People · French consul-general, French minister to China
M. Lemaire
李梅Lǐméi · 1839–1907
French interpreter who served in Shanghai in the 1850s, became consul-general there in 1884 and later minister to China.
M. Lemaire (李梅, Lǐméi) was a French interpreter turned diplomat who knew Shanghai both as a young interpreter and, decades later, as consul-general. He joined the French consulate in 1855 as an interpreter and sat as a judge in the French Concession’s police court. After postings in Guangzhou, with the French expeditionary force and at the Beijing legation, he returned to Shanghai, acting as consul-general in 1875 and 1878 and receiving the full post in February 1884.
In that year the consulate outgrew its premises, and he rented a house on Canton Road in the British settlement as a residence and another on Xinbeimen Street for offices. Months later he was promoted to be France’s minister in Annam, and in 1887 he went to Beijing as plenipotentiary minister, a post he held until 1894. The gazetteer does not give his first name; it also records a Chinese-French handbook he compiled with Prosper Giquel.