How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 3

And here’s an interesting little side line to the “why Graham Greene never wrote a China” story too – Greene did get as far as enrolling to learn Chinese in the expectation that Greene was to be sent to China by his employers British American Tobacco.

Anne Witchard from Westminster University reminded me of an anecdote she heard from Bristol University’s Robert Bickers that Greene attended classes at the School of Oriental Studies (SOS) at London University (no SOAS) in Chinese in the academic year 1924-25. Apparently the class was taught by none other than the great Chinese modern writer Lao She. Anne tells me that Robert Bickers cites Norman Sherry’s Life of Graham Greene Vol 1 pp 194-210 as his source. Amazing that Greene met Lao She and vice versa. Not sure how good Greene’s Chinese got – not so good I suspect.

This post also allows me to do a very early plug for Anne’s own forthcoming book in the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai-Hong Kong University Press China Monographs series (following her great study of Thomas Burke, Limehouse and Chinoiserie), due in 2012, on Lao She’s time in London and the influences of British modernism upon him. More to follow on that project.

Lao She around the time he was setting Graham Greene homework!!

We await the chance to buy Greene’s well thumbed flashcards at auction!