Around the beginning of the 20th century, a young Frenchman named Labansat set up an outdoor stall on Tibet Road in Shanghai and played gramophone records to Chinese citizens who were curious. The phonograph was purchased from Moutrie and Company, and he charged anyone 10 cents to listen to a novelty record called "Laughing Foreigners". Anyone capable of resisting any laughs or chuckles got their money back. Phonographs were becoming popular in the city in 1906. By 1908, he received help from a French engineer and an assistant from Ningbo and established "Pathé Orient", also known as "Pathé Asia," though other sources point to the renaming in 1921. The company initially recorded Peking Opera. Mandarin popular songs became hits, and they were sold at stores like Wing On in Shanghai. In 1930 Pathé's factory was taken over by Columbia Records in Shanghai and was used to press Odeon and Beka with the manufacturing portion named "China Record Co. Ltd," and the distributor continued as Pathé Orient. In the same decade, Pathé went under British EMI, which was originally seeking to make a profit on The Bund selling gramophone records. Ren Guang became Pathé-EMI’s new director and began getting involved with leftist music devoted to the proletarian cause. In 1937 Ren was fired from the company when the leftist music was cut off by the Japanese military officials. Any Japanese plants were also taken back to the Nipponophone Company. From the late 1930s to 1940s the company held the rights to 90% of the mandopop songs. In 1949 with the communist victory in the Shanghai Campaign of the Chinese Civil War Pathé's factory in Shanghai was accused of promoting pornography, and under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong in China popular music produced prior to 1949 was denounced as Yellow Music, the color yellow became associated with pornography and pornography was made illegal. As a result of the accusation Pathé was immediately forced to stop cutting records, close down its factory and cease operations. In 1952 Pathé moved its main office from Shanghai to Hong Kong and started to cut records in Hong Kong, thus restoring the glory of Shanghainese pop music in the British colony. Pathé Hong Kong faced fierce competition in the 1960s with the rise of Diamond Records and eventually ceased Shanghainese pop production and cut Cantopop instead, which gained popularity in the early 1970s. Pathé Hong Kong later changed its English name to EMI Hong Kong but retained its original Chinese name. In 2012 the entire EMI Group was broken up and sold to various companies. Pathé Hong Kong was absorbed into Universal Music Hong Kong.
