Hong Kong Club Her Lotus Year Dinner – March 2025

Many thanks to the Hong Kong Club for organising a dinner last month around Her Lotus Year and inviting me to speak…. it was a lot of fun…

Walter Fane’s Mountains Near Shanghai

A painting titled Mountains Near Shanghai by Major-General Walter Fane C.B. (British, 1828–1885) – though I have no exact date or which mountains these are I’m afraid – and I’m not entirely sure it isn’t mis-labelled. I assume ‘near’ means at least a few hours away.

Anyway, Fane was a British Indian Army officer on the North West frontier. In 1860 he raised the irregular cavalry force of Fane’s Horse to fight in China during the Second Opium War. He took part in the looting of Peking in October 1860 and the burning on the Yangmingyuan (Old Summer Palace)…. for which he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Bath (hopefully those people involved with China who accept British “honours” and gee-gaws think upon that!). And apparently he still found time to do a bit of painting…

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

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…

Fenn’s Character Cards, c.early 20th Century

Fenn’s Character Cards, as used by the College of Chinese Studies, Peking in the early twentieth century. Printed by the Presbyterian Missionaries in China…

Essex Book Festival, June 29 2025

Heads Up: I’ll be at the Essex Book Festival History Day in the amazing Layer Marney Tower, England’s tallest Tudor Gatehouse (ticket holders get access to house & gardens too), near Colchester – June 29 – click here for more details and tickets….

Her Lotus Year: Tiffin at Repulse Bay

Like everyone who stayed at the old Repulse Bay Hotel in Hong Kong – from Emily Hahn to Bertrand Russell, Martha Gellhorn to Eileen Zhang – Wallis enjoyed the famous hotel tiffin. Perhaps to us these days it doesn’t sound that appetising, and the copious amount of wines were extra. Not included on the tiffin menu but always available was a curry dish, a nod to the Kadoorie family owners Bombay days.

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

The Midnight in Peking Official Walking Tour is Back On!!…

Retracing the official Penguin Books in China Midnight in Peking Walking Tour – everything still survives!! If you’re in Beijing, or intending to visit, and interested in taking the tour WildChina Travel have trained guides who know the book and the walk inside out….

• Armour Factory Alley (Kuijichang Hutong) – the haunted hutong where Pamela and her father lived with Edgar Snow and Helen Foster-Snow close by…
• The Fox Tower (Dongbianmen) – the last remaining watch tower of Peking and where Pamela’s lifeless body was discovered in January 1937…
• The Tartar Wall – stroll along the longest surviving remnant of the wall that once ringed the entire imperial city.
• The Badlands – the hutongs that once housed the old “Badlands” and its foreign denizens on Heroin Alley, in the Oparina’s bar, Madam Leschinsky’s brothel and the Asbury Church (the Island of Hope).
• The Legation Quarter – The suspicious apartments, St Michael’s Church, the French Legation (where Pamela was last seen alive), The British and Japanese Legations…
• Finally the Grand Hotel de Pekin (Hotel Nuo)…. the centre of “Foreign Colony” life in Peking in 1937….

Macau Closer Jan-Feb 2025 – Killmaster: Macao (1968)

My latest bi-monthly column on Macao and popular culture for Macau Closer magazine – Almost nobody reads Nick Carter-Killmaster bookstoday, which is a shame as some of them are pretty good, including the 31^st in the series, Killmaster: Macao (1968) by Manning Lee Stokes….