All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Whoever is arranging the revolving wall photo exhibits at the Hong Kong FCC is doing a great job – the last year has seen Bill Lascher’s display of Mel Jacoby’s wartime China photos, Macao-based photographer Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro’s images of Macao’s fading streets and colonial-era buildings, and now Katharina Hesse’s often stark yet poetic portraits. On till October 31….
In an Edinburgh used bookshop I picked up a copy of The China Run: Being the Biography of a Great-Grandmother (Hodder and Stoughton), a 1948 book purporting to be a biographical novella by the Scottish writer Neil Paterson (1915–1995, a novelist, screenwriter, and Academy Award winner). It’s a curious and slim little book – only 95 pages and marketed by Hodder as a “long-short story”. It claims to tell the story of Paterson’s great-grandmother, Christian West, who lived in Banff on Scotland’s east coast and famously became a sea captain in the China tea-clipper trade sailing out of Wales. What an amazing…. and little known… tale – a woman captain in the China Trade? Who could resist! I see Hollywood, I see Kidman, I see Oscars….
And it had some major fans. Somerset Maugham named it his Book of the Year in the New York Times following its post-war release while it was also praised by the novelists HE Bates and Eric Linklater, receiving warm reviews both sides of the Atlantic and especially in Paterson’s native Scotland.
And it is a stirring tale told concisely. The book opens with the narrator observing two uninspiring portraits of his supposed great-grandmother. Dissatisfied with how they capture her essence, he resolves to paint a “third portrait in words,” presenting the book as a factual biography.
Born in 1829 in a humble two-roomed house in the Scottish coastal town of Banff, Christian West grows up to be an unconventional woman. She marries a Welsh sea captain out of Cardigan Bay, the not wholly appealing Dai Evans, but refusing to endure long, lonely years ashore during his extended voyages, she insists on accompanying him to sea. While aboard, Christian rejects the passive role of a captain’s wife. She dedicates herself to mastering the complex arts of navigation, sailing, and being a ship captain.
Tragedy strikes when her husband dies unexpectedly during a voyage. Instead of handing control over to the crew or returning home in mourning, Christian uses her self-taught skills to assume full command of the ship. She successfully commands a commercial tea-clipper in the highly competitive China tea trade and the unglamourous and often dangerous Welsh roofing slate trade to South America in return for nitrate for fertilisers to spread on Welsh gardens.
Christian earns the respect of a rough, unruly crew, fights off pirates, navigates treacherous global waters, and operates a highly profitable business in a strictly male-dominated industry. At one point she has a brief affair with an American China Trade clipper captain (in a scene and story line of dated male fantasy that wouldn’t make the cut today as she submits during what is clearly a rape).
The novella tracks her extraordinary life until her peaceful death in 1893, concluding with a reference to her obituary in the Banffshire Journal.
However, it must be noted that Paterson gives scant primary sources for his tale, no footnotes. Gripping and seeming revelatory as the story of this unique female ship captain in the China trade is it turns out to be pure fiction. It is a literary illusion – though it’s not clear if either Somerset Maugham or HE Bates realised this? Though some newspapers called it a “fictionalised biography” most reviews seem to have taken its genuineness at face value.
Still the descriptions of Iquique (Chile and formerly Peru) and Antofagasta (Chile) are illuminating on a now oft-forgotten two-way trade between Wales and Peru. Also the description of Melbourne in the nineteenth century feels solid. There are some imaginings of Fuzhou, the tea market and the pirates of the South China Coast down to the legendary Bias Bay that might have inspired James Clavell.
The book was translated into several European languages. It sold well in America where they hyped up the rather toxic relationship with the American clipper captain. The British newspapers reported that The China Run had been optioned by RKO and Rank for a movie – but it never happened sadly (perhaps when they worked out it was all fiction?). However there was a radio adaptation for the BBC Home Service.
A word on Paterson as he had a rather remarkable life. He was educated at Banff Academy, hence the locale for The China Run. I’m pretty sure he’s the only Oscar winner to have come from Banff and captained a professional football team – while at Edinburgh University he played amateur football and rose to captain Dundee United for the 1936–37 season. He also played for Leith Athletic and Buckie Thistle (slightly less well known Scottish teams!). He served in the Royal Navy in World War Two mostly on mine sweepers thus learning a good bit of maritime terminology that would filter into The China Run.
At the 1960 Academy Awards Paterson won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for (the brilliant, and starring Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret) Room at the Top beating both Billy Wilder’s script for Some Like It Hot and Ben-Hur. Convinced he wouldn’t win he didn’t bother leaving Scotland to head to LA. Reputedly Paterson later used his Oscar as a doorstop at his home in Crieff, his home in Perth and Kinross.
“Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves… All gone.” Connie Sachs, Soviet intelligence expert, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
Back on the Le Carre Cast with a new 2-parter – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Ricki Tarr Declassified.
“This episode we talk about all things Ricki Tarr, exploring how Tarr’s backstory reflects the declining British Empire as much as the Cold War, how his past explains his the character we see in the novel and unwrap Tarr’s past as a ruthless killer. Plus, Japanese prisoner of war camps, gun running and spies in Southeast Asia.”
In the second episode we’ll talk about Ricki Tarr’s Hong Kong in TTSS (1974).
Part One is here
A collectors item i was shown in Beijing recently, but can it be real? “溥仪剪掉的辫子” which translates to “The braid cut off by Puyi.” We know Puyi did eventually cut of his queue, f on April 27, 1922. And that it may have been at Reginald Johnston’s urging and indeed Johnston May have done the cutting.
The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (Elliot & Thompson) is out now in the UK; US in November.
It’s quite rare now to find old photo albums in such good condition as this This album contains photos of a trip to Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai around 1911 or shortly afterwards (one photo shows a Coronation float in Shanghai for King George V). I’m not sure whose album this was but I’m going to assume, given that they included a royal-related image, it’s a British traveller.
I noticed this book up at the Edinburgh International book Festival – Caroline Knowles’ Uneasy Streets: How Chinese Money Is Remaking Urban Britain (C Hurst) – I’m afraid I missed the author’s presentation, haven’t read it yet and haven’t seen any reviews, but thought it might interest some on here….
At the high tide of UK–China relations, Chinese investors pumped billions into British property and projects each year, promising urban renewal and economic prosperity. But as political tides turned in both countries, the money dried up. A decade on, we live in the ruins of this ‘golden era’.
Caroline Knowles explores China’s global influence from the bottom up. Focusing on London and Manchester, she contrasts Beijing’s grand claims with the ramshackle physical evidence she finds at street level: a series of half-finished buildings and abandoned holes in the ground. And this isn’t just a British phenomenon. All along the continent-spanning Belt and Road network, Chinese-funded cities are patchworks of incompleteness, the products of relentlessly profit-driven urbanism that puts people last.
China’s soft-power city-making falls far short of the dreams displayed in glossy brochures. Combining urban observation with sharp commentary, interviewing property developers, Chinese migrants and other city-dwellers, Knowles paints an intimate, nuanced portrait. This is the material and human fabric of Chinese Britain.
A piece for That’s mags in China – 4 Last Emperor of China Locations to Visit in Beijing (that aren’t the Forbidden City, which is a bit obvious….) – Zhangwang Hutong; Mao’er Hutong; Dengshikou and; Prince Chun’s Mansion….Click here to read…
The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (Elliot & Thompson) is out now in the UK; US in November.
The London Illustrated News on the May 1858 races at Hong Kong’s Happy Valley. The original artist was Yokohama-based Thomas Wirgman, special correspondent and illustrator for The Illustrated London News in China and Japan. His field sketches were sent back to London, where professional workshop artisans engraved them onto woodblocks to be printed in the weekly paper.
