Artificially Manufactured Shanghai and Natural Fun in Peking

I spoke last week at the Royal Asiatic Society’s debate on the relative merits of Shanghai vs Beijing at the Beijing Bookworm as part of the 2018 Beijing International Literary Festival…I mentioned a couple of quotes from Harold Acton’s fantastic 1941 novel (but about 1930s Peking) Peonies and Ponies. A couple of people asked me for the quotes but I never got their cards contacts, so here they are….

And, by the way, if you haven’t read the novel you really should….

First the ever entrepreneurial booster of old Peking to visiting tourists, writers and wealthy sojourners, Mrs. Mascot…

“Peking’s such loads of fun. Jugglers, fortune-tellers, acrobats, puppet-shows, temple tiffins, treasure hunts and Paomachang picnics – not to speak of costume jamborees, galas and fancy dress affairs – always something original! Home-made natural fun, not imported or artificially manufactured as in Shanghai. And there’s always a delicious spice of the unexpected.”

and now the more dour but traditional China-loving Philip Flower:

“Sufficient to know and be profoundly grateful, to realise that he was as far as it was possible to be from post-war politics and the general jumpiness of Europe while comfortably within the orbit of its dubious civilisation, imbibing serenity from the geometrical quietude of China’s ancient capital. And everything about him still remained supernatural, brought grist for pantheistic reverie and wonder.”

I’m sure you all know the types….!!