Royal Asiatic Society Dinner – Beijing October 27 – The World of the Peking Aesthetes

Posted: October 17th, 2025 | No Comments »

WHAT: Author Paul French introduces “The World of the Peking Aesthetes” during a small-group RASBJ dinner in the former residence of Peking opera star Mei Lanfang

WHEN: Monday, Oct 27, 2025, from 7:00-8:45 PM Beijing Time. Doors open at 6:45 PM.

WHERE: Qingyun Huai 49 Yan Laofangu Master Ji (or “Banquet 1949”), Qingyun 23 Artistic Center, Neiyuan, Dongcheng (青云淮四九宴老饭骨大师技)

Between the world wars Peking was home to many long-term sojourner aesthetes, European, American and Japanese men and women sensitive to art and beauty. Writers, artists, translators and scholars, though often dilettantes, and occasionally fabulators and frauds. They were invariably of the “lost generation”, often gay, the men independently wealthy and the women newly independent of bad and boring marriages. They made hutongs and former temples their homes, they cultivated their appreciation of Chinese art, style and opera. They wrote, painted and collected. Their fabulous friends visited. They made alliances and close friendships with like-minded Chinese. And they recorded their experiences in memoirs, novels, plays and letters. They were the Peking Aesthetes.

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