The Story of Rice, c.1930

The Story of Rice was published c.1930 in Shanghai. It’s a major job – a fan binding with walnut wood covers and the “Foo” character carved into front board and painted green. The book contains ten hand painted watercolors, each matted in silk depicting farmers planting and harvesting rice. The pages have text in English & Chinese. But I’m still not sure who wrote the book or who exactly published it!

Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife

Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife (Quercus)….

Manchuria, 1908: A young woman is found frozen in the snow.

Her death is clouded by rumours of foxes, believed to lure people into peril by transforming into beautiful women and men. Bao, a detective with a reputation for sniffing out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until, perhaps, now.

Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all, she’s a mother seeking vengeance. Hunting a murderer, the trail will take her from northern China to Japan, with Bao following doggedly behind.

And as their paths draw ever closer together, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.

An Amazing Trip to China from WildChina

An Amazing Trip to China from WildChina this September….More details here

As if Chinese/Asian Surrealism Never Happened!

So the New York Review of Books (May 15 2025 issue) did a 4 page review of 14 works on Surrealism and managed to not mention Chinese/Asian Surrealist work or Surrealist artists even once! So much for Global Modernisms! May I suggest for anyone interested Lauren Walden’s recent book on Shanghai Surrealism from Hong Kong University Press….

Foreign Soldiers (& a Chinese cop) in 1910 Peking

A series of pictures from 1910 showing representatives of the foreign troops stationed in the city as well as a Chinese policeman. I’m no expert on matters military but a few things to note:

• The American soldier is probably a Marine? (said I’m not much good on military stuff) – the Marines were normally the Legation Guard though at various points during and after the Boxer Uprising the 9th and 14th Infantry Regiments, the 6th Cavalry Regiment, and Battery F of the 5th Field Artillery Regiment were also stationed in Peking I think;

• The Russian soldier is of course in a Tsarist uniform;

• These photos were taken by a British soldier in Peking so he didn’t take any of his own mates – but, of course, in 1910 the “Indian Soldier” is a member of the British Indian Army from (I think again!) the 1st Regiment of Sikh Infantry.

• The Italian soldier is a Marine (Marina Militare) of the Regia Marina. The Boxer Protocols agreed that the Regia Marina would be the force to oversee Italian interests in China post-1900, hence the Italian Legation Guard was made up of Italian Marines (despite being 70 miles inland), who also oversaw the old fort at Shanhaiguan.

• The Chinese policeman is wearing the final uniform design of the Qing Dynasty which would be gone within a year.

North Korea, a model for Donald Trump? The Rhyming Chaos Podcast

DPRK history (holding fast to 1 Big Idea, Cults of Personality, Theatrical Victimhood etc) are perhaps ways to look at the trajectory of Trump’s US now…. click here

William Spencer Percival’s Land of the Dragon, 1889

First published in 1889, Land of the Dragon provides an account of William Spencer Percival’s daily life as a British civil servant working in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century. An author of several travel books such as Twenty Years in the Far East (1905), Percival takes his ‘sympathetic’ British friends’ prejudices about China as pretext to give a thorough account of his life in the East. He delights in relating his boating and hunting excursions in the Chinese countryside, and his adventures – camping out, shooting pigs, and towing through rapids – are packed with often extraordinary anecdotes about the land, the Chinese people, and other foreigners, including American and Roman Catholic missionaries. Part travel diary, part anthropological study, this book gives a valuable insight into the relationship between the British and the people of Qing dynasty China.

ChinaRhyming May 1 2025 – Destinations….Destinations….

Destination Macao is out, some UK events in May, talking about Hong Kong 1945, my latest for Macau Closer magazine, wartime Chongqing & remembering the great Jane Gardam and her Old Filth trilogy…. click here…