Electric meters, eclectic tastes define this collector
Ma's collection of old meters
Rag-picker or junk collector? Ma Jiqiu doesn’t care what people call him.
Among other items in his work studio on 1,000-year-old Sanlin Road in the Pudong New Area are an old sewing machine, pin-up posters, plastic dolls, radios, an electric fan from the early 1900s, and a suitcase used by former Jewish refugee in Shanghai during the late 1930s.
Ma finds treasure in what many people might dismiss as trash.
“I call myself the savior of waste,” says the 40-year-old.
Three years ago, he established the Old Kilowatt-Hour Meter Museum to display about 5,000 electricity meters he collected over the years. They include meters imported from overseas and meters manufactured and used in Shanghai during the early 1900s.
One of the old meters made by GE
The meters span more than 90 brands, with nearly 200 models from 16 countries. They include the museum’s oldest meter, a Ferranti made in England in 1905; a General Electric meter made in 1927; and a Toshiba model made in Japan in 1939.
Ma found all the meters in Shanghai’s old districts, such as Jing’an, Hongkou and Huangpu, collecting them from derelict houses, construction site debris and garbage stations.
After Shanghai opened as a commercial port in 1843, Western technologies flooded in. The city was the first in China to have electricity and set up a power station.
Ma Jiqiu has collected old meters with a passion in retirement.
“The city was also the nation’s first to use kilowatt-hour meters,” Ma says. “No one cared about them before, thinking them trash, and just threw them away.”
But Ma saw value in the old meters and started to collect them with a passion.
“The meters bear witness to mankind’s development of electricity,” he says, “They are a reminder for us all today of the importance of saving energy.”
He collected the first meter from a trash station in Hongkou District four years ago.
“It looked pretty and special,” he says. “I had never seen an apparatus like that before, which aroused my interest.”
He took it home and studied it. After some tidy-up work and research, the gadget was found to be a Canadian brand Sangamo made in the 1940s.
Canadian-made Sangamo meter from the 1940s
His curiosity snowballed, and he began looking for old meters every time he went out on scavenger hunts for vintage items. In so doing, his knowledge about electricity and Shanghai’s power development grew.
Ma’s fascination with the second-hand “junk” business began in 2011 when a company he owned went belly-up and he plunged from being a multi-millionaire to being penniless. Needing to pay off debts, he began trading in secondhand goods, an industry with a low entry threshold.
“I quickly became obsessed with the old stuff,” he says. “It was fun to find it and then learn about old lifestyles and commercial and economic development 100 years ago.”
One old meter’s nameplate was engraved with Siemssen & Co. With some research, Ma discovered the company was a German trading firm founded in 1856. The nameplate revealed that the company traded in electric appliances, hardware, ordnance and drugs.
Ma’s work studio, just a few steps away from the museum, is filled with vintage furniture and other second hand items collected over the years.
Ma also discovered that the company had once set up a branch office on Jiangxi Road and bought the property at No. 28 on the Bund in 1868.
“All this interesting history can be found on a meter’s plate,” he says.
The Toshiba meter from 1939 was made of glass.
“That was just before the Second World War, and metals were allocated to weapons manufacture, so glass was used as a substitute,” Ma says.
As his collection grew, he decided to set up a museum to exhibit the old meters.
In 2015, he found available space on old Sanlin Road. Though not large enough to exhibit his whole collection, the museum does offer visitors a clear timeline of the city’s electric evolution over a century.
Ma’s ambitions didn’t stop there. His latest plan is to create a power museum.
“It’s not only about old meters,” he says, “but also about new energy technology, power applications and achievements, as well as interactive activities. I’ve got a long way to go, but if I don’t do it, no one else will. The city is changing so fast, and old things disappear every day.”
If you go
Old Kilowatt-Hour Meter Museum
Address: 99 Donglin Street, Sanlin Road, Pudong New Area
Admission: 50 yuan (US$7.40)
You can book in advance on Airbnb.
Ma also collects old-fashioned electric household appliances, such as iron, fan and hair drier.
An old chair once used in a barber’s shop
Old hot-water thermos bottles in Ma’s collection
