All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Happy new year to one and all etc etc….herewith, for your delectation, a 15 cent Tientsin stamp featuring a small swirling dragon – small but just about perfect! BTW: LPO stands for licensed post office. I believe these stamps were primarily produced for local mail rather than international.
Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China is a new book of images edited by Jeffrey Cody and Frances Terpak. Most of the photographs are familiar though the discussion of their additions of their own brushwork to the photographic images is interesting. If you have a lot of books of old photos of China you might want to scan through this one first to make sure you’re not simply repeating what you already have.
More details and some photos in a pdf: Brush&Shutter_FINAL_brochure[1]
The area that runs behind the Bund by the new Peninsula Hotel is now extremely bland and dreary courtesy of the clearly well connected Rockbund Corporation. Much has been cleared including several key buildings and little of public interest added – the Peninsula Hotel is quite unpleasant, guards line the street to ward of any citizen who may linger or attempt to sit down, and several well appointed buildings have ‘chai’ signs on them and it is unclear whether all or part of them will be eradicated yet. Most of this can be laid at the doorstep of the Rockbund people, the Rockefeller Group folk who have largely balls all this up.
So, fine, vandals at work in Shanghai redeveloping for the elite with little or no appreciation of the past – not really news in Shanghai. But when the vandals lie as well as bulldoze then, well, not much you can do but call them out.
Take the plaque they’ve stuck on the old Rowing Club building. A mediocre restoration of what was the main building down by Suzhou Creek and the Garden Bridge now closed up and guarded by the usual square badges. Here’s the plaque:
‘The Boathouse was dismantled in 1989’ – sadly not true. As reported in Shanghai and on this blog, the bulldozers moved in July 2009 to finally demolish the boathouse – not quite so long ago. This was despite pleas from preservationists and well known architectural academic from Tongji University Ruan Yisan, one of the the city’s foremost experts in historic architecture protection. The contractor, stated at the time to be Shanghai New Huang Pu Real Estate Co Ltd, went in at midnight and did their dirty work hoping darkness would cover their evil deed. See the story as reported back in 2009 here.
So why the lies on the plaque then? Is it possibly that Rockefeller don’t want to be associated with having destroyed what was a supposedly preserved building in an area supposed to be earmarked for preservation just the year before last? Or perhaps nobody told them! Or the political heavies have indeed leaned as they tend to? Either way, now a solid plaque stands on the building telling a lie to every passing tourist.
Who wrote the plaque we do not know – a good guess would be that the author’s name is Winston Smith though!! He was a dab hand at rewriting history.
And here is a picture of the rowing club in all its glory before the vandals at the Shanghai New Huang Pu Real Estate Company and the philistines at the Rockefeller group got their greedy bloody fangs into it.
My forthcoming book Murder in Peking (Penguin, sometime this year) has been likened by some early readers as a sort of White Mischief in China. In a way it is – my story is January 1937 and the murder of the daughter of a former high ranking British Consul in China while the murder murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll was January 1941. Still both books are really about not just previously unsolved murders but also goldfish bowl ex-patriot communities (Kenya’s Happy Valley/The Peking Legation Quarter) where morals, laws and self discipline rather collapsed when faced with distance form the mother country, impending war, economic collapse and a feeling that barbarism was ascendant. I reread White Mischief recently and was even more struck by some overlaps – both murders led to swirling local rumour mills among the resident ex-pats and the locals, both led to the further airing of a whole range of embarrassing private behaviour and criminal activities by otherwise seemingly law abiding citizens and both had strong sexual components with a little too much booze and dope lying around. Both were also investigated by ex-Scotland Yard coppers and, of course, both were ultimately not solved at the time though a new book (below) claims to solve the murder of the Earl of Erroll and my book….well, just wait. White Mischief of course became a great film – Murder in Peking…well, we’ll see.
Anyway this is all a bit of a plug but the point is that for anyone interested in that White Mischief milieu and those events there is a new biography out, Paul Spicer’s The Temptress, about one of the most intriguing and beautiful (though seriously unbalanced) characters in the whole saga – Alice de Janze. Her life is one of the most fascinating and destructive of that Bright Young generation after WW1 that swanned through London (though she was American originally) and the colonies. She was also stunningly beautiful and among all the women of that Happy Valley set (how, you often wonder were they capable of inspiring such lust and anger in men?) was the one you’d clearly hang for. As usual no full review but blurb below.
In Kenya’s ‘Happy Valley’ no one paid too much attention to the privileged colonial set as they farmed their estates, partied until dawn and indulged in extra-marital affairs. Not until Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was shot dead at the wheel of his Buick in the early hours of 24 January 1941. Some said the good-looking womaniser had it coming. He was a philanderer who could have had any number of enemies who wanted revenge. Ageing Jock Delves Broughton stood trial for Erroll’s murder but was acquitted and the mystery remained unsolved – until now. American heiress Alice de Janze had been conducting a clandestine affair with Joss for years. Married into French aristocracy, her stunning beauty was to prove a fatal lure to men of adventure. Previously tried by a French court for shooting one of her lovers, scandal followed her wherever she went. She arrived in Kenya as a newly married Countess in the 1920s, but by 1941 she had turned forty and the years of partying had taken their toll. Pushed aside by Erroll for younger lovers, Alice was thrown into desperation, resulting in Errol’s murder and her own tragic demise. The Temptress not only solves the mystery of Josslyn Hay’s murder with the utmost conviction – it eloquently paints a portrait of a volatile, captivating woman.
Sometimes the act of destruction can reveal what was previously hidden. Clearance of perfectly refurbishable lilongs and shikumen along Fujian Road North (Fokien Road North) that had been left to rot for several years to allow for demolition has revealed the previously hidden backs of the residential properties that front onto Zhejiang Road North (Chekiang Road North). These are, for the most part, in good condition – however, given the policy of creating slums by intent in Shanghai at the moment as the prelude to clearing large swatches of former residential property for the property developers, one has to ask how long these can be expected to be left alone.
And so we see the construction date of 1931 revealed. Some properties in this development are slightly older, going back to 1927. Originally this area of Chekiang Road North was dominated by legal buildings and many lawyers lived in these peroperties to be close to the courts – the Shanghai Special Area District Court (Chinese residing in the International Settlement were under the jurisdiction of the two Chinese Provisional Courts, the Shanghai Special Area District Court and a “Second Branch” of the Kiangsu Province High Court) dominated the street and was a busy congregating point for the litigious.
The clearing of the former properties on Fujian Road North is now complete – save for some migrant workers clearing away the last debris. Presumably a new high rise will be erected and once again blot out the rear of the structures on Zhejiang Road North…if indeed they survive 2011.
At present these 1931 buildings look to be in good condition…as are the 1927 ones next door…however, so were the structures on Fujian Road a couple of years ago and now they’re history!!
I’m afraid I don’t know anything of any interest about Stockholm’s China Teatern, except that in December I happened to be sitting in the large and cosy bar next door in the Berns Salonger drinking beer and watching the snow fall on the Berzelii Park. The Berns Salonger, which dates back to 1863, is a great collection of bars and restaurants as well as a rather nice hotel which featured a series of photographs of strippers and lap dancers in the halls when I stayed. The China Teatern is part of the Berns complex and hosts a lot of major gigs and theatre shows in Stockholm – as to why they called it the China Teatern I’m afraid I don’t know…but anyway…
The China Teatern
The Berns Salonger
Inside the China Teatern
Inside the bar…which I rather liked
March approaches and so Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Chengdu (and there’s one in Hong Kong too though not sure what’s happening down there these days) are gearing up for their lit fests. Beijing got its programme out first – click here – and you’ll note I’m doing a bit of moderating on March 9th with the excellent Michel Faber.
Plenty for all this year as Beijing becomes a bit of a mass arts festival with music and all manner of entertainment as well as the books and the bookish.
I read a fact the other day – a rather obscure one and pretty unusable anywhere perhaps but this blog…and even then I’m pushing it. Renoir’s famous painting Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) is extremely well known – a delightful looking summer lunch party along the Seine. It now resides in the Phillip’s Collection in Washington DC, a charming small museum up near Dupont Circle. I fear the gigantism of the Smithsonian rather overwhelms the city’s other more interesting institutions such as the Phillip’s.
Anyway, here’s the obscure China Rhyming factoid about Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party – the chap seated with his back to the painter but wearing a brown bowler hat is Baron Raoul Barbier, Renoir’s friend, all round bon-vivant (horse racing, champagne parties, beautiful women, had been a dashing cavalry officer) and a former Mayor of Saigon who had just returned from French Indo-China.
Well it interested me…
Thanks to Edmund de Waal’s beautifully written The Hare with Amber Eyes for that factoid.
