The SOAS China in Context podcast – Writing Shanghai – a Tribute to Lynn Pan – episode we look at the life and work of Lynn Pan, one of the most imaginative of writers in English about modern China and particularly Shanghai, who died last year, and was commemorated at a special event at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival earlier this month. Her books, including In Search of Old Shanghai, The New Chinese Revolution, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, Shanghai Style and When True Love Came to China, were accessible, often witty, and always deeply researched. Duncan Hewitt discusses her legacy with Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking and Her Lotus Year, Frances Wood, SOAS Research Associate and former curator of Chinese collections at the British Library, and Michelle Garnaut, founder of the Shanghai Literary Festival. With a further contribution from Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History at University of California, Irvine. Click here to listen…
I’ve blogged about Dymia Hsiung many times before (use the search box if you’re interested), published Diana Yeh’s book The Happy Hsiungs (RAS China/Hong Kong University Press) and made a BBC radio documentary featuring her (and her husband the playwright Shih-I Hsiung) work. Dymia, who lived in London for many years, wrote a memoir/biography called Flowering Exile in the early 1950s. It’s hard to find but secondhand copies can be located.
Marvelously though Hong Kong’s Commercial Press has just translated it into Chinese in a lovely edition….
My new BBC Radio drama-doc, The Defectors, is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Sunday March 9 and will then be available on the Listen Again web site and for download on the BBC Sounds app. The drama portions were written by Al Smith with my narration and the documentary interviews with North Korean exiles in Britain were done by myself and producer Sasha Yevtushenko. Talking heads included former UK Charge d’Affairs in Pyongyang Jim Hoare, the BBC’s former security correspondent Gordon Corera and the former BBC Seoul correspondent Steve Evans…. The Radio Times had a listen and is enthusiastic!!
The fourteenth Macau Literary Festival will take place from 21 to 30 March and will once again focus on poetry, as it did in 2019. The event also returns to the waterfront of Barra, in the Inner Harbour.
In a concert scheduled for the 29th, the Lisbon Poetry Orchestra will make its debut in Macau, presenting the show The Surrealists and bringing special guest Xana, the lead singer of Rádio Macau. The first part of the concert features a performance by Poetry & Music, a band led by Anthony Tao, the former organiser of the Beijing Literary Festival. Theme of the performance: Writing Myth. Among the Chinese poets who will be present at the festival, the name of the young Xu Jinjin stands out. She is an interdisciplinary artist who shares her time between Shanghai and New York, where she has already exhibited her work at the Museum of Modern Art. Her poetic work has received several awards, namely from the Poetry Society of America. She is joined by Valério Romão, from Portugal, Zang Di and Jia Wei, from Beijing, Chan Ka Long and Wang Shanshan, from Macau, among other poets invited by the Script Road Festival. Poetry recitals, launch of new books, debates and workshops take place in the Old Barra Slaughterhouse Site, which is currently under the management of the MGM Macau Group, one of the festival’s main sponsors. The event also continues to enjoy the support of the Macao SAR Government’s Culture Development Fund and many other public and private institutions based in Macau. The Society of Arts and Letters and Praiagrande Edições, co-organisers of the festival, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication of Lin-Tchi-Fá, Flor de Lótus, a book of poems by Maria Anna Acciaioli Tamagnini, by releasing new translations into Chinese and English. This year’s Script Road marks the 50th anniversary of the independence of Portuguese-speaking African countries with an exhibition by photojournalist Alfredo Cunha, who covered these historic events. The theme of the end of the colonial war and the decolonisation process that followed is also present in João Ricardo Pedro’s novel O Teu Rosto Será o Último, which Luís Filipe Rocha adapted for the cinema. The director returns to Macau after having directed here in the late 80s the TDM programme department and filmed Amor e Dedinhos de Pé, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Macanese writer Henrique de Senna Fernandes. Still on the same theme, António Costa Silva, writer, poet and essayist, and Portuguese Minister for the Economy and the Sea between 2022 and 2024, is presenting in Macau his novel Desconseguiram Angola, about a period half a century ago, when the Angolan nation was being built in the midst of a fratricidal war. Chinese novels are also well represented at the festival by by Chen Jining, vice-president of the Guangdong Writers’ Association. Throughout his career he has collected numerous literary honours, including the Annual Chinese Literature Award for Best Novelist, the People’s Literary Award and the China Good Book Award, among others. Seven Steps Town and Monologue Out Loud are two of his most notable novels. This year, the main vehicle for non-fiction is English. British writer Paul French brings his two latest works to Script Road: Her Lotus Year, a biography of Wallis Spencer, later Duchess of Winsor, focusing on the time she spent in China in the 1920s; and Destination Macao, a collection of stories about some of Macao’s most fascinating 19th and 20th century personalities. Tony Banham from Hong Kong presents the results of his research into the sinking of the Lisbon Maru, one of the most tragic mistakes made by the Allied forces during the Pacific War. And Thomas DuBois, a Beijing-based author, presents China in Seven Banquets, a recently-released in-depth study of the history of Chinese cuisine. The books for the youngest will be brought to schools by Chen Shige, the first post-1980s writer to win China’s highest honor in children’s literature, and André Letria, a Portuguese illustrator and publisher who has had several of his works published in Chinese. Sophia Hotung, an illustrator from Hong Kong, will also be sharing her art with the Macau public. On the eve of the Festival’s opening, Wang Zhengping, one of the great masters of Chinese photography, opens the exhibition The Wind Blows on the Grassland at the Tap Seac Gallery, a poetic look at the vast open spaces of Inner Mongolia and those who inhabit them. Rao Yongxia, a disciple of Wang’s, followed in his footsteps and is showing her work a few days later at the Santa Casa da Misericórdia Hostel Gallery. Over the ten days of the festival, there will be two dozen talks, three exhibitions, a film cycle and a concert, school visits, photography and creative writing workshops, many with simultaneous translation. The detailed programme of the event will be published in the coming days.
For more information, please contact: Aska Cheong: +853 6622 3215 Kathine Cheong: +853 6688 2821 Media.macauliteraryfestival@gmail.com | Info.macauliteraryfestival@gmail.com
Hong Kong University Libraries have launched a Wartime Posters database comprises 12 oversize, coloured posters in Japanese and Chinese languages, promoting propaganda dated between 1942-45, with contents relating to workplace efficiency, health promotion, air raid preparedness, and nationalism, etc. click here to see….
The Chinese diaspora in Britain is one of the longest-standing and fastest-growing racially minoritised groups. Over the past few decades, there has been a growing body of literature on these diverse individuals and communities, challenging essentialised and homogenised portrayals of them. This panel continues the “Contemporary China Centre Conference Deconstructed” format, bringing together three early career researchers to share their latest work exploring underrepresented aspects of 20th-century British Chinese history. The three papers will examine this multifaceted history, focusing on agency, grassroots activism, and state intervention.
Over her lotus year Wallis became a fairly regular user of the coastal steamer network despite them being prone to strikes and pirate attacks. With China in warlord chaos and the train system in disarray coastal steamers were essential of basic. Wallis took steamers from Hong Kong to Shanghai and then Shanghai to Tientsin in 1924 and then back to Shanghai in 1925.
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
