Cream silk programme printed with a decorative red border and dark blue lettering giving details of the productions on 8th March 1854 and of Horatio Buskin's tenancy of the theatre. Silk programme for the opening of a season at the Tae-Ming Theatre, Shanghai, Wednesday 8th March 1854 Silk and satin theatre programmes were frequently produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to commemorate special theatrical and musical events, the less expensive ones with integral fringing made from fraying cut edges, and the more expensive with separately applied silk or metallic fringes. This programme is not fringed but was printed with an intricate Chinese decorative border, for the opening of a season on 8th March 1854 at the Tae-Ming Theatre, Shanghai, under the management of Horatio Buskin. The plays that opened the season on 8th March 1854 - A Fast Train-High Pressure-Express and The Practical Man were performed by British actors, some extremely well-known in London, including the comic actors John Pritt Harley (1786-1858), Paul Bedford (1792-1871), and the singer and actress Priscilla Horton (1818-1895). The scenery was designed by the eminent painter and Royal Academician Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (1793-1867). The description of the opening production as a 'Bradshawian Transatlantic Farce' refers to the popular series of Bradshaw's railway timetables and travel guides published in Britain from 1838 by George Bradshaw. A tour to China in 1854 would have taken months and would not have been undertaken lightly by British actors, who nevertheless travelled the globe astonishingly frequently in the 19th century, given the vicissitudes of transport by sea and land. We know from a similar silk playbill for the Tae-Ming Theatre, 5th April 1854, sold at auction in November 2015 in Hong Kong by Charlotte du Rietz Rare Books, but not in our collection, that there were more productions that season, probably by the same company. The programme that evening comprised A Race for a Dinner, Anything for a Change, and Box and Cox, with scenery by the famous British scene painters Thomas Grieve (1799-1882) and William Telbin (1813-1872). Both playbills noted that the theatre was under the patronage of Tae-Ping Wang, also known as Hong Xiuquan (1814–64) leader of the Taiping Rebellion between 1850 and 1864.