All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
After suffering the ignominy of trailing the movie tie-in version of One Day and then coming in after Eat Pray Love (for Christ’s sake!!) I am victorious and the number one selling book at Bookazine in Hong Kong!! Justice is restored!
A short podcast with me chatting about Midnight in Peking and the murder of Pamela Werner with This is China! blogger and Siuzhou resident Bill Didson.
Apparently by the regular consumption of runny eggs and an excellent quality butter…..
As seen on the London Underground
Congratulations to Earnshaw Books for republishing Edmund Candler’s The Unveiling of Lhasa.
“The kind of book which the ordinary reader wants… easy, bright, and graphic, but for all its apparent simplicity there are ideas lurking in the crisp sentences.”
The Times (London)
December, 1903. A border dispute escalates amid rumors of a proposed secret alliance between Russia and the religious monarchy at Lhasa. British Colonel Francis Younghusband marches his Indian troops north with a battalion of coolies and special correspondent for The Daily Mail Edmund Candler in tow. It was a thrilling new chapter in the “Great Game†of Asian colonial supremacy, which sent the men deep into the heart of a region that few outsiders had ever lived to recount.
Who is Edmund Candler?
Edmund Candler (1874-1926) was a popular war correspondent, once called “the very soul of fearlessness” by The London Times. Born and educated in England, he become an educator in India and was named principal of Mohimara College in Patiala State. In 1903, he lost an arm as special correspondent to accompany the Younghusband mission in Tibet. In WWI, he wrote from the Western Front and Iraq. He was the author of several books including novels and nonfiction.
This interesting little book – Peking Sun, Shanghai Moon: Images From a Past Era – came out some time ago, back in 2008 I think, from the eponymous Tess Johnston’s Old China Hand Press here in Shanghai. But it’s taken me an age to get round to reading it. It’s the memoirs of Diana Hutchins Angulo, the daughter of a US Naval Attache assigned to the US Legation in Peking and then Shanghai and includes vignettes of life in both cities between the wars as well as trips to Mongolia, the Western Hills outside Peking and so on. There’s some interesting photos and particularly nice descriptions of Shanghai’s 1930s nightlife and 1920s Peking Legation Quarter life. Well worth a read, and well done to Tess and the Old China Hand Press for printing it.
I noted the other day the indignity of being beaten out of the top spot in Hong Kong by a book that is popular largely due to a film where the insipid Anne Hathaway (the pin up girl for middle class boys who’ve never done drugs and always did their homework) mangles an English accent. But it gets worse – beaten into fifth place in the Beijing branch of Page One bookstore by the horrendous, puke inducing, self indulgent pile of hyena kak that is Eat Pray Love!!! And not just once – twice – by the original and tie-in to the film with Julia Roberts!! and then come crap about commitment and a Rom-Com tie in thing!! If this is what ex-pats in Beijing are really buying before they buy my book then God Help the Good Ship SS Laowai Peking and all who have to sail in her!!
The good folk at the Shanghai Expatriate Association have organised a champagne luncheon no less around my book. Members and guests though it’s apparently easy to become a member (here).
Champagne Luncheon: Midnight in Peking by Paul French
Please join us for this fascinating glimpse of pre-Revolutionary Beijing, a city on the brink of Japanese invasion-as uncovered by author Paul French in his latest book, Midnight in Peking.
January, 1937: Peking is a city with two communities that co-existed, sometimes uneasily-the privileged diplomats and businessmen in the walled and European-style Legation Quarter and the foreign driftwood of prostitutes, pimps and opium addicts that lived in an area called simply “the Badlands”. Soon, a sensational murder will bring these two worlds into violent collision. In the exclusive Legation Quarter, the foreign residents wait nervously for the axe to fall. Japanese troops have already occupied Manchuria and are poised to advance south. Word has it that Chiang Kai-shek and his shaky government, who long since moved to Nanking, are ready to cut a deal with Tokyo and leave Peking to its fate.
Each day brings a ratcheting up of tension for Chinese and foreigners alike inside the ancient city walls. On one of those walls, not far from the nefarious Badlands, is a massive watchtower-haunted, so the locals believe, by fox spirits that prey upon innocent mortals. Then one bitterly cold night, a body is dumped there. It belongs to Pamela Werner, the daughter of eccentric Edward Werner, a former British consul to China and respected academic. This crime would shock the city and make headlines worldwide.
Seventy-five years after these events, Paul French has masterfully recreated the murder investigation from mountains of research of a 74-year-old crime and painted a beautifully intriguing picture of old Peking at the end of an era. Midnight in Peking was presented at the Australian Booksellers Association conference in July as one of the top three Penguin books to be released this year.
Following the talk will be a three-course luncheon at Four Seasons Shanghai.
Menu
STARTER:
Tomato and onion tart with roast pepper sauce
Mixed green salad & olive vinaigrette
MAIN:
Roasted halibut, lentil ragout, warm bacon balsamic vinaigrette
OR
Braised pork, fontina risotto, mushroom ragout
OR
Teriyaki glazed tofu, baby bok choi, straw mushrooms, steamed couscous (vegetarian)
DESSERT
Paris Brest: praline mousse with caramelized hazelnut
Champagne, tea and coffee
Date: Wednesday, October 19
Time: 10:45am registration, 11am talk begins
Venue: Jazz on 37, Four Seasons Hotel, 500 Weihai Lu (at Shimen Lu)
Cost: RMB 250 (includes talk, 3-course luncheon, tea/coffee & champagne)
Please bring your membership card to the event.
Please email seaspecialevents@yahoo.com by Sunday, October 16.
Under subject, please type: “Midnight” and include your membership number, mobile phone number and choice of main course. SEA cancellation policy applies after October 16. Out of town guests and family members are most welcome.
A new book on the little known Béthanie and Nazareth French Mission foundations in Hong Kong is now out in English, French or Chinese -Alain Le Pichon’s Béthanie and Nazareth: French Secrets from a British Colony. A favourite of mine is the Béthanie, in Pokfulam, was built in 1875 as the Colony’s first sanatorium and still exists in a good state of repair and in use today (see below); the chapel is particularly impressive. The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts now use the building – marvellously they also still use the restored dormer cow sheds adjacent to the building too!
The Béthanie
The Béthanie’s chapel
The former cow sheds of the Béthanie