Tea Dance at the Park Hotel

In 1941 the world was going to hell in a handcart and Shanghai and China were already ahead of plenty of places – still the Park Hotel kept on running its nightly tea dances (every night 5-7pm) with Leo Itkis and his orchestra (who I know nothing about sadly). The Park Hotel is still there on Nanjing Road – built in 1932 and still a hotel (though somewhat less than glamorous and a bit run down inside – at least when I last visited a room there the decoration was pretty grotty) and Mr Itkis and his orchestra were long gone too. Still the Park Hotel Tea Dance and Leo Itkis had to be better than the legion of second rate Eurotrash DJs and fifth rate nightclubs that infest Shanghai these days full of vacuous ponces…as ever…ho hum!

Gellhorn’s Life to be a Movie

In my most recent book – Through the Looking Glass – I put in a fairly lengthy section about Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway’s trip to China. It’s a good story as Gellhorn and Hemingway were recently married, he was a star but didn’t do much reporting and she was, as ever, gung-ho for some action. Hemingway was actually passing back intelligence to Henry Morgenthau at the State Department.

In my telling of their trip to China Hemingway comes over as a bit of a twat (my basic view of him) while Gellhorn is a far more interesting and intelligent character. Intelligent enough anyway that she soon after got rid of Hemgingway.

I read on the internet that the actress Gillian Anderson has acquired the rights to Caroline Moorehead’s bio of Gellhorn, Gellhorn: A Twentieth Centruy Life. I wonder whether Gellhorn’s China sojourn (which the hygiene obesessed Martha described as a ‘particularl loo going horror’) will make it into the movie – I’d expect Spain and Hemingway but China often slips out of Gellhorn bios. Anderson of course is a good actress (when not doing that anti-science X Files nonsense) and does, I suppose, have something of the look and character of Gellhorn and is about the right age (given that 20 year olds get to portray everyone now this is a good thing). I look forward to it – it’s time Martha Gellhorn was remembered better.

Love it When You Learn Something – Mengjiang

As mentioned the other day in a post I’m reading James Palmer’s interesting biography of Baron Ungern-Sternberg, The Bloody White Baron, and his times in Mongolia. It’s an extremely good read and I’ll try and write a fuller review soon.  However, I love it when you learn about something new you didn’t know before and should have. In this case Palmer has educated me about Mengjiang – which despite having written often on this blog and in books about Japanese involvment with Chinese warlords in northern China and the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (the lands of Manchruia annexed by Japan from China in 1931 and then controlled by them by nominally ruled by the puppet boy emperor Pu Yi) I’d never heard of really. So a very brief and sketchy, unnuanced bit about Mengjiang.

Mengjiang was somewhat similar to Manchukuo and was a Mongolian border land that came under Japanese control – to match Manchukuo they named it Menguguo (land of the Mongols Japanified sort of) and gave it a flag.  It consisted of a capital in Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou)  and the former Chinese provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan (map below). The titular leader was a Mongolian Demchugdongrub (left – 1902-1966) who saw himself as a Pan-Mongolist while others naturally saw him as a traitor and Japanese puppet. In 1941 control of Mengjiang was transferred to Wang Jing-wei, the Japanese puppet would-be ruler of China.

The Soviet Union’s swift move across Mongolia and Manchuria in 1945 saw Mengjiang cease to exist (left – Sovs mopping up Japanese troops in Manchuria in ’45). Demchugdongrub ended up in Peking after the war under the control of the KMT and then after the communist takeover went back to Mongolia where he was first welcomed, then arrested and placed under house arrest. He died in 1966.

Art of the DPRK – A New Book

Nick Bonner and his team at Koryo Tours in Beijing have been running trips into the DPRK for years now (and still are if you’re interested). Nick has also made three excellent documentaries on the DPRK. But these days they’re branching outand have their fingers in all sorts of pies.

They‘ve put together, with book designer Oscar Venhuis, a lovely looking and original book Art of the DPRK that includes loads of art and promotional work as well as posters for DPRK films. Most of the art is from a private collection and not seen before outside the DPRK. There are also useful notes and synopses on the films featured. The example opposite is from the DPRK classic – An Unattached Unit. If you’re interested in a copy contact Koryo.

They’ll also be launching the book (an example of the art is left) at the Beijing Bookworm, speaking about it and showing a DPRK film Our Flavour, a romantic comedy about a tour guide and a kimchi taster falling for each other (I’ve seen it and it is funny – though not perhaps always how the North Koreans intended it to be!) on August 6th – details here.