The conflagration, the origin of which is still a mystery, completely destroyed the large studios and workshops of the Chinese motion picture concern which had moved out of the premises when hostilities broke out in 1937. The complex consists of a number of foreign-style buildings and wooden huts and is understood to have been used for the storing of medical supplies for a military hospital near by, ever since the Japanese occupied that area.
Additional machines from the Nantao and Chapei fire brigades arrived on the scene about one and a half hours after the fire was first reported, but departed soon afterwards when they realized that no water was available to combat the blaze.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.