Glimpses of Peking, 1957

Glimpses of Peking, 1957 – state publisher Art Photo Press, in six languages…

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing Zoom Event – Nick Hodern in Conversation with Paul French about Shanghai Demimondaine – November 1 2023

You’ve probably read famous Shanghailander writer Emily Hahn’s novel “Miss Jill” — now hear author Nick Hordern discuss with Paul French the real-life character upon whom Miss Jill was based. Lorraine Murphy’s life unfolded during the turbulence of 1930’s Shanghai, and later in well-heeled London society. There’s even a Royal Asiatic Society connection.

WHAT: In conversation with Paul French, author Nick Hordern discusses his new book Shanghai Demimondaine: From Sex Worker to Society Matron (online)

WHEN: Nov. 1, 2023 Wednesday 7:00-8:00 PM Beijing Time

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: Author Nick Hordern’s conversation with Paul French will focus on the extraordinary hidden life of Australian Lorraine Murray (1910-2000), the model for the titular character in Emily Hahn’s 1947 novel “Miss Jill”. In 1931 Lorraine travelled to Canada, where she became the mistress of the Japanese diplomat Tokugawa Iemasa. When their relationship ended, she was passing through Shanghai on her way home to Australia when she stayed over, subsequently drifting into the sex industry. In 1936, supported by businessman Edmund Toeg, she quit the brothel where she had been working, but struggled to find a new path, until the American journalist and author Emily Hahn took her under her wing. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two, during which Emily guided Lorraine away from a life of banality.

As an eyewitness to the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, Lorraine’s horizons began to open out and a series of relationships with journalists – Italian, Japanese and above all with Emily – introduced her to a broader world. Lorraine spent WWII in Australia, including a stint as an informant for a counter-intelligence agency. After the war she joined Emily in England and reconnected with Edmund Toeg; the two married and settled in London, where she re-invented herself as a Knightsbridge society matron. At one point she worked in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London.

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Nick Hordern studied history at the University of Sydney before joining the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. Postings in Pakistan and Sri Lanka were followed by a stint as a political staffer in Canberra. He then moved across to journalism, working for the Australian Financial Review for sixteen years in various positions, including as Senior Writer. In 2013 he left the newspaper to write full-time; his previous books include two histories: “Sydney Noir: The Golden Years” and “World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War”

HOW MUCH: This online event is free for members of RASBJ and of RAS branches in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul, as a courtesy; RMB 100 for non-members. Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up at http://rasbj.org/membership/

HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Please click “Register” or “I will attend” 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 RAS in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. You’ll receive several emails from RASBJ; please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails.

REFUND POLICY: Attendees will be refunded in full if RASBJ cancels the event. Registrations for those who have not paid by noon, October 30 will be cancelled. If you registered/paid but discover you cannot attend, please let us know before noon October 30 by emailing communications@rasbj.org RASBJ will offer your spot to others, and you’ll be refunded if someone takes it.

A Shanghai Volunteer Corps HQ Staff Officer Collar Badge

A Shanghai Volunteer Corps HQ staff officer collar badge. The silver faceted star with central enamel medallion bearing the motto OMNIA JUNCTA IN UNO.

Getting to Know Your Beijing Neighbors: E.T.C. Werner – Jeremiah Jenne in The Beijinger

Getting to Know Your Beijing Neighbors: E.T.C. Werner by Jeremiah Jenne in The Beijinger…click here to read…

Destination Shanghai – RTHK3 Abridged Chapters – Warner Oland Brings Charlie Chan to Shanghai (1936)

Listen to an abridged version of the chapter – A Warm Welcome for Charlie Chan: Warner Oland (1936) from Destination Shanghai (Blacksmith Books)

The Magic of Macao & Pulp Fiction – Sid Fleischman’s Look Behind You, Lady (1950)

I was asked to write a bi-monthly column for Macau Closer magazine in Macao on representations of the enclave in popular culture. Here’s the first one on 1950s Macao and The Pulp Fiction of Sid Fleischman in “Look Behind You, Lady”

By Paul French

Sid Fleischman loved Macao. He once wrote, ‘there’s not much paradise left in the Orient, but there’s always Macao.’

Admittedly Fleischman arrived in Macao after a rough stint in Asia. He was with the US Navy in World War II serving in the Philippines before landing in Shanghai shortly after the Japanese surrender. Rounding up on-the-run Japanese torturers in the once legendary, but now rather depressed, “Paris of the East”, was a tough beat.

Then he was posted to Hong Kong, where he found the Brits a little pompous, and decided to take a ferry to Macao. It became a regular haunt. Fleischman came to know Macao well and decided that ‘If you can’t enjoy yourself in Macao there’s something wrong with you – not Macao.’

Out of the Navy and back in California, Fleischman didn’t have many useful civilian skills. But he could do magic tricks, in fact he was obsessed with magic. And he couldn’t get Asia out his head.

He bought a Royal portable typewriter and wrote a novel about Shanghai (“Shanghai Flame”, 1951). A publisher bought it. It was good, but no more than pulp fiction – quickly churned out, fast-paced stories featuring wise-cracking tough guys and beautiful dames invariably in exotic settings.

“Shanghai Flame” did well. The publisher asked for another – ‘stick with the Orient Sid, the readers dig it. Write what you know.’ And so he thought back to those lazy weekends in Macao, sipping vinho e licores watching sojourning Hong Kong bachelors dancing with Eurasian hostesses to a Filipino band at the Bela Vista Hotel. He put his two interests together – Macao and magic. The result was “Look Behind You, Lady” (1952).

The mix worked. The public loved the book, loved the setting. Macao, ‘hanging like a necklace of simulated diamonds and paste rubies off the neck of Hong Kong’ and a broke American magician, Bruce Flemish, who knows every trick except how to win in a casino. Flemish is performing magic shows – after the Chinese acrobats, before the Greek stripper – at the Hotel China Seas (a thinly-veiled version of the Central Hotel on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro). Two floors of gambling, a bordello, several floors of suites, and opium on the room service menu.

Flemish is broke. He’s offered a way to make some money. It’s not exactly kosher, but when you’re down to your last few patacas, what you gonna do? And this is pulp fiction, a genre with rules that Sid Fleischman had quickly mastered. His Macao has a Macanese casino boss with no thumbs (his wife was late paying the ransom to some pirate kidnappers), a dapper, but thuggish American gangster, a “White” Russian émigré indulging in a little casual espionage, and a ‘dame’ – invariably an American one, a long way from home, “lost in the East”, in some sort of trouble and, of course, completely irresistible. And in Fleischman’s Donna Chandler we get a classic pulp fiction dame – you shouldn’t fall in love with her, but you can’t stop yourself, even though she’s trouble with a capital T.

The plot meanders through some gold smuggling, spy shenanigans, a bunch of counterfeit dollars. There’s a little gunplay, a garrotting, a fair bit of lovey-dovey action, before a magic trick or two save Flemish’s hide. Pulp fiction isn’t heavy on the moralising, though if you’re looking for a life lesson from Fleischman then the best you’ll get is the tip that when a gangster gives you a fat roll of Hong Kong dollars to give to another gangster, don’t go and gamble it in a casino!

“Look Behind You, Lady” isn’t the best novel about Macao ever written… but it is fun. And Fleischman did know of what he wrote. The atmosphere is heavily redolent of Macao in the early 1950s. Not quite a historical document, but not to be totally dismissed either.

Sid Fleischman kept on writing… and kept on doing magic. He made a decent career combining the two. He returned to Shanghai for his biggest hit –a novel set in the old French Concession’s knock-down-and-drag-out bar strip, Blood Alley (1955). John Wayne bought the rights, made a movie, and Sid was set up for life with Hollywood.

“Look Behind You, Lady” might have made a good movie too – Bogart and Bacall as Flemish and Chandler? They’re not a mile away from Bob Mitchum and Jane Russell whose movie Macao came out the same year. Perhaps that’s why we never got a movie version of “Look Behind You, Lady” – Josef von Sternberg got there first and Hollywood wasn’t going to do two Macao movies in the same year. But we still have the novel and Sid Fleischman’s Macao.

Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011

Rachel S Core’s Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011 is out now from Hong Kong University Press….Core is associate professor and chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Stetson University.

Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011 is the first book on the most widespread and deadly infectious disease in China, both historically and today. Weaving together interviews with data from periodicals and local archives in Shanghai, Rachel Core examines the rise and fall of tuberculosis control in China from the 1950s to the 1990s. Under the socialist work unit system, the vast majority of people had guaranteed employment, a host of benefits tied to their workplace, and there was little mobility—factors that made the delivery of medical and public health services possible in both urban and rural areas. The dismantling of work units amid wider market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s led to the rise of temporary and casual employment and a huge migrant worker population, with little access to health care, creating new challenges in TB control. This study of Shanghai will provide valuable lessons for historians, social scientists, public health specialists, and many others working on public health infrastructure on both the national and global levels.

Shanghai Volunteer Corps, Mounted Rangers Cup 1860

A 19th century Chinese silver mug, makers mark LC?, with dragon handle and embossed with continuous battle scene, with engraved inscription ‘Shanghai Volunteer Corps, Mounted Rangers Cup Won By Trooper F. Evans F.L. at the Spring Meeting, 1860?