Her Lotus Year – Deep Diving Shijia Hutong….& an RAS Event there on 19/3/25

Posted: April 13th, 2025 | No Comments »

From late December 1924 to the summer of 1925 Wallis lived at #4 Shih-Chia (Shijia) Hutong, the home of Herman and Katherine Rogers. The only pictures we have of Wallis there are outside or sitting on some internal steps so revealing little of the scope and grandeur of the siheyuan (a courtyard surrounded by buildings on all four sides).

However, further along the street lived the Ling family and (then a student at Yenching University), a 24-year-old Ling Shuhua (aka Ling Ruitang, Su Hua Ling), the daughter of a former mayor of Peking and later to become a noted writer, artist and art collector. In her memoir – Ancient Melodies (under the name Su Hua), 1953 and written when she was living in London, Su Hua included this sketch of the Ling family home, which must have been approximate to the Rogers’s courtyard close by. The Ling family courtyard is now the Shijia Hutong Museum.

BTW: for anyone in Beijing I will be hosting a dinner on March 19th for the Royal Asiatic Society China with “Matthew” Hu Xinyu, the director of the museum, to talk about Wallis, Ling Shuhua and other famous residents, as well as the architecture, of Shijia Hutong.

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…

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