Midnight in Peking Comes to Beaverton, OR – Powell’s Books – May 8th

I’ll be in Beaverton, Oregon at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing (sounds cool!) – details here

Peking’s May 4th Movement Monument and La Jeunesse

I’ve walked past the rather uninspriring May 4th Movement memorial on Beiheyan Dajie in Peking quite a few times and not paid it that much attention to be honest. fortunately I don’t need to recount the history of May 4th 1919 to readers of this blog. But I did note recently that there are some covers of La Jeunesse included in the sculpture which is quite interesting. Started in 1915 by Chen Duxiu an early communist and then leader of China’s Trotskyist movement (look hard for that one in the official records!!) it was a genuinely revolutionary journal of the New Culture Movement. Nice to see it remembered in that monument – of course anybody starting up a revolutionary journal now calling for a new start, “youth” and revolution would find themselves looking a prison cell from the inside out pretty quickly – hear that noise?? That’s Chen spinning in his grave!

A Bit of Opium and All That….

Regular readers of China Rhyming will know that we like anything about opium, references to opium in history and literature as well as opium dens all over the place, particularly in London…

And so here’s this week’s Guardian Books Podcast which has a discussion, among other things, of opium in literature….

And here’s a new book they discuss buy Jeet Thayil called Narcopolis which has references to opium smoking in India as well as Chinois links between opium and China in the Indian imagination.

Midnight in Peking Comes to Seattle – Seattle Art Museum – May 7

On May 7 I’m at the Seattle Asian Art Museum (co-presented with the Gardner Center for Asian Art & Ideas and Elliot Bay Books) doing the Midnight in Peking thing. I’ve long wanted to go to Seattle but have never got there before so obviously I’m excited…

Midnight in Peking and the Literary Review May Issue

The May issue of the UK’s Literary Review has a review of Midnight in Peking by Jonathan Mirsky – interestingly they decided to put Midnight on their cover – and here’s what the artist came up with…I’ll let you all decide!!…..

Hong Kong Heritage – a Few Observations 2 – Kennedy Terrace

Kennedy Terrace is sadly evidence that Hong Kong is still knocking down with abandon despite some improvements to non-residential attitudes to heritage. Several buildings, designed as individual residences, built between 1925 and 1937 were pretty much all that remained of the once quite glorious Kennedy Terrace. They had been left abandoned – the great trick of the anti-preservationist, creating a slum by neglect – while (in one of the world’s densest retail, eating and living areas) no alternative use could apparently been found for the structures. A banner had appeared on the frontage of the buildings some time ago announcing “Revitalising Hong Kong’s Old Buildings” – a sad joke perhaps? Weeks later the buildings were rubble. New apartment buildings, smaller and expensive will now be built – great!

Here’s some various Kennedy Terrace buildings:

Hong Kong Heritage – a Few Observations 1 – Central Market

a few days break in the Midnight in Peking US tour so let’s catch up on some heritage news gleaned on a recent Hong Kong trip…

The Central Market issue in Hong Kong rolls on with shop keepers there finding life precarious. The 72-year-old building is supposed to be being renovated by the Urban Renewal Authority. The aim is to rezone the market as a “historic area” – an obvious thing to do as the Central Market is by far the best piece of architecture in the Bauhaus style left in Hong Kong (built in the late 1930s) and at that time one of the biggest and most modern meat markets in Asia (comparable only really to Shanghai’s abattoir – now the failed 1933 development in Hongkou).

The Central Market is a four storey building with rounded corners typical of the period and style. The internal courtyard and staircases are particularly impress (see this pdf for some internal pictures of the market). The building was so well designed and maintained after the war that it has hardly been changed inside.

Anyway, shop keepers are up in arms about being moved swiftly without being able to let their customers know where they’re going while (surprise, surprise) property developers want the land for (uuggghh!!) a car park or a supermarket.

frontage onto Des Voeux Road

Side of the market down

Midnight in Peking Comes to the Tattered Cover, Denver – May 4th

I’ll be at the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, CO on 2526 East Colfax Avenue on May 4th at 7.30pm. And delighted to be so invited of course….