From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West’s relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back.
The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. China, India and Japan were all acknowledged to be both great civilizations and in crude ways seen as superseded by the West. From Chicago to Calcutta, and from antiquity to the new millennium, this is a rich, involving story of misunderstandings and sincere connection, of inspiration and falsehood, of geniuses, adventurers and con-men.
Christopher Harding’s captivating gallery of people and places celebrates Asia’s impact on the West in all its variety.
Christopher Harding is the author of the widely praised Japan Story: In Search of a Nation– described by Neil MacGregor as ‘Masterly. How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it’ – and The Japanese. Harding teaches at the University of Edinburgh and frequently broadcasts on Radio 3 and Radio 4. He also writes the IlluminAsia blog, about Asia’s influence on Western life.
A set of three prints/engravings – panoramic Views of Hong Kong Island and the Vicinity, with Named Landmarks, as seen from, and drawn by, Lieutenant L. G. Heath, R.N. of H.M.S. Iris in 1846. I also add below a painting of Iris in Hong Kong in 1846….
Graham Sutherland painted Maugham in 1949 at Cap Ferrat. The artist Gerald Kelly told Maugham ‘you look like the madam of a brothel in Shanghai’. Maugham’s reaction is not known. The portrait now resides the Tate Collection
As Blacksmith Books have just published the fourth in the China Revisited series of reprints of old writing on Hong Kong, Macao and Southern China (Harry A Franck’sRoving Through Southern China) you can catch up with a series bundle from Blacksmith and save 20% on the combined price of the four – that’s a good Stretched January deal for you!!
A photo of the unveiling of the statue of Zhou En-lai in the North Korean city of Hamhung, South Hamgyong province. The Statue was unveiled in May 1979 (or Juche 68 for those so inclined) with attendant wreaths, a few years after Zhou’s death. Zhou had visited the city in 1958. I see some later pictures on the internet and it remains in place, largely unchanged though the base seems a little reduced, but otherwise….
A pair of 1920’s watercolour views of Queen’s Road, Hong Kong, signed indistinctly – if anyone can make out or recognises the signature i’d be much obliged…
(NB: thanks to Maile Cannon of Beijing we can identify the artist as Lee Hung, born 1942, a graduate of the Guangzhou Arts Institute who moved to Hong Kong. Apparently (an anonymous quote) “He has determined to rediscover the old Hong Kong to the modern people. He has devoted much of his time to conduct [research] and organize findings. Although the places he [has] drawn have changed drastically, his pictures are all [original] from his substantial investigations.”
Matthew H Sommer’s The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China from Columbia University Press….
n imperial China, people moved away from the gender they were assigned at birth in different ways and for many reasons. Eunuchs, boy actresses, and clergy left behind normative gender roles defined by family and procreation. “Stone maidens”—women deemed physically incapable of vaginal intercourse—might depart from families or marriages to become Buddhist or Daoist nuns. Anatomical males who presented as women sometimes took a conventionally female occupation such as midwife, faith healer, or even medium to a fox spirit. Yet they were often punished harshly for the crime of “masquerading in women’s attire,” suspected of sexual predation, even when they had lived peacefully in their communities for many years.
Exploring these histories and many more, this book is a groundbreaking study of transgender lives and practices in late imperial China. Through close readings of court cases, as well as Ming and Qing fiction and nineteenth-century newspaper accounts, Matthew H. Sommer examines the social, legal, and cultural histories of gender crossing. He considers a range of transgender experiences, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular social contexts and penalized in others. Sommer scrutinizes the ways Qing legal authorities and literati writers represented and understood gender-nonconforming people and practices, contrasting official ideology with popular mentalities. An unprecedented account of China’s transgender histories, this book also sheds new light on a range of themes in Ming and Qing law, religion, medicine, literature, and culture.
