Kim Il Sung ruled his country, North Korea, for longer and shaped it more profoundly than almost any other modern leader. He created a unique and seemingly bizarre and menacing political and social system, establishing a dynasty that has maintained it for two more generations. Yet he remains a curiously inaccessible, little understood figure, partly due to the closed and secretive nature of the state he founded. Michael J. Seth puts together what we know of Kim’s life from all available sources and places it in the context of Korean and modern world history to make both Kim and North Korea comprehensible. He looks at the unusual circumstances that contributed to Kim’s rise to power and at the early experiences that help to explain the directions he took his country. Seth examines his impressive early achievements and his later failures, which left North Korea the isolated, impoverished half of a divided nation. Kim was a charismatic and resourceful leader determined to reunify and modernize his country. But he pursued these aims with ruthlessness, egotism and extreme narrow-mindedness. Ultimately, his political inflexibility led to disaster.
Two works by Lui Shou-Kwan (1919-1975), one of the most prominent Cantonese painters of the 20th century and a founder of the Hong Kong New Ink Movement. What also makes these intreresting is that they come from the estate of Lord Murray Maclehose (1917-2000), the 25th Governor of Hong Kong from 1971 to 1982….
Recently up for auction was a diarised account of the invasion of China by the Eight Power Allied Army in 1900 in response to the Boxer Uprising and the Siege of the Legations. It was written by Morris Edward Cochrane, Sub-Lieutenant on HMS Centurion, part of the 2,000 strong force led by Admiral Edward Seymour that left Tianjin attempting to reach Peking by rail. Having received orders on Sunday 10th June at 5.30am to make ready his men within the hour, Sub-Lieut. Cochrane describes in great detail the advance and subsequent retreat back to Tianjin of the multi-national force ending his account on Thursday 25th June, in jubilant mood having just met with the Russian relief column, the force having been under almost constant fire with few provisions for much of the preceding two weeks. The journal is accompanied by a letter to his family dated June 29th written once back onboard Centurion.
Morris Edward Cochrane was born in 1879, the youngest son of J. H. Cochrane and Charlotte Newton. He entered the Royal Navy as a Naval Cadet on 15 January 1893. He was appointed a Midshipman in February 1895 and was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant in August 1898. On 9 November 1900 he was promoted to Lieutenant for his services in China. He later served in Somaliland and was mentioned in despatches. He was advanced to Lieutenant-Commander in November 1908 and Commander in May 1919. For his services in the Great War he was awarded the D.S.O., the Italian Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus and the Serbian Order of the White Eagle.
Join the Cambridge University China Forum for a Fireside Chat and Q&A session with me on the 25th of November! This event is free and open to all. Please sign up via the QR code or this link here). It’s the end of November in Cambridge so there might actually be a real “fireside”!!
Tuesday 25th November – 18:00-19:00 – Blue Boar Common Room, Trinity College, Cambridge
This book asserts Surrealism resolutely chimed with traditional Chinese thought whilst reflecting and refracting contemporaneous socio-political issues from Mao to now. A ‘historico-intrinsic’ relationship coalesces archival and primary sources consulted in Chinese, French and English, artist interviews as well as cosmopolitan political theory. The purported originality of European modernism is overturned, ascertaining traditional Chinese concepts of spontaneity were cited by Surrealists as redolent of automatism, the notion of creating without forethought.
Surrealist art was officially prohibited under Mao’s rule (1949-1976). However, the book interrogates potent tensions in clandestinely created surrealist artworks by Zhao Shou and Sha Qi, who discovered the movement while studying abroad. Furthermore, Walden explores how several European Surrealists aligned Chinese calligraphy with automatism as well as Michel Leiris and Marcel Mariën’s travels to Maoist China and their diametrically opposed visions of the nation. Amidst post-socialism, the book posits that the ’85 New Wave consciously employed Surrealism to process the traumatic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and react to newfound societal freedoms. Subsequently, the volume considers why a new artistic tendency of ‘surrealist pop’ emerged in the 1990s. At present, Lauren Walden reveals how Surrealism has become officialised and even promoted by Chinese authorities owing to revolutionary resonances between traditional Chinese art and the western avant-garde.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Chinese studies, and Surrealism. Part of the book is available open access here.
This study investigates cultural exchange between the Surrealist movement and the People’s Republic of China (1949-present).
Surrealist art was officially prohibited under Mao’s rule (1949-1976). However, the book interrogates potent tensions in clandestinely created surrealist artworks by Zhao Shou and Sha Qi, who discovered the movement while studying abroad. Furthermore, Walden explores how several European Surrealists aligned Chinese calligraphy with automatism as well as Michel Leiris and Marcel Mariën’s travels to Maoist China and their diametrically opposed visions of the nation. Amidst post-socialism, the book posits that the ’85 New Wave consciously employed Surrealism to process the traumatic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and react to newfound societal freedoms. Subsequently, the volume considers why a new artistic tendency of ‘surrealist pop’ emerged in the 1990s. At present, Lauren Walden reveals how Surrealism has become officialised and even promoted by Chinese authorities owing to revolutionary resonances between traditional Chinese art and the western avant-garde.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Chinese studies, and Surrealism.
Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
Pátio da Claridade near the Barra district of old Macao consists of a long alleyway of 48 buildings originally fishermen’s homes and that was then formerly managed by STDM as a social housing project for the elderly. The north side of the patio consists of a row of two-storey units. The south side of the patio is a row of identical units with two overlapping dwellings occupying the same plot, both with a small courtyard and access ways facing the inner street. On the main street, the first-floor balconies double as a continuous sidewalk canopy alongside a street front-facing ground floor with mezzanine level. The Pátio is now severely degraded, almost totally empty and boarded up although there are apparently plans to develop it as a “food street” (click in here to see those plans)… Anyway, here’s what Pátio da Claridade looked in October 2025…
