All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Midnight in Peking, and me, will be at Left Bank Books in St Louis, MO this week on May 1. It somehow seems appropriate to be visiting Left Bank Books on May Day!
The Shanghai Power Company was the major electricity generator for the International Settlement and also sold electricity into nearby Chinese controlled areas and Frenchtown. But the company was also a retailer, the Gome chain of its day! And, of course, as a company that sold electricity they were rather keen, in 1937, for you to buy electric cookers…
The Bookreporter site is giving away 25 free copies of my book Midnight in Peking to US readers – you just have to go to this site and fill out some form before May 3rd.
I’m greatly looking forward to talking about Midnight in Peking at the Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse on the 28th at 1pm. More details here
Thanks to Peter Aspden, the weekend FT’s always readable arts guy, who wrote a column on the newly unveiled and restored Jean Cocteau murals at the Church of Notre Dame de France in Leicester Square (read all about it here). He also mentions in passing that Jean Cocteau met Charlie Chaplin on a boat steaming between Hong Kong and Shanghai. I like the idea of these two meeting and, obviously, I like that it happened on a boat somewhere between Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, it might have been a bit strained as neither man spoke the others language apparently. Still I do know from various biographies of him that Cocteau admired Chaplin but not sure what Chaplin thought of Cocteau. Cocteau of course was an infamous opium fiend!
I’ll be at One More Page Books (I have to say independent American bookstores are very clever with their names!) in Arlington, Virginia on Friday April 27th.
2200 N Westmoreland Street #101 Arlington, VA 22213 Ph. 703-300-9746
PS: I did the Dianne Rehm Show on NPR here today and she is one of the classiest Americans I’ve ever met – it was a blast – here’s the show online or it’ll be repeated in the USA on Sunday.
I noted the other month that the number of books now appearing and scheduled to appear on the role of the Chinese Labour Corps (aka the Coolie Corps) during the First World War was reaching an all time high. It’s also good to see that the Corps and its members are popping up in literature too. See, for instance, Sebastian Barry’s brilliant A Long Long Way book about a group of Irishman in the war which has a lot of mentions of the Chinese working on the battlefields. Admittedly Barry’s book is a few years old but I’ve just discovered it and loved it…
Brilliant to see the team at Penguin Australia shortlisted in the 2012 Australian Book Industry Awards in the category for International Success of the Year 2012 for their marketing internationally of Midnight in Peking. They’ve done a great job so fingers crossed….the winners are announced on May 18th in Sydney…see the full list of those shortlisted in all categories here.
