Friday 10th June: “Ballot Box China”: A talk by Kerry Brown

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents’ Club Presents:

“Ballot Box China”

Kerry Brown

Fount Restaurant

Friday, June 10th, 12:30 pm to 2 pm

In the last 20 years, China has undertaken one of the world’s largest experiments in grassroots democracy. Across over half a million villages in China almost one million elections have taken place since 1988, with over three million officials elected. Chinese farmers still account for half of the Chinese population and a quarter of its economic output. With villages remaining restive, what does this mean for the future of the country as a whole – and what clues do these elections give to China’s own possible democratic future?

Venue details: Fount Restaurant, 1st Floor, Building Five, Surpass Court,

570 Yongjia Road, Tel: 60737785

Admission: Set menu, 100 RMB

RSVP: fcc.sfcc@gmail.com

About the Speaker:

Kerry Brown is senior fellow on the Asia Programme at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies’ Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy,

in London. A former diplomat in Beijing, and former head of the China Section at the British Foreign Office in London, he is the author of “Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China” and “The Rise of the Dragon – Chinese Investment Flows in the Reform Period”. He is a regular commentator on Chinese and Asian affairs for a number of international media organizations. His latest book  “Ballot Box China” has just been published by London’s Zed Press. It is the first in the Asian Arguments series edited by Paul French.

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Bad Memorials that No Longer Stand on the Bund

Robert Bickers was in town recently and gave a series of talk about his new book The Scramble for China. In one presentation he went through some of the old statues that sat along the Bund between the 1840s and 1949. Interesting stuff and I know many of you will be familiar with the grand old war memorial to the 1914-18 war and the statues of Harry Parkes and Robert Hart.

More interesting and obscure perhaps was the memorial to General Gordon, remembering his command of the Ever Victorious Army and protection of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion. The memorial was made in Hong Kong and shipped up to Shanghai – it was not liked much apparently. Rather like the stuff designed in Hong Kong and shipped to Shanghai these days – mostly ghastly nouveau riche canteen-like dim sum restaurants and marble palace shopping malls – it was considered gauche. I also like the fact that you can, apparently, take the English out of England, but not England out of the English – British sailors disliked it so much that, when drunk (one imagines a very common state for them) they would abuse it and try and smash it up – binge drinking lager louts in early 20th century Shanghai – my heart swells with pride!

Then there was the Margery Memorial that started out along Soochow Road (Suzhou Road) in 1881 and then got moved to the Bund Public Gardens in 1907. Margery was a British functionary who was about as smart as most of the chinless wonders who work for the Foreign Office these days still and got himself killed rather stupidly in south west China. Rather pompously the inscription apparently read, ‘the path of duty was the path of glory’. Margery was officially praised as an English hero though others suggested he was just a typical Foreign Office burke who annoyed the locals and got his throat cut for his trouble. Anyway, the Margery Memorial was pretty awful too – compared by some as being as bad as the Albert Memorial in London, that most vainglorious of unnecessary totems stuck up in the capital to a waste of space. I thought I’d see if it was possible that Shanghai had once been graced with something as architecturally repulsive as the Albert Memorial – not quite, but it was a close thing!!

Ciro’s Great Nightclub Remembered in the Basement of Ciro’s Crappy Plaza

The famous Ciro’s nightclub – “The Most Fashionable in Town” – which was at 444 Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing West Road) was a very classy creation from the very classy Victor Sassoon. For much of its life the manager was the legendary Freddy Kaufmann (immortalized by Auden and Isherwood in their 1939 Journey to a War). Interestingly Ciro’s call itself the ‘coolest place in town’ which may confuse some younger readers. They were of course referring to their state of the art air-conditioning – the general use of the term ‘cool’ meaning good didn’t really enter the general lexicon in America until after WW2 and everywhere else much later (though ‘cool’ was used in black slang in the nineteenth century).

Sadly the wonderfully modernist Ciro’s was bulldozed a long time back in the spurious name of redevelopment. After a couple of shabby structures on the same site we eventually got the stunningly bland Ciro’s Plaza which defies any attempt to be remotely uninteresting with great strength. Though in the basement I noticed that there is a small display including some old photos of Ciro’s noting that the current dreary shopping mall is plonked on top of the original nightclub. History does pop up in the most unlikely places sometimes…

Prostitution and Urban Development in Republican Suzhou – This Tuesday, Shanghai

RAS Shanghai LECTURE

Tuesday 7^th June, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai

Peter J. Carroll

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Prostitution and Urban Development in Republican Suzhou

During the late Qing and Republic, Suzhou state officials and business leaders openly exploited prostitution to foster economic development, especially along the railway station “horse-road” (malu) outside the northern city wall. City leaders correctly surmised that the “spill-over” from prostitution would support an array of other commercial activities. This practice, if not explicit policy, was not uncontroversial. Male and female reformers militated against female sex-work as a local and national shame that bespoke the noxious effects of male lust and capitalist exploitation. At the same time, some businessmen feared that the prominence of vice interfered with the expansion of licit commerce and development. In the end, many commentators agreed that prostitution and the prerogatives of male desire were inextricably linked to the fortunes of the greater urban economy.

This talk examines local debates regarding the physical, discursive, and political-economic place of prostitution within the city during the late Qing and Republic. The paper will particularly focus on the critiques of prostitution leading to its “abolition” in 1929 and later “reintroduction” under a regime of state regulation in 1935. (The initiation of state-sponsored prostitution was explicitly linked to the ineffectiveness of abolition, as well as the deleterious economic consequences of wholesale prohibition.]

Peter J. Carroll is a social and cultural historian of modern China and teaches at Northwestern University, USA. He is the author of the award-winning book Between Heaven and Modernity: Reconstructing Suzhou, 1895-1937 (Stanford UP, 2006) and is writing a book on suicide and conceptions of modern society in China, 1900-1957.

Entrance: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Frank Dorn and Anna May Wong

I thought I’d post this picture that was sent to me of the actress Anna May Wong and the artist Frank ‘Pinkie’ Dorn. This picture was taken, I believe, during Anna May’s extended visit to China in 1936 which attracted some controversy from the Nationalist government and many on the Chinese film community (though she was met by crowds of admirers too as she moved around the country). Colonel Frank Dorn (1901-1981), later brigadier general, was an artist, writer and aide to General Joe Stilwell. Dorn wrote a wide variety of books on everything from cooking to the Forbidden City, his wartime memoirs to an illustrated map of Peking. I believe that when visiting Peking Anna May stayed a while with Dorn. By the way, Dorn’s papers, including originals of this picture, reside in the archives at Stanford.

Union Church Stained Glass

I am told that the stained glass has arrived for the windows of the restored Union Church on the Bund (restored but, rather importantly, not actually open for worship though popular with newly married couples having their photos taken!) – the earliest surviving church in Shanghai. Apparently the stained glass had to come from Germany.

Shame that the restorers couldn’t have sorted out some sort of training scheme or apprenticeships so that a new generation of Chinese craftsmen could have learnt how to make stained glass. There are a lot of new churches popping up around China, though many are built in traditional style – high ceilings, steeples and, stained glass. There are any number of existing ones in desperate need of repair and new stained glass (a lot was lost during the Cultural Revolution and, more recently, rampant redevelopment). Those craftsman could then also make some stained glass to replace that destroyed by vandalism such as the beautiful stained glass that once adorned the former Jesuit Recoleta Mission (Misioneras Agustinas Recoletas) on Rue Moliere (Xiangshan Road). That original stained glass was smashed out with hammers last year so that workmen at an adjacent site could get in and out of their temporary accommodation easier – a complete tragedy for which nobody was ever held responsible.

The Voyagers, Shanghai and a Love Story

I met the great Australian writer Mardi McConnochie a few years back when she visited Shanghai, spoke at the Shanghai International Literary Festival and then hung around in the city a while. She was rather impressive. Seems she’s put her Shanghai time to a bit of use with her new novel that several people down under have raved to me about. Shanghai along with Singapore and Blitzed London feature in her new novel The Voyagers. As usual no review here but the publisher’s blurb – great to see Shanghai popping up in a novel.

All he had to do was look carefully enough , ask the right questions, find the right people, keep sailing on, and he would find her. In 1943, Stead arrives in Sydney Harbour hoping to spend his shore leave with Marina, a woman with whom he shared three magical days before the war. But Marina is gone, and has been missing for almost five years. And so begins an extraordinarily powerful and compelling journey – across the seas and the great stages of the war – as Stead retraces the steps of the one woman he has truly loved. Taking you from London after the Blitz to the booming Shanghai and fallen Singapore, The Voyagers is a book you won’t be able to put down. An unforgettable and breathtaking novel of heartbreak, courage and unwavering love. ‘A deeply moving story of heartbreak, courage and unwavering love.’ Hobart Mercury Praise for Coldwater:’Mardi McConnochie’s electrifying first novel is beautifully sustained’ The Age

Party Like It’s Opium Supression Day…June 3rd

which it is today (June 3) in Taiwan commemorating the burning of opium in the first opium war of 1839. I don’t know what happens on Opium Supression Day exactly. Perhaps it’s a little like Guy Fawkes night in Britain and there will be bonfires and fireworks or perhaps nothing very much happens at all.

Anyway, wherever you are today, China Rhyming wishes you a very happy Opium Supression Day.