War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945

A new collection of essays – War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, edited by Eveline Buchheim and Jennifer Coates (Palgrave Macmillan)…

This book explores how narratives, exhibitions, media representations, and cultural heritage sites that communicate memories of conflicts in East Asia between 1930 and 1945 spread, interact, and are re-packaged for post-war audiences across national divisions. The contributors examine individual case studies of grassroots engagement with war memory, and collectively demonstrate the necessity of remaining aware of the researcher as participating in another kind of engagement with war memory. 

Contributions showcase a number of ways of doing research on war memory, alongside case studies from diverse regions of the world. Taken together, they bring a fresh perspective to scholarship on war memory, which has tended to focus on space, text, exhibition, or personal narrative, rather than bringing these elements into dialogue with one another.

Discover Kowloon’s Art Deco treasures on & around Kadoorie Hill as well as the local markets with my new Voicemap GPS audio walk

VoiceMap is a GPS-enabled audio tour app that provides self-guided walking, cycling, driving, and boat tours in hundreds of locations worldwide, created by local storytellers like journalists and historians. It uses your phone’s GPS to automatically play relevant audio stories and directions at the right time and place, allowing you to explore at your own pace, pause as needed, and even use tours offline or virtually at home. 

My new Voicemap tour is Kowloon Tong: Art Deco and Hidden Heritage in Hong Kong. To download the tour and more information click here…

On this walking tour, you’ll discover some of the most impressive yet overlooked Art Deco and Modernist structures near Hong Kong’s vibrant local markets. From villas commissioned by wealthy merchants to modernist apartment buildings, schools, and churches, you’ll see how avant-garde architectural trends reached this corner of the British Empire during a crucial period of its development in the 1900s.

The tour starts at Mary Knoll Convent School on Waterloo Road, with its fascinating blend of Art Deco and Gothic Revival styles. You’ll weave past the startlingly modern St. Teresa’s and see what is perhaps Hong Kong’s finest Art Deco treasure on Prince Edward Road West.

You’ll ascend Kadoorie Hill and the Braga Circuit to find an often overlooked enclave of Art Deco villas. Each property features distinctive architectural elements like wraparound balconies, curved edges, and nautical motifs.

The tour ends at Mong Kok East MTR Station, where working-class hustle-and-bustle contrasts with the exclusive residences of Kadoorie Hill.

On this 90-minute tour, you’ll also have a chance to:

• Appreciate the detailed Art Deco wave patterns and cantilevered balconies of Prince Edward Road West’s meticulously restored apartments
• Walk through Yuen Po Bird Market, where songbird enthusiasts still gather to socialise and compare their prized avian companions
• Find out how the evolution of the Garden Cities Movement and the international style of Art Deco in Kowloon Tong influenced Kowloon’s architecture
• Explore the once-significant Boundary Street, which formerly marked the border between British-controlled Kowloon and Qing Dynasty territory
• Discover the Braga Circuit, a mews-like street named after prominent Macanese businessman José Braga
• Admire Kadoorie Hill’s luxurious villas featuring Streamlined Moderne styling with high ceilings, Crittall windows, and curved edges
• Visit St. Teresa’s Roman Catholic Church, an intriguing blend of Romanesque architecture and Art Deco influences
• Browse the vibrant Mong Kok Flower Market, a glimpse of traditional Hong Kong culture that persists amid rapid urbanisation.

This tour is a rare opportunity to explore an overlooked architectural enclave that survived Hong Kong’s development frenzy. By the end, you’ll have a sense of how European design sensibilities were adapted to the tropical climate of this dynamic colonial port city.

Carl Crow’s Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom – Forthcoming Chinese Edition

I recently wrote a new foreword for Chinese readers to an upcoming Chinese translation of Carl Crow’s Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom (1940), I think this is the first edition in Chinese amazingly (the war rather stopped an initial translation at the time even though 400 Million Customers had been a success in translation – here)…. It’s out later this year in China from Beijing’s Post Wave Publishing Company (also known in English as Ginkgo Book)…

So just to remind you, if you haven’t read it used copies abound on the internet and there’s a fine reprint from Earnshaw Books still available (with an intro in English by me!)….

A Murder in Yunnan: The Unsolved Killing of a British Diplomat on China’s Southwestern Frontier

David Leffman’s A Murder in Yunnan: The Unsolved Killing of a British Diplomat on China’s Southwestern Frontier (Blacksmith Books)….

Who did kill British diplomat Augustus Raymond Margary on the remote China-Burma frontier in 1875? It could have been agents of the Burmese king, eager to stop the British from undermining his own country’s trade with China, or local Chinese, scared that Margary was spearheading a British invasion from Burma. Some suspected a plot going right back to the xenophobic Chinese governor, Cen Yuying, or perhaps Margary had simply run foul of bandits – and how was a tribute envoy of Burmese elephants involved? Against a background of colonial arrogance and cultural incomprehension, A Murder in Yunnan unpicks the complex tangle of official reports, rumor, suspicions and unreliable newspaper rants clouding the facts behind Margary’s killing – an event which brought Britain and China to the brink of war.

Submarines in 1920s Hong Kong and Submarine Depot Ship Titania

In 2024 I wrote a long read for the South China Morning Post on submarines in 1920s Hong Kong waters. In the 1920s, the pirates of the South China coast faced a new threat to their livelihood of smuggling, kidnapping and hijacking, one that gave them significant pause for thought – anti-piracy submarines. Britain’s Royal Navy, overstuffed with ships, crews and submarines after World War I, wondered what it might do with its new sleek, silent, torpedo-laden vessels. The whole article is here. I mentioned in that article that the six L-class submarines of the 4th Submarine Flotilla – L1, L3, L4, L7, L9 (which famously sunk in 1923 in Victoria Harbour during a typhoon) and L15 – were largely towed from Portsmouth to Hong Kong by Royal Navy Submarine Depot Ships.

So, my thanks to Kitty Lam for sending me photos of HMS Titania which was a Submarine Depot Ship that escorted the L-class subs to Hong Kong from Gibraltar in February 1920, arriving in April via Port Said, Suez, Ismailia, Aden, Colombo, Penang and Singapore. Titania‘s ship’s log records that she weighed anchor and secured to Storm Signal Buoy at Gap Rock Light at 10.17 a.m. on 14 April 1920. Here, courtesy of Kitty, are some photos of Titania with the submarines…

Jifeng Bookshop Documentary – From Shanghai to DC

A new documentary on the travails of Jifeng Bookstore (季风书园) originally founded in 1997 in Shanghai by Yan Bofei. The bookstore’s name, meaning “monsoon”, refers to “the seasonal prevailing wind, changing according to the climate in an endless way, [which] resembles the fate of modern China”. The government initially offered some support to Jifeng but that all fell away after 2014 and Jifeng, having established itself as a chain, ended up with just one location in Shanghai Library subway station. Then, following government pressure, the landlord turned on Jifeng too. It was too much – Yan closed the store and moved to the United States.

Jifeng Bookstore reopened as JF Books on September 1, 2024 on Washington DC’s Dupont Circle. They very graciously asked me to speak there at their newly inaugurated “JF Salon” in November that year when I was in America to launch my Wallis Simpson in China book, her Lotus Year. And what a great crowd turned out, bought books and supported me and Jifeng. Since then the DC store has gone from strength to strength with so many speakers, people discovering it, and as a node for anyone interested in China – mainland students in the US, those Americans studying China, old hacks back in town, former businesspeople, diplomats or those who’ve just started to find China interesting and want a great selection of English and Chinese language books. And long may their success continue…

Shanghai Mixed Foursomes Golf Champions, 1940 & 1941

Belated congratulations to Miss M Ballingall and Mr RM Ballingall for winning the 1940 Mixed Foursomes and Mrs C McLean and and Mr JC Dickson for winning the trophy the following year, 1941 – obviously there was not to be a 1942 competition!

The Balingall’s, a family with English and Indian (colonial tea planter) roots, lived in Shanghai and were interned by the Japanese as civilian internees between 1943 and 1945 during the Second World War. They were repatriated to England in October 1945. Not sure about the Maclean’s – there were both merchants and missionaries around with that surname. JC Dickson seems to have been around in Shanghai since at least the late 1880s with the Municipal Police.

The By Their Own Compass Podcast – Emily Hahn’s Shanghai

The By Their Own Compass Podcast – the new podcast from historian Jeremiah Jenne and travel guru Sarah Keenleyside (both of whom may be familiar to you if you are involved in China) has an episode on Emily Hahn. And a bonus episode on Hahn’s Shanghai and what’s left of it with Tina Kanagarathnam of Historic Shanghai….

‘We’re following the travels of Emily “Mickey” Hahn in 1930s China. Mickey Hahn was a writer, an adventurer, and a professional rule breaker whose wanderlust took her from the American Midwest to Europe and Africa and finally to China, all before she turned 30.

By the time she got to China, she had already established herself as an up-and-coming literary voice and one of the New Yorker’s earliest star writers. In her career, she published 54 books and over 200 articles, but her most famous book is China to Me, a memoir of the years that we’re going to talk about in this episode.

She partied with poets (and her pet gibbon) at Shanghai soirees. Wrote biographies while dodging bombs in wartime Chongqing, and did her best to keep herself and her family alive in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. Along the way, she became famous (some might add “notorious”) for her affairs, including with Chinese writer Sinmay Zau (Shao Xunmei 邵洵美) and the head of British intelligence in Hong Kong, Charles Boxer.

Mickey lived through some of China’s most tumultuous moments. While many foreigners experienced these events, Mickey gave her readers an unvarnished look at what was happening, with a style all her own.

We’ll explore Mickey’s life, travels, and adventures, and we’ll also discuss how to follow in her footsteps today through the modern cities of Chongqing, Hong Kong, and especially Shanghai.’