Bill Lascher’s collection of US foreign corespondent in Asia Mel Jacoby’s (mostly never seen before) photos of China, HK, Macao, and the Philippines in the 1930s & the outbreak of war are truly incredible. A significant new treasure trove for historians. And Blacksmith Books have done a great job of publishing them – now avalable from Blacksmith’s website & Hong Kong bookshops….. click here
WHAT: “The Father of China’s Pinyin System: Zhou Youguang”, an RASBJ online event with author Mark O’Neill and moderator David Moser
WHEN: Feb. 7 Wednesday. 7:00-8:00 PM Beijing Time
ABOUT THE EVENT: Mark O’Neill’s latest book is about Zhou Youguang (周有光), the scholar who invented Pinyin, a system of romanisation for Chinese characters. At the age of 111, Zhou died in January 2017 after an extraordinary life. He had been a banker in Shanghai, New York and London. He’d supplied food and textiles for soldiers and civilians during WWII. After 1949 he was a linguist. He lived through Maoist-era political campaigns and spent 28 months in a labour camp. He wrote 49 books and, in the last 20 years of his life, was one of China’s few intellectuals willing to openly express his sometimes critical views.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Mark O’Neill has lived in Asia since 1978 and has written 14 books on Chinese history and society. Born in London, England, O’Neill was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford and worked in Washington D.C., Manchester and Belfast before moving to Asia.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR: David Moser holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan, with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy. He is currently Associate Professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. Moser is author of “A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language”, published by Penguin.
HOW MUCH: Free for RASBJ members. RMB 50 for members of partner RAS branches in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul. RMB 100 for non-members. Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Please click “Register” or “I Will Attend” (here) and follow the instructions. You may find paying via Alipay easier than by Wechat; credit cards are also accepted. After successful registration you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.
Note for members of partner RAS branches: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. Please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails.
HOW TO PURCHASE THE BOOK IN BEIJING: RASBJ has available a limited number of hard copies; regrets if supply is insufficient to fill demand. If you’re interested, please email communications@rasbj.org (If you’re outside of Beijing, books can be ordered via https://www.mybookone.com.hk. However, RASBJ is not responsible for their delivery.)
A spasm of extreme radicalism that rocked China to its foundations in the mid- to late 1960s, the Cultural Revolution has generated a vast literature. Much of it, however, is at a birds-eye level, and we have very few detailed accounts of how it worked on the ground. Long after the event, Tan Hecheng, now a retired Chinese writer and editor, was sent to Daoxian, Mao’s home county, to report on the official investigation into the massacre that took place there during the Cultural Revolution.
In The Killing Wind, Tan recounts how over the course of 66 days in 1967, over 9,000 Chinese “class enemies” were massacred in the Daoxian, in the Hunan Province. The killings were unprovoked and carried out with incredible, stomach-churning brutality, which is documented here in excruciating detail. But although this could easily be just a compendium of horrors, it’s also a meditation on memory, moral culpability, and the failure of the Chinese government to come to terms with the crimes of the Maoist era. Tan interweaves the story of his research with the recollections of survivors and reflections on the long-term consequences of the Cultural Revolution. Akin to Jan Gross’s Neighbors, about the Holocaust in a Polish town, The Killing Wind likewise paints a single episode in extraordinary detail in order to make a broader argument about the long term consequences flowing from one of the twentieth century’s greatest human tragedies.
A panorama of the Shanghai Bund taken from Pudong (probably) by William Arthur Blackburn Leach, probably early 1920s and who usually used either a ‘3A Graflex’ or a ‘Thornton Pickard Special Ruby’ camera.
Leach was born in Norwich in 1872 where he attended a local grammar school, later becoming an apprentice carpenter and engineer. In 1902 after he had qualified, he went to China where he obtained a position in the Public Works Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council. He spent his working life in Shanghai until he left in 1926. More on Leach here courtesy of Lay’s Auctioneers.
A sketch of the old Hong Kong club on Statue Square (artist and date unknown) – and a photograph of the original building, now long replaced by a rather ugul high rise.
Consuls in the Cold War, a collection edited by Sue Onslow and Lori Maguire (Brill). Of course ridiculously expensive at Euros 129! But if you have a kind library…. for China Rhyming types there’s interesting essays on Franc in the new Vietnam, the Chinese Consulate in Geneva, the British in early 50s Maymo, the Portuguese in early PRC China, the Australians in Cold War Hong Kong and the Polish Consulate in Shanghai 1954-1989…
No studies currently exist on consuls and consulates (often dismissed as lowly figures in the diplomatic process) in the Cold War. Research into the work of these overlooked ‘poor relations’ offers the chance of new perspectives in the field of Cold War studies, exploring their role in representing their country’s interests in far flung and unexpected places and their support for particular communities of fellow nationals and itinerant travellers in difficulties. These unnoticed actors on the international stage played far more complicated roles than one generally imagines. . Contributors are: Tina Tamman, David Schriffl, Ariane Knuesel , Lori Maguire, Laurent Cesari, Sue Onslow, Pedro Aires Oliveira, David Lee, and Marek Hańderek.
The Sea Captain’s Shop was a very well-known store in 1930s Shanghai run by local celebrity Mrs W Tornroth (a celeb as she was always in the Shanghai paper social columns). This advert from December 1934.
The store was known for its amazing interior decor and range of luxury Chinese made goods (silk etc) for men and women mixed in with various curios and Chinese objets. The store’s location, adjacent to the Cathay Hotel in the Central Arcade alongside other antique stores and useful locations such as American Express and Thomas Cook. Tornroth specialised in selling to the sojourners arriving by ship and staying at the Cathay and Palace – prices were high, but good by US and European standards.
The shop, by the way, was named in honour of Mrs Tornroth’s husband, Captain W Tornroth, a US Naval Commander (around the time of World War One) who had also commanded one of the Yangtze Rapids ships for several years. Tornroth and his wife were lifelong collectors of Chinese antiques and curios. The Tornroth’s were interned in WW2 and repatriated from Shanghai on the Gripsholm.
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: Alec Ash describes his book, slated to come out Feb. 8, as the memoir of his first year living in a quiet mountain village in the valley of Dali, southwest China, in 2020, after leaving the honk and buzz of Beijing. This enclave of rural escape has increasingly attracted ‘reverse-migrants’ from the cities, disillusioned with China’s high-pressure urban life (and authoritarian politics), instead seeking personal freedoms and alternative ways of life, be it spirituality, environmentalism, mind-altering experiences or just the simple life – hiding away from the state, and from modernity, where “the mountains are high, the emperor far away.” The book traces his quest for some of the same grails, after personal circumstances led him there. The Mountains Are High is a beautifully written, candid memoir about how reevaluating what is really important and taking a leap of faith to reach it can genuinely transform your life. As one of the ‘new migrants’ tells Alec when he arrives: it is easy to change your environment, far more difficult to change your mind.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER:A writer and editor focused on China, Alec Ash lived in Beijing and Dali between 2008 and 2022. He is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016), literary nonfiction about the lives of six young Chinese people, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His long-form articles have appeared in NYRB, LARB, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and elsewhere, and he has been a stringer for The Sunday Times and The Economist. He was previously editor of LARB China Channel, founder of the writers’ collective The Anthill, and contributor to two anthologies of literary reportage, Chinese Characters, and While We’re Here. He currently edits the China Books Review at Asia Society.
MORE ABOUT THE MODERATOR: Rianka Mohan is a freelance writer and former investment banker. Her poetry was included in Mingled Voices 6: The International Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology and her work has been showcased at The Glass House Festival, Lens of Passion, Spittoon, and Republic of Brown. Previously, she has moderated panels for the Beijing International Society, RASBJ (Desert Pilgrims), the EU-China Literary Festivals, and the Neilson Hays Literature Festival, among others.
HOW MUCH: This online event is free for members of RASBJ; RMB 50 for members of partner RAS branches; RMB 100 for non-members. Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership
If you experience difficulty paying via Wechat, please try Alipay instead. We hope to “see” you there!
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Please click “Register” or “I Will Attend” (here) and follow the instructions. After successful registration you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.
Members of partner RAS branches: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification; you’ll receive several emails from RASBJ: one confirming your registration request, another requesting payment, and a third confirming your registration with a link to join the event. Please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails.
