Local theatre-goers will not at first recognize the significance of the statement that Ah Yune, the chief carpenter of the Lyceum Theatre? is dead, chiefly because his work was not brought to their notice by reference in the programmes of the Shanghai A.D.C. and the many other amateur dramatic organizations, as well as professional, who availed themselves of his services, "Mo-bee," as he was more familiarly known, was the second generation of stage carpenters who have served the A.D.C. so well. His father Ah Ping, to whom a brass memorial plate is erected in the theatre was one in a thousand when it came to solving the many perplexing problems which stagecraft presented, and it was said of him that while a difficult point was being put to him he would stand listening knotting a piece of string. Then when he had all the facts he would sit apart and by the time he had unravelled the tangle of his own making the problem was solved so far as Ah Ping was concerned. Mo-bee was of a similar type. He had learned much of what his father had to teach him, and when he succeeded to the position was quite ready to go on from where his predecessor had left off. No difficulty dismayed him, and on many an occasion he would take very amateurish rough drawings from foreign scenic artists and not only reduce them to some semblance of order, but go quietly to work with the joinery upon which so much of the foreigner's success depended. With him the size of a setting was no object; from a half-set on the stage to the big effects for military tattoos Mo-bee ranged with a quiet efficiency in which those who worked with him had the completest trust. He would listen to instruction with a faraway look in his eye and when he had heard everything and understood it, a laconic "Can" pledged him to the successful carrying out of the work. The Shanghai A.D.C, has lost in him a man who served them loyally for nearly a quarter of a century, and the history of whose family's connection with the club and the theatre goes back to the days when Shanghai was very young.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.