Escape from Hong Kong

Vare’s The Maker of Heavenly Trousers as a Penguin Modern Classic – Sneak Preview

It’s not out till February 2012 in China and globally in July but it is great to see that Penguin are issuing the old Italian diplomat Daniel Vare’s The Maker of Heavenly Trousers as a Modern Classic. It’s one of the best and most charming accounts of old Peking by a man of class, culture and erudition and I hope people do read it if they never have, and if you have then it’s well worth a return journey.

Lady Precious Stream Revived in London

Someone has resurrected SI Hsiung’s 1934 play Lady Precious Stream, a spoken word drama based on the Chinese opera 王宝钏 (Wang Bao Chuan) set in the Tang Dynasty. As you can see below it’s being performed in December at the University of Reading and the Islington Chinese Association (a bit more Archway than Islington to be fair). Hsiung (1902-1991) was a Chinese writer who became the first Chinese to direct a play in the West End theatre in 1935 – Lady precious Stream ran for a very respectable 733 performances. A movie version of the play was also shot in 1938 though I’ve never seen it and I don’t think any names of great note were associated with it (IMDB here). Searching round the web I found this rather nice site about a 1935 production in Nottingham complete with flyer (as below).

Hsiung was a graduate of Beijing University and a friend of the famous Chinese opera star Mei Lanfang.

Anyway, it’s peaked my interest and I’ll be popping along in Islington to have a look as I happen to be in London that weekend.

American Wheels, Chinese Roads: The Story of General Motors in China

It’s not that long ago but it is history. Also I am, like Mike Dunne the author of American Wheels, Chinese Roads, not in the first flush of youth anymore and so I should remember that most foreigners hustling around China passing themselves of as experts on the Middle Kingdom these days were still at school when we all marvelled at GM being the first company to slap down a cool billion bucks in China. I confess to knowing Mike, and, when it comes to cars (things I personally loathe and would abolish thereby saving thousands of lives from idiots and drunks behind the wheel as well as the planet and getting people to exercise a bit more and not be so obese) he knows more most others and, when it comes to cars in China, he’s the font of all wisdom. This is a great history of GM’s ride in China and actually starts a little shelf of books about cars and China including Jim Mann’s great Beijing Jeep, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving and Martin Posth’s 1,000 Days in Shanghai – The VW in China Story.

As usual cover and blurb below.

How could one company—General Motors—meet disaster on one continent and achieve explosive growth on another at the very same time? While General Motors was hurtling towards bankruptcy in 2009, GM’s subsidiary in China was setting new sales and profit records. This book reveals how extraordinary people, remarkable decisions and surprising breaks made triumph in China possible for General Motors. It also shows just how vulnerable that winning track record remains. No small part of GM’s success in China springs from its management of shifting business and political relationships. In China, the government makes the rules for—and competes in—the auto industry. GM’s business partner, the City of Shanghai, is both an ally and a competitor. How does such an unnatural relationship work on a day-to-day basis? Where will it go on the future? General Motors also engages in constant battles with other global and Chinese car makers for the hearts of demanding Chinese consumers. Dunne gives us rare glimpses into the mindsets and behavior of this new moneyed set, the worlds newest class of wealthy consumers. China is already the number one car market in the world. During the next ten years, China will export millions of cars and trucks globally, including to the United States. American Wheels, Chinese Roads presents readers fascinating illustrations of what to expect when Chinese cars, companies, and business people arrive on our shores.

Penguin Just Gave me the Coolest Christmas Present Ever

A light box ad at Hong Kong Airport right through December into January. Just try and avoid it!!! You will buy!! You will buy!!!

Truly the best Christmas pressie ever!!! Thanks guys

RAS CHINA LECTURE Tuesday 13/12/11 – ANNA GREENSPAN On Shanghai’s Retrofuturism

RAS Shanghai LECTURE

Tuesday 13^th December, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xing Guo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai

兴国宾馆 上海市兴国路78号

ANNA GREENSPAN

On

Shanghai’s Retrofuturism

Modernism’s alchemistic promise has been a failure, a hoax: magic that didn’t work. Its ideas, aesthetics, strategies are finished. Together, all attempts to make a new beginning have only discredited the idea of a new beginning.

Rem Koolhaas S,M,X,XL 1995

Touch the Future.

Slogan on a Shanghai billboard advertising the 2010 World Fair

In much of the Western world the future now belongs to the past. The very idea of the city of tomorrow  – with its multilayered skyways, housecleaning robots and flying cars — seems doomed to the realm of nostalgia, the sadly comic promise of a future that never arrived

Yet, faith in the future, which has elsewhere been lost, has reemerged in contemporary China. In Shanghai today, yesterday’s dreams of tomorrow are being revived.

This talk explores Shanghai’s retrofuturism asking:  how is it that the future came to seem so backward?  Is the dynamic that eclipsed yesterday’s visions of a future metropolis fated to simply replay itself? Is Shanghai’s current futurism just a reflection of what has come before? Or, instead, might the city give rise to an urban future that is unexpected, unfamiliar and unknown?

Anna Greenspan works as an adjunct professor at New York University Shanghai where she teaches about globalization and the city. She is co-founder of NYU’s Institute of Shanghai Studies. Anna is currently writing a book provisionally entitled ‘Modernity 2.0: Shanghai’s Reemergence in the New Millennium”

Entrance: RMB 30.00 (RAS members) and RMB 80.00 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at these events.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

RAS Shanghai – HONORABLE SURVIVOR: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service

RAS WEEKENDER

Saturday 10^th December, 2011 at 4:00 p.m.

Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai

兴国宾馆 上海市兴国路78号

LYNNE JOINER

On

HONORABLE SURVIVOR: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service

Lynne Joiner’s biography offers a fascinating tale of international intrigue, romance, war, revolution, and the fate of nations. It weaves diplomat John Service’s extraordinary story into the fabric of a watershed moment in our history when World War II was ending, the Cold War was dawning, and the McCarthy era witch-hunters were stirring–and offers a gripping true story of love, courage, betrayal, and final redemption set against a backdrop of war and revolution that changed the world forever.

During World War II when the U.S. Army needed allies to fight against the Japanese, diplomat John Service was secretly assigned to learn about Mao’s communist guerrillas. He was the first to alert top U.S. officials to the growing power of Mao’s peasant revolution and cautioned his government not to take sides in what he predicted would be the renewal of China’s bitter civil war.

In 1950, the Foreign Service officer became McCarthy’s scapegoat for the alleged “loss” of China to the communists and was fired on a charge of “doubtful loyalty.” A unanimous ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court returned Service to the diplomatic corps in 1957, but only Nixon and Mao’s historic handshake in 1972 finally confirmed his vindication by history. The author gained access to top secret FBI and State Department security records and was granted special access to Service’s private papers. Joiner’s exhaustive research reveals much new information on the role played by the FBI and Chiang Kai-shek’s secret Nationalist Chinese police in spreading false information about the diplomat, including charges that he fathered an illegitimate child with his beautiful Chinese actress mistress-an alleged Soviet spy- during the war.

Winner of the 2010 Douglas Dillon Award for distinguished writing on American diplomacy, HONORABLE SURVIVOR, has received much critical acclaim. Here’s a sampling:”Honorable Survivor is not just a fascinating read… it also offers breathtaking insights into the realities of the process of national policymaking, including the terrible toll exacted by egotism, miscommunication, prejudice, turf warfare and plain ignorance. As such, the book is full of timely lessons…. Reading Honorable Survivor, one cannot help but reflect on more recent foreign policy challenges – Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan – where a genuine comprehension of developments in a distant land could make all the difference for effective policymaking.”

–Susan Brady Maitra, Foreign Service Journal

“Joiner is neither naïve nor uncritical toward her subject….[Her] book is part biography, part history of an extraordinarily complex and tormented chapter in China-US relations, and part description and analysis of the paranoid style in American politics during the McCarthy era. There are lessons to be learned here, for yesterday and for today.”

–Lyman P. Van Slyke, The Journal of the China Quarterly,

Lynne Joiner is a veteran broadcast journalist whose career includes assignments for major American TV news organizations, such as ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC. She was the only American correspondent in China at the time of Premier Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976. Her news reporting and documentary filmmaking have taken her around the globe and her articles have appeared in such publications as Far Eastern Economic Review, San Francisco Chronicle, and Pacific News Service. Joiner is currently in Shanghai, serving as a media consultant for International Channel Shanghai-(ICS-TV), an all-English television cable channel in the city.

Entrance: RMB 30.00 (RAS members) and RMB 80.00 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at these events.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

M on the Bund Dec 11 – Flight From the Reich: Jewish Refugees, 1933-1945 – to Include Shanghai Apparently

M’s Literary Salon
Author Talk: Flight From the Reich:
Jewish Refugees, 1933-1945
1933－1945

Sunday, December 11, 4pm

No cover charge

Join us for a fascinating discussion with Professor Deborah Dwork, author of Flight from the Reich:  Jewish Refugees, 1933-1945, which focuses on the ever dwindling choices open to those seeking to flee Nazi occupation and the often painful decisions of the people who dealt with them—consuls, immigration officers, church, health, and social workers.  The role of Shanghai as a sanctuary will be examined as well as the other avenues for escape open to those in need.