All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Twitter/X just got too nasty, horrible and depressing for me so i’m well out of it and away from the nutters, tankies and fascists. But I’m now enjoying my experience and interactions on books, history, old China photos etc at Bluesky – @chinarhyming.bsky.social
I’ll be zooming on Wallis Simpson, 1920s China, swinging Shanghai, colonial Hong King, bombarded Shamian & warlord surrounded but ever eternal Peking with Frances Wood for the Royal Asiatic Beijing – December 11 7pm – details: rasbj.glueup.cn/event/45887/
Chinese Creeds and Customs volumes 1-3
Just a moment to plug the audio book version of Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson. It’s available now on Audible (at a great discount) and other audio stores. The book is read brilliantly by Laurel Lefkow. So, if you’re planning a lot of driving around this holiday season maybe 10 hours of Laurel, Wallis and 1920s China might make the journey a little easier!
A rare Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps Officer’s pagri badge c. 1920-29, worn by Sikh members of the HKVDC on their turbans….
mThrough Hong Kong with a Camera by Julius Arnold, published by Hood & Co. of Middlesbrough, 1910
I’ve written before about the old Shanghai Academy of Art. In 1952 the new government got around to rearranging the entire art education system in China. The Shanghai Art Academy was closed with elements of it being incorporated into the new East China Arts Academy in Wuxi. But the decentralization of education as part of the Great Leap Forward, also led to the establishment of many short-lived local art colleges and the Shanghai Art School was founded in March 1959, under the auspices of the Bureau of Light Industry. The academy was initially organized as a technical school at the high school level (zhongzhuan ) and had a three-year curriculum. In 1960, junior college and college programs were added, and the academy was reorganized under the Shanghai Department of Education. During its brief existence, it moved at least four times, occupying the grounds of an old middle school, then an abandoned synagogue, and finally moving into the old campus of St. John’s University, where it shared its facilities with the Shanghai Institute of Social Sciences.
The college was then closed in 1965 as priorities changed again and the Cultural Revolution beckoned during which art education was not high on the priorities list.
An event at SOAS in London open to all on Chiang Yee and his London Circle (published by Hong Kong University Press) with Paul Bevan, Sarah Cheang, Craig Clunas, Anne Witchard, Frances Wood and me…. open to all – this Thursday (4/12/24) – Click here…
