16 Dec 1941, Harry Ching's wartime diary

Heavy shelling again in the softening up of our waterfront. I am local stringer for The Times, London. We correspondents have religiously filed daily throughout the first week, but the pressure was heavy and few messages have reached our newspapers. A trying day, with a continuous showering of shells and bombs. Anxiety deepening by the hour; but morale still holding. Some of the cinema theatres are carrying on, with shows at noon and 2 p.m. subject to abandonment without notice. 

A Chinese newspaper, the Wah Kiu Yat Po, tendered to its readers some advice on "How to Comport Yourselves in the Street". According to the Wah Kiu, "Chinese wearing foreign clothes should not put both their hands into their trousers or coat pockets. Those wearing Chinese clothes should not put their hands into their sleeves or into the back of their gown when they walk. They should walk with their hands out hanging by their sides. The Police yesterday stopped many pedestrians and warned them of these factors."

A firewood racket was exposed and deplored. The poor are actually selling their free ration at a profit. Perhaps they know that soon there will be blackwood furniture to burn. Official notifications about food still envisage a long siege. In the defence preparations, siege rations had been got ready - for the last of our days, salt fish and hard biscuits made from powdered peanuts. The latter are now appearing. The Government urged people not to throw away the thin red skins of peanuts "which contain far more of the anti-beri beri and anti-pellagra vitamins than does Marmite or yeast". The population was chided, "It is unpatriotic and disloyal to eat more than your daily ration." We are urged to grow our own food as much as we can. This is old advice; many of us already have vegetable gardens on our flat roofs, Government having suggested it a few years before when the Japanese occupation of the Canton area caused supplies from there to dwindle.