RAS Shanghai РD̩cadence Mandchoue Launch РThe Memoirs of One Seriously Dirty Old Bugger

Posted: April 19th, 2011 | No Comments »

RAS WEEKENDER

Saturday April 23^rd, 2011 @ 4.00pm

Glamour Bar 6^th Floor No. 5 The Bund, 20 Guangdong Road Shanghai

Book Launch with Derek Sandhaus (editor) Wang Xiaoge (translator) Graham Earnshaw (moderator)

“Décadence Mandchoue:

The China Memories of Sir EdmundTrelawny Backhouse”

In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a ho­mosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bed­chamber of imperial China’s last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz’u Hsi. Published now for the first time, Décadence Mandchoue, the con­troversial memoirs of sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, provides a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China’s impe­rial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality.

Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper’s 1976 bestseller, Hermit of Peking, which accused Backhouse of fraudu­lence and forgery. Décadence Mandchoue, written shortly before the author’s death, lay for decades forgotten and unpublished in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, dis­missed by Trevor-Roper as nothing more than “a pornographic novelette.”

But Décadence Mandchoue is much more than that. Alternately shocking and lyrical, it is the masterwork of a linguistic genius, a tremen­dous literary achievement and a sensational account of the inner workings of the Manchu dynasty in the years before its collapse in 1911. If true, Backhouse’s chronicle completely re­shapes our understanding of the era, and pro­vides an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.

Edmund Trelawny Backhouse (1873-1944), Baronet, arrived in Peking in 1898 and quickly became the city’s most respected trans­lator, working for both the British Foreign Ser­vice and London Times correspondent George Morrison. He was co-author, with J.O.P. Bland, of China under the Empress Dowager (1910) and Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914). Considered a brilliant linguist and Chi­nese scholar in his day and the subject of great controversy in the time since, Backhouse’s repu­tation was posthumously tarnished when it was discovered that much of his work was based upon forged documents. His precise role in the alleged deceptions remains one of the great puz­zles of Chinese scholarship.

Derek Sandhaus is chief editor of Earnshaw Books, and the author of Tales of Old Peking (2009) and Tales of Old Hong Kong (2010). He lives in Shanghai.

ENTRANCE: RAS Members: FREE (no drink included) OR RMB 65.00 (including one drink).  Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the ‘Weekender’ Membership applications and membership renewals will be available this afternoon.

RSVP: to RAS Enquiry desk at:  enquiry@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

BOOKS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE FOR MEMBERS AT A SPECIAL RAS MEMBERS PRICE OF RMB 200.00

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