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!

Xinhai – China Heritage Quarterly – No. 27, September 2011

As I’ve been adding a few Xinhai posts I’d thought I’d note the new issue of the China Heritage Quarterly that highlights writing and research on Xinhai. Click here.

And, of course, I hope you haven’t missed Jackie Chan being patriotic, saving China and building harmony in 1911!! Now there’s history for you!

How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 2

The major reason we never got a Greene China book was that he never spent any time in China – and so it never became part of “Greeneland”. What a potentially great book we never got – imagine a Greene book on China that was as insightful as The Quiet American was regarding Indo-China or The Comedians on Haiti or The Power and the Glory on Latin America. But Greene never went to China despite having absorbed books on China (see previous post) as a boy and written a short play on China that he later binned (see previous post).

However, he very nearly did go to China in a major way. In Greene’s autobiography of his early life, A Sort of Life, the author recalls that at 21 he briefly took up a post with British American Tobacco who promised him a post in China. However, it never materialised and, demoralised at not getting to go to China, Greene left BAT and went to work at the Nottingham Journal, thereby beginning a life as a journalist and writer. What great ad copy BAT might have had in China though!

Xinhai – Dr Sun Up Again in Tiananmen Square

The up/down, up/down and not really all around of Sun Yat-Sen’s portrait in Tiananmen Square takes another twist as, as we approach the 100th anniversary of the Double Ten, the good doctor is up again (he was briefly before back in April but then got taken down again – see here). But there’s controversy of course over his legacy – here granddaughter Lily Sui-Fong Sun wades in. Sad to say China’s professors and supposed intellectuals have been all but silent on the anniversary preferring to witter on about the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party (I’m standing by my line that the Commies are celebrating their 90th birthday for the same reason my now departed Nan did – they know there’s little chance of reaching 100, so have your cake now while you’re still around to eat it!!).

What would the Doctor have made of it all? And while they’re moving portraits around the Square they can feel free to take away the Mao one if they like.

How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 1

A while back I speculated on why the great Graham Greene never wrote a book on China – his subject range was so great that it’s hard to imagine China didn’t peak his interest at any point when everywhere from Haiti to Sierra Leone; Vienna to Brighton did – not forgetting of course his Asian masterpiece The Quiet American. In his early career Greene did attempt a play about China (as I noted) but it appears to be lost to posterity. But recently reading Greene’s early memoir of his youth and adolescence, A Sort of Life, he makes two references to his early interest and encounters with China that are worth noting. So first today, the book that first piqued the boy Graham into being fascinated by China.

According to Greene it was Captain Charles Gilson’s The Lost Column – a book, published in 1909, I’m rather ashamed to say I haven’t read. It is all about the Boxer Rebellion, the sieges of Tientsin and Peking and Admiral Seymour’s relief forces. Plenty of daring-do apparently as you might expect but also some local characters including a Mr Wang and the more interesting sounding Jugatai the Tartar.It was a best seller in its day and very popular with young English lads being groomed for Empire.

I’m afraid I don’t know much about Gilson except he wrote quite prolifically for Boy’s Own and Boy’s Adventure type annuals and publications and wrote a number of other novels dealing with Russia and the Orient (The Scarlet Hand for instance is described as an “Oriental tale”). A search on Google will reveal a whole range of titles produced by Gilson with intriguing adventurous titles through to the 1920s. It seems that Gilson did know his China – indeed it seems he did serve with the British portion of the post-Boxer Eight Power Allied Army in Peking and Tientsin. The Lost Column opens on Meadows Road in Tientsin (now Tai’an Dao). There’s plenty of Yellow Peril language though Gilson seems to suggest that the Old China Hands were complacent to miss the rise of the Boxers.

Whatever, the book captivated the young Greene and set him off thinking about China…more tomorrow on his China dreams.

Matthew Niederhauser on Counterfeit Paradises: Youth Culture and Urban Development in China – October 18th, Shanghai

I first met Matthew Niederhauser a couple of years ago ostensibly because he is a relative of the old China Hand Anna Louise Strong and we swapped stories about the old gal for an afternoon. I personally think it’s very cool to have a pro-China Wobbly in the family! Anyway, Matthew himself is a massively talented photographer who was based in Beijing for quite some time and specialised in looking (and snapping) the underground music scene; images which he gathered together in an excellent book called Sound Kapital. And  now he’s coming to the RAS Shanghai to talk about it.