trans­port was often by don­key. Mac­Mur­ray labeled the films him­self, but did not pro­vide any iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Some of the scenes are shot at Ta Pei Ssu, a tem­ple in the Pa Ta Ch’u val­ley, where Mac­Mur­ray and his fam­ily leased liv­ing quarters.

Lease of liv­ing quar­ters at Ta Pei Ssu for 1926–1927. The other half was kept by the temple’s admin­is­tra­tion (trans­la­tion at TaPeiSsutransl.pdf).

The first film includes uniden­ti­fied views and local scenes, vil­lagers per­form­ing man­ual labor, don­keys and camels and their dri­vers, and views of the hills cov­ered in snow. The footage also fea­tures a trip to the Ming tombs.

This film includes some fam­ily and tem­ple scenes, prob­a­bly at Ta Pei Ssu. In addi­tion, the film includes street and vil­lage scenes, as well as footage of car­ri­ers, labor­ers, pig herders, and other villagers.

Miao Feng Shan (“Mar­velous Peak Moun­tain”) was a pop­u­lar pil­grim­age site about 30 miles north­west of Peking. On Octo­ber 23, 1928 Mac­Mur­ray wrote his mother that the fam­ily was tak­ing their guest, the artist Lil­ian (“Jack”) Miller, on a five-day trip in the West­ern Hills to Lung Ch’uan Ssu, Miao Feng Shan, Ti Shui Yen, and T’an Che Ssu. Mac­Mur­ray must have shot this film dur­ing this trip. The film includes views of the Sum­mer Palace north­west of Bei­jing, but the scenes fol­low­ing are not iden­ti­fied. The last part of this film seems to have been shot while climb­ing Miao Feng Shan.

The frag­ments on this reel include images of MacMurray’s chil­dren, Joan and Frank, and a guest rid­ing don­keys in the West­ern Hills, pos­si­bly Lil­ian (“Jack”) Miller.

This brief film opens with camels and a camel herder, fol­lowed by a man who seems to be the sto­ry­teller at Chieh Tai-Ssu (a tem­ple in the West­ern Hills), men­tioned on the film reel label. The footage ends with a small boat being pulled across a stream.

Pre­vi­ous posts about the films of John Van Antwerp MacMurray:

• MacMurray’s films of China, 1925–1929 (includ­ing “Kalgan”)
• Trip to attend the rein­ter­ment of Sun Yat-sen, 1929
• A diplomat’s trip along the Yangtze River, 1928