All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
A video interview with me up on Youtube, filmed in London recently by photo-journalist and old Shanghailander Nicky Almasy. In it we discuss research, writing, how my books are received in the West and in China, Wallis Simpson, Carl Crow, filming Midnight in Peking and what I’m up to next…. click here to watch…
An amazing new book of photographs, Our Country, detailing China’s resistance to Japan from my Beijing friend, historian and research collaborator Zou Dehuai (邹德怀). It’s published by our mutual Chinese publishers Social Sciences Academic Press (SSAP Beijing). The photos (from his extensive archives) are amazingly detailed and many focus on the behind the lines struggle in the communist base areas…..
Literary festival bucket list entry ticked – Wonderful to listen to Amitav Ghosh discuss the Opium Trade Implications at the Heart of Historic Macau (and his Canton/Macao/Calcutta Ibis trilogy) with Joshua Ehrlich at the Macao International Literary Festival in the old East India Company HQ, Casa Garden. And wonderful that you can watch it too!!
Thanks to Tina and Patrick, the loabans of Historic Shanghai, for inviting me to Garden Books on Changle Lu last week to speak on my books and writing about Old China. My Shanghai visit was a bit last minute but Historic Shanghai pulled together a great event at short notice. Thanks to everyone who came out, asked smart questions and brought along books for signing.
Another interesting series of now boarded up streets is around Yunnan Lu South and Ninghai Lu East. These, and adjacent streets that run at the back of the Great World (Da Shijie), are interesting as they were mostly created around 1915 when the old Yanjing Creek and its surrounding slums were finally (after 60 years of complaints!) cleared and covered.
Ninghai Lu west of Xizang Lu was cleared in the early 2000s of shikumen/lilong and a park created running alongside the Gaojia (built earlier with a lot of protest about clearances at the time).
Anyway many will remember that Yunnan Lu and the crossroads with Ninghai Lu was a vibrant all-day/night cluster of Uyghur restaurants and foodstalls until a few years ago. Before WW2 it was recorded as an exciting area where many of the performers and “ladies of the night” who plied their trades at the Great World lived. Now the area’s future is anyone’s guess…..
One thing immediately noticeable on visiting Shanghai is the number of old streets of longtang shikumen that are now emptied of residents and boarded up. And they appear to have been this way for quite some time (indeed some I revisited were already emptied and boarded up a couple of years ago when I last passed through the city).
So what’s going on? Well, views and opinions differ depending on who you talk to. But….(sounding out the heritage crowd)…. most agree on a few things. The traditional process of “redevelopment” (for which read bulldozing the old replacement by hi-rises and office blocks) has changed. The harsh Zero-Covid regime made it somewhat easier to reach relocation/compensation settlements with shikumen\longtang residents – the notion of a bit more room, your own kitchen and perhaps a balcony. Areas were then emptied. They were subsequently boarded up. And so many remain.
The big question of course is what is intended with these areas – eventual demolition or some form of refurbishment. We hope of course for the latter…. but the last 35 years in Shanghai doesn’t offer good odds.
What seems to have happened of course is that as we all know property developers are in a mess across China – either openly bankrupt or stagnant and avoiding declaring their troubles. So these boarding ups may continue and become lingering ghosts of once vibrant old Shanghai communities.
These pictures are the north side Changle Lu between Chengdu Nan Lu and Ruijin No.1 Lu, a once dense and vibrant community where some shikumen date back over 130 years. Now all boarded up….
It was amazing to spend a week in and around Macao’s Casa Garden (Praça de Luís de Camões) for the Macao International Literary Festival….
Originally built in 1770 as Macao’s first villa-style garden residence for the wealthy Portuguese merchant Manuel Pereira.
In the early 19th century, it was leased to the East India Company as their Macau HQ, housing high-ranking directors.
It has hosted figures such as Lord Macartney (Britain’s first envoy to China) and former US President Ulysses S Grant.
Around 1850 George Chinnery painted “A View of Macao Looking Towards the Casa Garden”, taken from a high point above the inner harbour looking towards the Casa Garden. The pitched roof of the Camões Grotto is visible among the trees of the Casa Garden in the middle distance.
More recently Casa Garden housed the Camões Museum before being purchased by the Oriental Foundation in the 1980s.
There is still time to see the exhibition of black and white photos taken by António Duarte Mil-Homens celebrating the work of the late Macanese Modernist architect José Maneiras -“José Maneiras: From Architecture to Urban Management in Macau” – at the Casa Garden until April 5 2026.
Maneiras studied architecture at the University of Porto’s Faculty of Fine Arts, graduating in 1962 and then returning to Macao.
Below just two of Maneiras’s many projects. The Edificio Fung Wong (1966), close by the ruins of St Paul’s on Rua de Sao Paulo and the Residence for the Visually Impaired (1970) in the Areia Preta neighbourhood (Hac Sa Wan).
