All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
An official Hong Komg evacuation order from 1940. From The Commodore, Hong Kong, aboard Indrapoera, built 1926 for Rotterdam Lloyd hired to the British Government. The ship sailed in July 1940 to transport refugees from Hong Kong to Australia. Here is the original ticket No. 564 to allow a Mrs. Medewells to board the vessel…
This week on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf one of the best selling books about China to come out of World War Two – Teddy White and Annalee Jacoby’s Thunder Out of China... supportive of China’s war effort; critical of Chiang Kai-shek, it kept on selling well into the 1950s and the two Life writers (not best appreciated by KMT/Chiang supporting own Henry Luce) heavily influenced America’s ‘Who Lost China?’ debate after WW2…click here
An interesting photograph of Mongolian falcon sellers in Peking around 1930 (I am afraid the photgrapher is unidentified). Apparently these sellers would come to Peking anually with falcons caught on the Mongolian plains and transported as you see below. The American linguist, missionary and Sinologist Samuel Wells Williams recalled in his 1848 book, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, Etc. of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants that though used initially to discourage rodents and pests (something falcons do in many major cities still tosah globally) they would eventually come to infest the gates, towers and trees of the city, impudently forgae food in markets and food streets, snatching food from stalls and out of people’s hands in a rather startling fashion (they’re pretty big birds)…..
Edward Wilson-Lee’s A History of Water is a fascinating tale of 1500s Portugal that does eventually reach Macao and has a sub-plot concernig the life and Asian adventures of the poet Camoes….
A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal.
The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life.
Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.
Eugenie Buchan’s A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers (University Press of New England) is a new addition to the Flying Tigers shelf…
On December 7, 1941, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the first three months of the war the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across the Pacific: the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies. Nonetheless, in those dark days, the U.S. press began to pick up reports about a group of American mercenaries who were bringing down enemy planes over Burma and western China. The pilots quickly became known as the Flying Tigers and a legend was born.
But who were these flyers for hire and how did they wind up in the British colony of Burma? In the standard version of events, an American named Claire Chennault had convinced the Roosevelt administration to establish, fund, and equip covert air squadrons that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo—even before a declaration of war existed between the United States and Japan. That was hardly the case: although present at the creation, Chennault was not the sole originator of the American Volunteer Group.
In A Few Planes for China, Eugenie Buchan draws on wide-ranging new sources to overturn seventy years of received wisdom about the genesis of the Flying Tigers. This strange experiment in airpower was accidental rather than intentional; haphazard decisions and changing threat perceptions both shaped its organization and deprived it of resources. In the end it was the British—more than any American in or out of government—who got the Tigers off the ground. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the most important man behind the Flying Tigers was not Claire Chennault but Winston Churchill.
Not seen one of these before – a spoon adorned with the thistle crest of the Scottish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps…..
The Last Emperor Revisited, from Hong Kong University Press with photographs by Basil Pao; Introductions by Jeremy Thomas, Vittorio Storaro and James Acheson. In July 1986, Basil Pao joined the multi-national cast and crew in Beijing for the filming of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. His principal role in the production was to appear as the young emperor Pu Yi’s father Prince Chun. But he also served as a 3rd Assistant Director and Special Stills Photographer.
This book is a true behind-the scenes look at the making of the epic, now legendary film through the exquisite eye of a photographer who had unlimited access to everyone and everything everywhere. The images feature an international cast of characters contributing to the creation of the masterpiece, from the director, the filmmakers and actors, to the farmers, workers and students from in and around Beijing who had been recruited as extras because they had interesting, often striking faces. It contains over 250 photographs, including some of Pao’s most stunning and iconic images of the film, along with a treasure trove of ‘never-been-seen’ pictures captured during the filming in Beijing and in Italy.
In Pao’s own words: “It is the chronicle of a truly extraordinary experience that completely changed my life.”
Basil Pao is a photographer and graphic designer from Hong Kong who has worked extensively behind the scenes for various film and television productions, notably with the BBC and Michael Palin on numerous travel programs. His stills, travel essays and corporate works have been published widely around the world.
Listen to an abridged version of the chapter – Bored in the Broadway Mansions: Penelope Fitzgerald (1977) from Destination Shanghai (Blacksmith Books)
