The following graphs shows the evolution of attendance at regular meetings of the Rotary Club of Shanghai. The first graph compares the general attendance with the total membership (all nationalities included). The two other graphs examines Chinese absence at meetings (absence without excuse) in relation to the total number of absentees. Data comes from the corpus of Pagoda we were able to reconstruct from Rotary International archives. The tabulated data we used for conducting our analyses is available in the "Tables" section. 

The first graph reveals that general attendance was rather irregular over time. In terms of percentage of total membership, attendance never exceeded 70% prior to 1930, with a several drop in 1928 (46%). It rose in the 1930s and peaked in 1935-1936 (74%), while Yinson Lee was chairman of the Programme committee. No data was available for the war and postwar years. Symmetrically, absence without excuse was very irregular over time, with a remarkable drop in 1925 and a severe peak in 1932. 

As shown on the second and third graphs, Chinese absentees followed the general trend, except in the early years, since the club included very few Chinese members at the time. Their absence peaked in 1925, which suggests that Chinese Rotarians were largely responsible for the general drop in attendance that year. There was second peak of absence in 1934 (46%) and a third, the most important, in 1937 (50%).