All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Got some listening time over the holidays? – join me chatting with the Le Carre Podcast host Jeff Quest in a 3 part marathon discussion of The Honourable Schoolboy – Le Carre’s magnum opus (no dissenting positions permitted)…
Wild China are excited to introduce our new expert-led journey through China, guided by New York Times bestselling author and award-winning historian, Paul French. Known for his books “Midnight in Peking” and “City of Devils”, Paul brings a unique and insightful perspective on 1920s China. In his most recent book, “Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson”, Paul brings Wallis Simpson’s time in China to life in vivid and unexpected ways.
In the 1920s, a young Wallis Simpson arrived in China, long before the world would know her as the Duchess of Windsor. She described her time there as her “Lotus Year,” a period clouded by rumors and the beginnings of her infamous reputation. Paul French’s book offers a fresh perspective, unveiling new insights into this mysterious chapter of her life.
This rare itinerary, inspired by Paul French’s books, traces Wallis Simpson’s “Lotus Year” while unraveling the mysteries of colonial Peking and the timeless allure of Shanghai’s Art Deco era.
Journey highlights:
🔸Stepping back into the 1920’s footsteps of Wallis Simpson in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou
🔸Staying in some of China’s most iconic 20th century hotels, many of which Wallis Simpson stayed in herself a century ago
🔸Immersing in two of French’s other books with exclusive Paul French-led walking tours in Shanghai (Bloody Saturday) and Beijing (Midnight in Peking)
This is not simply a trip through China—it’s an exploration of character, culture, and the unexpected connections that define a place and a life. For those who seek depth, elegance, and the thrill of discovery, this journey is an invitation to see China—and Wallis—in a way few ever have.
Ready to see the full itinerary? Learn more click here
Elisabeth Koll’s Railroads and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press)…
As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present.
China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion.
The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.
Stuart Christie’s The Flip Side: Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935–1985 (Sydney University Press)…..
Benefiting from recently catalogued archival materials, The Flip Side: Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935–1985 evaluates the influence of an ensemble of well-known Americans born or bred in China – Pearl S. Buck, Henry R. Luce, Owen Lattimore and John Hersey – after their return to the United States of America.
The children of missionaries and others serving China, all contributed in significant ways to the globalisation of the American ideal in the 20th century, even as each sought in different roles – as publishers, as novelists, as scholars – to centre Chinese values and concerns in the anglophone public sphere. As Chinese ideas and values met the projection of American soft power and governmentality, a uniquely bilateral, global imaginary arose, wherein respect for China as an emerging force encountered Western reaction. For these “old China hands”, the return to the USA resulted in unique and differing sociocultural formations: Buck’s intersectional literary populism on behalf of “the Chinese people”; Henry R. Luce’s press internationalism; Lattimore’s “inner Asian” regional imaginaries; and Hersey’s China trilogy allegories. All were keen observers of and participants in international networks combining a diversity of China-based expertise and resources that continued to inform their everyday work at a great distance. Both public and private, these networks, onshore and off, enabled and energised their own advocacy that dared to imagine a Chinese future distinct from its colonial or semi-feudal past.
The Flip Side asserts that these American stakeholders occupied a transitional but crucial role in the rise of China in Western imagination, prior to China’s assertion of sovereignty over its own global role and message.
The latest China Books Review podcast with Alec Ash – yes, we talk about my new book, Her Lotus Year, but I also get to talk about the state of the China books market. As someone who has written, published, commissioned, edited and reviewed books on China for going on 30 years now, through the good times and the bad, in Asia, Europe and the US, I have thoughts…..
and…
Her Lotus Year pops up on the Best China Books of 2024 list from the China Books Review alongside some good company. Many thanks to Bethany Allen for nominating!
Wallis Simpson (then Spencer) loved horse racing – she went to the autumn races in Shanghai 1924, the spring races at Paomachang in Peking in 1925 and finally squeezed in some late spring/summer meetings back in Shanghai….. more on those courses, clubs, the runners & riders, the parties and who she was with in Her Lotus Year…
If you’re in Hong Kong…..
