Three rather interesting views of the Dongbianmen (east gate) Watchtower, or the Fox Tower as it was known to foreigners in Peking, which any of you who have read my book Midnight in Peking will know well. These three pictures are by the American photographer John David Zumbrun (1875-1949) who started his own studio – Camera Craft Company – on Legation Street (Dongjiaominxiang).
The first shows the view from some distance and that before 1949 the networks of canals of the Grand Canal were still surrounding the watchtower. The second shows camels passing by the Fox Tower and the third is the view west from the raised base of the tower towards the Legation Quarter, Chienmen (Qianmen) and what is now Tiananmen Square. If you visit the tower today you can see this same view, with some of the wall still intact and what was the Grand Canal is now a major railway line out of Beijing the post 1949 Beijing Railway Station.
Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu’s seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. Joseph A. Seeley shows how the unpredictable movements of water, ice, timber-cutters, anti-Japanese guerrillas, smugglers, and other borderland actors also spilled outside the bounds set by Japanese colonizers, even as imperial border-making reinforced Japan’s wider political and economic power.
Drawing on archival sources in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and English, Seeley tells the story of the river and the imperial border haphazardly imposed on its surface from 1905 to 1945 to show how rivers and other nonhuman actors play an active role in border creation and maintenance. Emphasizing the tenuous, environmentally contingent nature of imperial border governance, Border of Water and Ice argues for the importance of understanding history across the different seasons.
23/11/24 on Zoom via GuanghwaBooks – Souls Left Behind: How Can We Retell the History? with Fan Wu & Xinran honouring the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 & the release of Souls Left Behindby Fan Wu (trans Honey Watson). Free sign up here
An online book event featuringSouls Left Behind, where we invite you to explore the profound connections between history, memory, and storytelling. We will begin with a warm welcome and an introduction to our distinguished guest speakers, Fan Wu andXinran, both of whom bring deep insights and rich narratives to our discussion. Fan Wu will share the inspiration and historical context behind Souls Left Behind, offering a glimpse into the personal and collective stories woven throughout the book. Fan Wu and Xinran’s conversation will delve into the themes of resilience and the unique ways Chinese writers approach the retelling of history, inviting you to reflect on the power of storytelling in shaping our understanding of the past. To foster a sense of community, we will conclude with an open Q&A session, where you can engage directly with our speakers.
Souls Left Behind pays homage to the forgotten sacrifices of the Chinese Labour Corps in World War One, telling a universal tale of family, identity, and loss through the life of David. Oscillating between his older years as a widower supported by his daughter, and his experiences in his youth on a journey from China to France to contribute to the allied forces War efforts, this work is an emotional tribute to the forgotten of the forgotten, and those searching for their identity. Fan Wu has crafted empathetic characters and emotional storytelling to make this novel be a memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps, and a journey of reclaiming one’s identity.
Even when you’re about to have a new baby you have to find time for your other children…. spotted in Monument Books, Phnom Penh – City of Devils – shelved next to some newbie author called Xi Somethingorother….
JF Books (old Shanghailanders may remember Jiefang Books at the library on Huai Hai Lu – it’s moved to DC! – 1509 Connecticut Ave NW. I’ll be there on November 14th at 6pm for a book talk, audience Q&A, and signing….
I’m heading to Wallis Simpson’s hometown – back before she was a Duchess, a Simpson, even a Spencer – before her China sojourn – she was Bessie Wallis Warfield of East Biddle Street, Baltimore. So where better to talk about her life in China and its repercussions than to her hometown crowd?….and, as well as in-person, you can there is no registration required for virtual attendance, simply visit the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Facebook or Youtube page. To attend in person registration is here
Tuesday, November 12, 2024 7pm to 8pm
The Poe Reading Room, Central Library
400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China.
In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Though faced with challenges, Wallis came to appreciate traditional Chinese aesthetics. China molded her in terms of her style and provided her with friendships that lasted a lifetime. But that “Lotus Year” would also later be used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment.
The British government’s supposed “China Dossier” of Wallis’s rumored amorous and immoral activities in the Far East was a damning concoction, portraying her as sordid, debauched, influenced by foreign agents, and unfit to marry a king. Instead, French, an award-winning China historian, reveals Wallis Warfield Spencer as a woman of tremendous courage who may have acted as a courier for the US government, undertaking dangerous undercover diplomatic missions in a China torn by civil war.
Her Lotus Year is an untold story in the colorful life of a woman too often maligned by history.
About the Author:
Paul French was born in London and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. His book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir received much praise with The Economist writing, ‘…in Mr French the city has its champion storyteller.’ Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils are currently in development for film.
Wallis’s Shanghai bolthole for a few weeks in the late autumn of 1924 was the Palace Hotel. Newly separated from her first husband, she stepped out onto the Bund and into town – the race club, Nanking Road shopping, cocktails. But she also saw the dead and wounded of the 1924 Second Zhili–Fengtian War being brought into the city by train from the battlefields nearby. And how could she afford to stay in the Palace – then the most expensive hotel in town? Well you’ll need to read Her Lotus Year I’m afraid….
