Shanghai Club Committee Badge

So, if you got on the committee of the Shanghai Club, home of the legendary Long Bar at #2 Bund you got a badge!

Her Lotus Year – The Peking of Ann Bridge

I should tip my hat to one of the best novelists to describe the insular “goldfish bowl” world of the Legation Quarter Set of 1920s Peking – Ann Bridge (aka Lady O’Malley). Wife of a British diplomat, she lived in Peking from 1925 to 1927, almost contemporaneous with Wallis. Afterwards she wrote 3 highly descriptive novels of the city and its 1920s “Foreign Colony”, all worth reading – Peking Picnic (1932), The Ginger Griffin (1934) & Four-Part Setting (1938). All contain Wallis sojourner-like characters enchanted with Peking, making it on their wits, and much desired within the male heavy society. Sadly not much read today Bridge deserves a revival…..

Bookazine Hong Kong Black Friday

Heads up HKers – Black Friday Bookazine Book Bonanza – 15% OFF books this Black Friday , 29/11 – including my very own Her Lotus Year (& other titles!!). In store & online – use code FRIDAY15 at checkout….

My Grandfather Duan Qirui

My Grandfather Duan Qirui by Naihui Zhang (Author), 张中柱 William Chang (Author), 刘继峰 David J Liu (Translator) from Ehg Books… Reading the blurb (as you can below) I do wonder if this might prove a rather self-indulgent book and I’ve never been much of a fan of family members writing biographies of relatives – it is impossible to be unbiased I find…. anyway, books on Duan don’t come along often so…

Using time as a guiding thread, this book traces the life journey of Duan Qirui. From attending old-style private schools, his upbringing in a military camp, walking alone the one-thousand li journey at age 15 to join the army, attending Tianjin Military Academy, studying abroad in Germany, taking part in establishing the New Army at Xiaozhan, serving as the “artillery commander”, assuming the position of the principal of the Baoding Military Academy and eventually becoming the important leader of the Beiyang Army and the head of the Republic of China government (ROC).

The book enumerates the contributions made by Duan Qirui to China’s progress, including the initiation of China’s military modernization, the insistence on the transformation of China’s political system through “three creations of the Republic”, and the promotion of China’s entry into the Allied Powers to take part in the war against Germany, among others. At the same time, he not only opposed the monarchy dictatorship but also keenly recognized and opposed the “Knock down the Confucius’ shop (打倒孔家店)” campaign promoted by the Chinese agents of the Soviet Union’s Third Communist International. After became Zhizheng (执政the Chief Executive of the Republic of China, or the head of the state), he collaborated with Sun Yat-sen in seeking to convene a constitutional conference and persistently attempted to pursue the path of constitutional democracy to unify China.

Throughout the writing, the author emphasizes the importance of Confucianism’s influence on the moral character of the Chinese people. In the early 20th century, Duan Qirui, who initially served as a Qing military general and later became a high-ranking official in the Republic of China, was able to abandon the traditional “King’s-State (家天下)” approach and resist the wave of Soviet-style communism. Instead, he chose the path of republicanism and constitutional democracy. This can be traced back to the influence of Confucianism, which he received from a young age. Just as Christianity influenced the founding fathers of the United States, Confucianism deeply ingrained itself in Duan Qirui’s bloodline, shaping his political aspirations and life path. The book’s exposition is based on this context: without moral cultivation, an individual cannot go far on the right path; however, even with morally upright individuals, a society without check-and-balance of power, may succumb to the temptations of power, wealth, sex and fame, leading them astray. American founding father John Adams once emphasized, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” This book tirelessly and extensively argues that in building a civilized society, (1) the importance of cultivating moral qualities in individuals from a young age should be recognized, and (2) the Acton’s axiom, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which is an objective law that is not subject to people’s will, should be recognized. Therefore, the concept of “King’s-State” inevitably leads to corruption as power corrupts, resulting in being strong at first and then falling apart and eventually being replaced. On the other hand, the “Party-State (党天下)” system, self-proclaimed to be superior to the decayed old world, experiences absolute corruption with absolute power and fails to catch up with the prosperity and renewal of the private capitalist market economy under constitutional democratic rule even after seventy years. Ultimately, it can only lead to the depletion of public trust and self-collapse.

Shanghai Volunteer Corps Insignia Badges

Some various insignia badges from different divisions of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC)…

Voices of the Walls – Kowloon’s Walled City Explored – Blue Lotus Gallery, Hong Kong till December 1 2024

You’ve still time to see the photo exhibition Voices of the Walls: Kowloon’s Walled City Explored at Hong Kong’s Blue Lotus Gallery till December 1, 2024

Blue Lotus Gallery presents “Voices of the Walls,” an exhibition exploring Kowloon Walled City’s rich history through photographs by Ian Lambot, Greg Girard Keeping Lee and AI illustrations by Bianca Tse. Running until December 1, 2024, it showcases the unique community that thrived in this ungoverned urban enclave. The exhibition celebrates the community that once lived there while also highlighting the importance of preserving collective memory through photography.

Photographs serve as a vital medium for preserving heritage, particularly for places that will eventually disappear like the walled city. While few ventured there, even fewer thought to document it. However, Ian Lambot and Greg Girard did just that in the years leading up to its demolition, culminating in the iconic book City of Darkness, published by Watermark, which has sold over 20,000 copies to date. This collection not only preserves the heritage of the notorious walled city through photographs and stories but also served as a source of inspiration for future generations of artists, still influencing everything from video games and AI-generated imagery, like that of Bianca Tse showcased in this exhibition, to films such as the latest blockbuster, ‘Twilight of the Warriors: Walled in.’

Venue: Blue Lotus Gallery, 28 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Opening times: Tuesday-Sunday 11am–6pm, closed on public holidays
Free admission

The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941

Rosemary Wakeman’s The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941 (University of Chicago Press)…

An interpretative history of global urbanity in the 1920s and 1930s, from the vantage point of Bombay, London, and Shanghai, that follows the life of business tycoon Victor Sassoon.
 
In this book, historian Rosemary Wakeman brings to life the frenzied, crowded streets, markets, ports, and banks of Bombay, London, and Shanghai. In the early twentieth century, these cities were at the forefront of the sweeping changes taking the world by storm as it entered an era of globalized commerce and the unprecedented circulation of goods, people, and ideas. Wakeman explores these cities and the world they helped transform through the life of Victor Sassoon, who in 1924 gained control of his powerful family’s trading and banking empire. She tracks his movements between these three cities as he grows his family’s fortune and transforms its holdings into a global juggernaut. Using his life as its point of entry, The Worlds of Victor Sassoon paints a broad portrait not just of wealth, cosmopolitanism, and leisure but also of the discrimination, exploitation, and violence wreaked by a world increasingly driven by the demands of capital.

Her Lotus Year: Wallis and Chinese Style

An argument of Her Lotus Year (out now from St Martins Press in the US and Elliot & Thompson in the UK) is that in China Wallis embraced Chinese aesthetics wholeheartedly and for life. From adopting Chinese style dresses, jade jewellery and the chignon hairstyle while there, she then later maintained these stylish elements and combined them with curios purchased in Peking as well as Chinoiserie items acquired later in America, London and Paris.

So here – 1) Wallis in a pink dress featuring Chinese decorative knotwork (Zhongguo Jie) and the Windsor’s pugs 2) Wallis & a Chinese screen in London 3) Wallis and a Chinese screen in either London or Paris 4) Chinese statuary and objets atop a Chinoiserie table.