Stella Benson’s Fox Tower, 1922

Feminist, travel writer and novelist Stella Benson went to China in 1920, where she worked in a mission school and hospital, before marrying Imperial Chinese Customs man James (Shaemas) O’Gorman Anderson. They lived in Nanning, Beihai and Hong Kong. in 1922 she published The Poor Man, about Edward R. Williams, a bit of a mess set adrift in a world gone awry who drinks far too much. Towards the end of the novel he arrives in Hong Kong and China making his way to Peking. There he finds himself at what must be the Fox Tower (Dongbianmen) – which if you’re read my book Midnight in Peking, you’ll be familiar with…..

‘There was a brick slope that climbed to the top of the wall. Iron gates barred both the foot and the head of the slope but the gates were easily climbed. Edward was on the broad weedy path that ran on the top of the wall. The seeds of flowers and tall grasses had accepted the wall as part of the soil of China. Edward went into the high-beamed hall of the guard-house. The moonlight made strange and glorious broad spaces of its dusty floor; its dazzled windows looked out on naked moonlight. It was so full of silence that its old walls cracked. That corner of Peking was a watching corner. A little farther on the dragons of the Observatory watched the sky… to the west Peking was like an enchanted forest in the milky half-light.‘