All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Last year for the Royal Asiatic Society China I chatted with Nick Hordern, author of Shanghai Demondaine (Earnshaw Books) which tells the story of the extraordinary hidden life of Lorraine Murray, the model Emily Hahn’s 1947 novel Miss Jill – it’s up on youtube now….
David Bellis, who runs the excellent Hong Kong history blog Gwulo, was featured on Annemarie Evans’s Hong Kong Heritage podcast recently – click here.
David has also published Volume 5 in his Old Hong Kong Photos and What They Tell series… available here
Vivian Kong’s Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910-45…
What does it mean to be British? To answer this, Multiracial Britishness takes us to an underexplored site of Britishness – the former British colony of Hong Kong. Vivian Kong asks how colonial hierarchies, the racial and cultural diversity of the British Empire, and global ideologies complicate the meaning of being British. Using multi-lingual sources and oral history, Kong traces the experiences of multiracial residents in 1910-45 Hong Kong. Guiding us through Hong Kong’s global networks, and the colony’s co-existing exclusive and cosmopolitan social spaces, this book uncovers the long history of multiracial Britishness. Kong argues that Britishness existed in the colony in multiple, hyphenated forms – as a racial category, but also as privileges, a means of survival, and a form of cultural and national belonging. This book offers us an important reminder that multiracial inhabitants of the British Empire were just as active in the making of Britishness as the British state and white Britons.
| The RAS China Journal is now receiving submissions for the 2024 edition. Authors intending to submit an article must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 31 March 2024, and completed articles will be due 15 June 2024. The journal generally comprises original unpublished research and observations, essays, book reviews, and other items of interest to our readership. Translations from Chinese into English are also welcome. The scope of the journal is broad, informing readers about life in China and Asia – past, present and future. Although authors are welcome to write about any subject of interest to Asia scholars, please note that material contravening the guidelines established by the Chinese government for speech and publications will not be accepted. For more information about the Royal Asiatic Society and the Journal, please visit https://ras-china.org// You can view past examples of the RAS China Journal at the Royal Asiatic Society China Reading Room at Dongan Lu #888, West Bund, Shanghai. It holds an almost complete set of journals going back to 1858, which document the earliest years of the expatriate community in Shanghai, and the Royal Asiatic Society’s history in Shanghai. You can see the guidelines for author submissions below. Please feel free to contact Journal Editor Melinda Liu at raschina@ras-china.org for more information. |
| GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS |
| The Royal Asiatic Society China (RAS) publishes the RAS China Journal annually in print and online. The journal comprises original research articles, essays and book reviews on topics of Asian scholarship, with a focus on China. All articles must be original and previously unpublished. Articles should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and references. Book reviews should contain no more than 2,500 words.Authors wishing to have their work considered for inclusion in this year’s journal should first submit, no later than 31 March 2024, an abstract or outline of the intended article to the journal editor, Melinda Liu at: raschina@ras-china.org Authors should follow the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) Style Guide when preparing articles, to ensure consistency of style. The MHRA Style Guide is an easy to use and comprehensive guide, and is available as a free download at http://www.mhra.org.uk/style/ Please ensure that British English spelling and grammar rules are used. Articles should be submitted as Word or Pages documents (.doc, .docx, .pages).It is the responsibility of an author to obtain any necessary permission for quotation of copyrighted material and for image usage. The author should ensure that permission to reproduce material in all territories and all media (e.g. print and electronic) is granted.The text of articles submitted for consideration should be formatted using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. The title of the article and the author’s name should be printed in bold at the top of the document.The document file name should include the author’s surname and brief reference to the article’s title.Articles should include a reference list to acknowledge work cited, placed at the end of the article and titled “References”. The JRAS does not use bracketed references in the body of an essay. Instead, superscript numbers are used to indicate where other authors’ works are cited in the text, which appear at the end of the article in the Reference section, in the order that they were cited. The reference entries must contain the full reference for the work cited, following the comprehensive guidelines given in the MHRA.In addition to numbered references indicating citations of other authors’ works within the text, authors may use footnotes to add brief explanatory notes that will be displayed at the bottom of the relevant page. Authors are requested to keep explanatory footnotes to an absolute minimum.Authors submitting essays, which employ a more general tone, may prefer to include a bibliography of appropriate works to inform further reading, in lieu of a reference list.All articles are to include an abstract of up to 180 words. The abstract should introduce the major aspects of the article and provide context.Authors may include images in colour or black and white. In the printed edition, images will appear in black and white, but colour reproductions will be available in the online version. All images should be supplied in separate, well-labelled files in formats such as jpeg or png, and should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi (images should be as large as possible). Images should be labelled as “Figures”, and listed in numerical order. A text note in the body of the article should indicate the desired position of each image (eg: [Fig. 1 here]).Authors should also include a brief introduction about themselves, including professional and/or academic background and any personal information that relates to their article. This should be no more than a couple of paragraphs (approximately 150 words), and may be edited by the editor to fit with the style of the journal. Authors should not include a CV or a self-portrait photograph.Article submission final deadline: 15 June 2024. Please note that authors intending to submit must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 31 March 2024.For further information about the Royal Asiatic Society China Journal and submission of articles, please email the journal editor Melinda Liu at raschina@ras-china.org |
Fantastic to see Annemarie Evans’s RTHK3 show Hong Kong Heritage make this list of the best heritage podcasts – click here to read
Listen to an abridged version of the chapter – A Showgirl, Bloody Saturday and the Shrapnel Swing:
Terese Rudolph (1937) from Destination Shanghai (Blacksmith Books)
The story of Paul Komor, the “A cserben hagyott hazafi,” currently rendered in English as “Patriot Left Behind. Rescuing Jews in Wartime Shanghai,” by Mátyás Mervay will hopefully be published soon in English, too.
Sanghaj 1938. A gyarmatosítástól legyengített Kína levegőért kapkod a támadó Japánnal kirobbant totális háborúban. A kormány a hegyekben, a külföldi elit evakuáló hajókon. A front elől futó nincstelen parasztok és Hitler Európájából érkező zsidó emigránsok özönlik el a kelet-ázsiai metropoliszt.
Komor Pál, a Budapesten született, de gyerekkorától Kínában élő üzletember, az első világháborús szibériai hadifoglyok egykori segítője, a zsidótörvények nyomán elveszíteni látszik féltve őrzött állampolgárságát. Magyarsága kétségbevonása után a jótékonykodó családi hagyományra építve, megszervezi a közel húszezer zsidó menekültet ellátó segélybizottságot.
A látszólag „egzotikus és távoli keleten” játszódó valós eseményeket bemutató kötet olyan általánosan érzékeny kérdéseket feszeget, mint Trianon, a zsidó asszimiláció, a Horthy-kori diplomácia mozgástere és a kivándoroltak viszonya a hazájukkal. A huszadik század első felében, a gyarmati világ alkonyán játszódó történetet izgalmas epizódok – alvilági bűnügyek, szerelmi kalandok és politikai intrika – színesítik.
I’ve been spotting opium references in popular culture with interest for quite a few years now (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 & 2012) about just how opium keeps on fascinating us.
So first off, some novels. Tom Bradby’s Yesterday’s Spy finds a link to opium smuggling in contemporary Tehran. There’s a lot of morphine and opium floating around 1930s Birmingham in Natalie Marlow’s great read, Needless Alley.
And some non-fiction…Gabrielle Paluch’s The Opium Queen, the true story of the widely mythologized genderqueer Burmese opium-pioneer of noble Chinese descent, Olive Yang, who secretly ran an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. Following his Ibis trilogy on the Canton opium trade Amitav Ghosh published Smoke and Ashes (out in February 2024 in the UK) subtitled A Writers Jounrey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories.
On the bg screen Florence Pugh was on the laundanum to ease the pain of child loss, husband loss and nursing in the Crimean War in The Wonder, based on Emma Donahughe’s book. And, on the small screen, I’ve been catching up with the period crime series Miss Scarlet and the Duke where (in series 2, episode 2) young copper Oliver Fitzroy is dragged out of an East End opium den in Victorian London by his boss.
