Time Travel, The Fox Tower and who was Paul F?

Those of you who follow the sillier proclamations of the Chinese Communist Party will know that a while back they banned time travel. This does seem rather churlish, but no TV programmes involving time travel are allowed – and no imports of Dr Who, Life on Mars etc etc. Alternative realities and histories are not to be contemplated. What on earth are they afraid of (as if I didn’t know). Of course alternative history is all the rage elsewhere – British readers have been fascinatingly gobbling up alternative histories of Britain imagining having lost the war (see Peter Millar’s The Shameful Suicide of Winston Churchill or CJ Samson’s Dominion for example). The British state has not collapsed despite publication of these books and a new series of Dr Who!

Personally I like a bit of time travel. Interesting then that a good friend, Matt Forney, happened to be wandering around the old Fox Tower in Beijing recently (Dongbienmen) which of course has a central role in my Midnight in Peking in 1937. Matt took a close look at the supposedly old graffiti on the tower’s walls that is said to have been left by soldiers, Russians mostly, of the Eight Power Allied Army that stormed Peking, finished off the Boxers and then proceeded to loot the place. Some of the scratched names look a bit fresh and more recent which has called the whole 1900 graffiti concept into question but anyway…What should he find? Perhaps a bit of time travel is possible….