How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 2

The major reason we never got a Greene China book was that he never spent any time in China – and so it never became part of “Greeneland”. What a potentially great book we never got – imagine a Greene book on China that was as insightful as The Quiet American was regarding Indo-China or The Comedians on Haiti or The Power and the Glory on Latin America. But Greene never went to China despite having absorbed books on China (see previous post) as a boy and written a short play on China that he later binned (see previous post).

However, he very nearly did go to China in a major way. In Greene’s autobiography of his early life, A Sort of Life, the author recalls that at 21 he briefly took up a post with British American Tobacco who promised him a post in China. However, it never materialised and, demoralised at not getting to go to China, Greene left BAT and went to work at the Nottingham Journal, thereby beginning a life as a journalist and writer. What great ad copy BAT might have had in China though!

Xinhai – Dr Sun Up Again in Tiananmen Square

The up/down, up/down and not really all around of Sun Yat-Sen’s portrait in Tiananmen Square takes another twist as, as we approach the 100th anniversary of the Double Ten, the good doctor is up again (he was briefly before back in April but then got taken down again – see here). But there’s controversy of course over his legacy – here granddaughter Lily Sui-Fong Sun wades in. Sad to say China’s professors and supposed intellectuals have been all but silent on the anniversary preferring to witter on about the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party (I’m standing by my line that the Commies are celebrating their 90th birthday for the same reason my now departed Nan did – they know there’s little chance of reaching 100, so have your cake now while you’re still around to eat it!!).

What would the Doctor have made of it all? And while they’re moving portraits around the Square they can feel free to take away the Mao one if they like.

How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 1

A while back I speculated on why the great Graham Greene never wrote a book on China – his subject range was so great that it’s hard to imagine China didn’t peak his interest at any point when everywhere from Haiti to Sierra Leone; Vienna to Brighton did – not forgetting of course his Asian masterpiece The Quiet American. In his early career Greene did attempt a play about China (as I noted) but it appears to be lost to posterity. But recently reading Greene’s early memoir of his youth and adolescence, A Sort of Life, he makes two references to his early interest and encounters with China that are worth noting. So first today, the book that first piqued the boy Graham into being fascinated by China.

According to Greene it was Captain Charles Gilson’s The Lost Column – a book, published in 1909, I’m rather ashamed to say I haven’t read. It is all about the Boxer Rebellion, the sieges of Tientsin and Peking and Admiral Seymour’s relief forces. Plenty of daring-do apparently as you might expect but also some local characters including a Mr Wang and the more interesting sounding Jugatai the Tartar.It was a best seller in its day and very popular with young English lads being groomed for Empire.

I’m afraid I don’t know much about Gilson except he wrote quite prolifically for Boy’s Own and Boy’s Adventure type annuals and publications and wrote a number of other novels dealing with Russia and the Orient (The Scarlet Hand for instance is described as an “Oriental tale”). A search on Google will reveal a whole range of titles produced by Gilson with intriguing adventurous titles through to the 1920s. It seems that Gilson did know his China – indeed it seems he did serve with the British portion of the post-Boxer Eight Power Allied Army in Peking and Tientsin. The Lost Column opens on Meadows Road in Tientsin (now Tai’an Dao). There’s plenty of Yellow Peril language though Gilson seems to suggest that the Old China Hands were complacent to miss the rise of the Boxers.

Whatever, the book captivated the young Greene and set him off thinking about China…more tomorrow on his China dreams.

Matthew Niederhauser on Counterfeit Paradises: Youth Culture and Urban Development in China – October 18th, Shanghai

I first met Matthew Niederhauser a couple of years ago ostensibly because he is a relative of the old China Hand Anna Louise Strong and we swapped stories about the old gal for an afternoon. I personally think it’s very cool to have a pro-China Wobbly in the family! Anyway, Matthew himself is a massively talented photographer who was based in Beijing for quite some time and specialised in looking (and snapping) the underground music scene; images which he gathered together in an excellent book called Sound Kapital. And  now he’s coming to the RAS Shanghai to talk about it.

A Right Couple of Old Shanghai Tarts

I’m busy chasing around today in Europe so no time to write anything…by way of an apology, here’s a couple of old Shanghai tarts for you soliciting a bit of business down Foochow Road:

Xinhai 100 – Sun Yat Sen – The Opera

I haven’t posted on the various Xinhai events going around Chinese Asia (but not noticeably much of anything in the PRC). I was hoping that as October and the anniversary of the Double Ten got closer the PRC history protectors might find a way to acknowledge their lineage from 1911. But the problem is that in today’s (like it or not) ‘harmonised’ China the very idea that positive change can come through upheaval is an anathema and therefore not to be countenanced.

Still, such nonsense doesn’t concern (or shouldn’t) the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan. But now there is an opera on the life of SYS – that will, apparently, premiere in Beijing and then move on to Hong Kong. Slight problem here for China Rhyming – very busy at moment and know nothing about opera…so here’s a link to a long piece from CNN Go Hong Kong.

The Fat Years

If you read one Chinese book in translation this year it should probably be Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years in my humble opinion.

TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION….

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn – not only about their leaders, but also about their own people – stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world…

Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party’s stranglehold on China today.

Chan Koon-Chung Chan Koonchung was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong.

He was a reporter at an English newspaper in Hong Kong before he founded the influential magazine “City” in 1976, where he was the chief editor and then publisher for 23 years.

He is also a screenwriter and film producer of both Chinese and English-language films.

Chan is a co-founder of the Hong Kong environmental group Green Power and was a board member of Greenpeace International from 2008 to 2011.

He recently founded the NGO, Minjian International, that connects Chinese public intellectuals with their counterparts in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa.

His google account is often blocked. He is fluent in English. Chan now lives in Beijing.

The Mapping of Asia – Wattis Fine Art – Hong Kong

Asian map aficionado Jonathan Wattis has a selection of excellent Asian maps on display at his Hong Kong gallery at the moment until October 1. They range from the 16th to the 20th century and many are of Hong Kong and places dear to my heart such as Shanghai. Do pop along if you can./

The 23rd Annual Mapping of Asia Exhibition

A collection of fine antique maps

including City Plans of East Asia

Tel. +852 25245302   Email info@wattis.com.hk