Midnight in Peking at the Brisbane Writers Festival

The Brisbane Writers Festival is getting underway. Been a while since I was last in Brisbane and that was only a flying visit (though I do remember an excellent steak and a good bottle of red was consumed). That was work back then, this time it’s pleasure and a chance to speak to the audiences at the festival about Midnight in Peking, China and all that.

Friday 9 Sept – 2pm
A Scandalous Past – Auditorium 1 – The State Library of Queensland – A$16
Creating scandal and intrigue without the aid of a single inappropriate Tweet or photo from a mobile phone, Linda Jaivin, Sulari Gentill and Paul French share the secret skills of crafting historical fiction.

Sunday 11 Sept – 2.30pm
Party Time: Living and Working in China – The Edge, The State Library of Queensland – FREE
In the absence of democracy, the success of the world’s second largest economy may be attributed to the intervention of bureaucrats working magic with heavy visible hands. Paul French, Jeremy Goldkorn, Katrina Beikoff and Linda Jaivin discuss the sensitivities of living and working in China.

Sheng Keyi – The Girl Who Sold Phones

Sheng Keyi’s novel Northern Girls is currently in translation for publication in English next year probably. If you don’t know who Sheng Keyi is then you soon will. Here, however, is a short story by her that has been translated – The Girl Who Sold Phones. We just both happened to be in Melbourne at the Writers Festival where she spoke very well about her work and the travails of being a Chinese writer.

The Midnight in Peking Late-Night Walking Tour – 13th September

The good folk at Time Out in Beijing have roped me into this event that could be a lot of fun…and definitely ends with a drink!

Retrace the scenes from an unsolved murder investigation that took place in 1937!

Trepang – China and the Story of Macassan-Aboriginal Trade

They say you learn something new every day and today I certainly did today in Melbourne – the Macassan-Aboriginal trade in trepang (sea slugs) for the Chinese market. A small but fascinating little exhibition is currently on at the Melbourne Museum.

This exhibition tells the story of the ancient trade in sea cucumbers (trepang).

Trepang explores the long history of cultural exchange and trade between the Chinese, Macassan (Sulawesi) and northern Australian Aboriginal people.

Combining historical artefacts, paintings, maps and photographs with new works to tell the story of the Aboriginal and Asian contact around the trepang (sea cucumber) trade from the early 18th Century to the early 20th Century.

Trepang is founded on a 20-year friendship between classically-trained Chinese artist Zhou Xiaoping and highly respected Indigenous Australian artist John Bulunbulun.

Featuring contemporary works including cross-cultural collaborations of traditional Chinese and Australian designs.

Trepang forms part of The Year of Chinese Culture in Australia 2011 – 2012.

The exhibiton is on until October at the Melbourne Museum

Midnight in Peking Extract in the Sunday Herald Sun

Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper extracted a little of my Midnight in Peking book – it’s a slightly different bit to previous extracts so might provide a little flavour and a temptation to buy.

The Fox Tower as it looks today

Street Angel – A Rare Chance to See a Chinese Classic – September 7

Website and magazine The World of Chinese puts on its next bi-weekly screening on Wednesday, 7^th September at Beijing’s Zajia Lab. And they’re showing a classic. Street Angel (马路天使) is a deft blend of comedy and melodrama tells of two sisters struggling on the streets of 1930s Shanghai. The pair — one a prostitute, the other a teahouse singer — face greater hardships when their adoptive parents try to sell one sister to a sleazy patron. This film introduced audiences to Chinese starlet Zhou Xuan in her breakthrough role.

The World of Chinese Movies @ Zajia Lab

FREE ADMISSION. Doors at 6:30pm, movie at 8:30.

Hong En Daoist Temple (beside Bell Tower food market), Doufuchi Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing

Contact Zhang Bo on 134 2643 0650 for questions or to reserve a seat. Reservations strongly recommended as space is limited.

地址：北京东城区旧鼓楼大街豆腐池胡同洪恩观（钟楼菜市场旁边）

Gorgeous Cigarette Girls on Cold Shanghai Days

A nice bit of late 1930s cigarette advertising in Shanghai for your delectation this Sunday. Nothing to say about this sort of shot and that period of old Shanghai that hasn’t been said a million times before…still nice though.

The Asian Arguments Quarterly Email

As you may know I am the series editor for a new set of short books about contemporary issues in Asia published by Zed. The first was published earlier this year, the next is imminent and more have been commissioned and are forthcoming. Not quite history but China-related so China Rhymers may find the quarterly email interesting all the same. To sign up for the regular emails direct just send your email and a short note to Julian Hosie at Zed Books.

Dear all,

In April we launched the first book in the new Zed Asian Arguments series – Kerry Brown’s Ballot Box China: Grassroots Democracy in the Final Major One-Party State. The launch was a great success with over 200 people packing into the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House to hear the well known journalist and China analyst Jonathan Fenby introduce Kerry, his book and our series. But, as everyone involved couldn’t be in London that week I thought an email round up of what’s happening with Asian Arguments might be useful.

Kerry’s book is now available and garnering favourable reviews. He’s been speaking everywhere from the Bath Festival’s Who Rules the World? debate, the legendary Arthur Probsthain’s bookshop to the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club and taking part in a Bookshop Barney at Foyles. We couldn’t have hoped for a better book on a hotter topic to kick the series of with.

Next up, in September, we’ve got Michael Barr’s Who’s Afraid of China? That book’s about to go to the printers and I can tell you it’s a very readable account of Beijing’s soft power efforts everywhere from the growing number of Confucius Institutes to China’s own version of CNN and from the reinterpreting of the Zheng He Treasure ships story to Chinese soft lending in Africa. I’m sure Michael (who’s based at Newcastle University) is going to become someone the media, trying to figure out China’s soft power strategy will call upon regularly! He’s organizing several speaking and launch events in north east England, the first in Newcastle on September 19th (for more information see here) and we?ll also have a launch in London, again at the RIIA, on September 22^nd (for more information on the latter event email contact@chathamhouse.org)

Just in case you’re worried the Asian Arguments series sounds too China heavy, in 2012 we’ll be publishing Ruth Pearson and Kyoko Kusakabe’s book Thailand’s Hidden Workforce: Burmese Women Factory Workers. This is the incredibly little known story of the 2 million Burmese women migrant workers that prop up Thailand’s manufacturing economy. The authors have spent a lot of time interviewing these women and an early draft indicates that we’re all about to find out a lot more about their lives and working conditions than previously. We hope the book attracts a lot of attention.

Back to China for a couple of other forthcoming books. Former South China Morning Post journalist and now managing editor of the China Economic Quarterly in Beijing, Tom Miller is currently writing a book ? China’s Urban Billion – for the series on China’s frenetic urbanisation process. So much has been written about migration to cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but Tom is getting out and examining the urbanising effects on China’s lesser-known hinterland cities and the creation of completely new multi-million person ”instant cities”.

And finally a slightly different sort of book is coming from the folk at ChinaDialogue, the best-regarded bilingual website and resource dealing with China’s environment. This book is looking at grass roots environmental activism across China from crusading lawyers to angry middle class protestors and is provisionally titled China’s Grassroots Green Defenders. The book is slightly different to others in the Asian Arguments series as it features a range of case studies written by journalists and activists including Sam Geall of Chinadialogue, Jonathan Ansfield of Newsweek and the New York Times as well as several notable academics and grassroots campaigners. The case studies will be bookended with a foreword by Chinadialogue?s editor and well known journalist and broadcaster Isabel Hilton and an afterword from Liu Jianqiang, one of China’s most prominent investigative reporters.

There are a lot of other ideas bubbling around that will hopefully turn into concrete titles for the series at some point – North Korean human rights, Mongolia and the resources curse, the inside story of the Uzbek cotton industry? If you know of any good subjects that should be part of the series and, more importantly, anyone who should be writing them then please do let me know.

Paul French

Series Editor, Zed Asian Arguments

Shanghai