All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
For anyone who likes Wang Shuo’s novels or Jia Jiangke’s films (particularly Xiao Wu) then Xu Zechen’s newly translated (but composed of stories originally published in Chinese from around 2008 I think) Beijing Sprawl (Trans: Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen) is a great read from Two Lines Press….
Helen FS Lopes’s new study of Macao’s neutrality and collaboration in WW2 looks fascinating….
The South China enclave of Macau was the first and last European colonial settlement in East Asia and a territory at the crossroads of different empires. In this highly original study, Helena F. S. Lopes analyses the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Macau during the Second World War. Exploring the intersections of local, regional and global dynamics, she unpacks the connections between a plurality of actors with competing and collaborative interests, including Chinese Nationalists, Communists and collaborators with Japan, Portuguese colonial authorities and British and Japanese representatives. Lopes argues that neutrality eased the movement of refugees of different nationalities who sought shelter in Macau during the war and that it helped to guarantee the maintenance of two remnants of European colonialism – Macau and Hong Kong. Drawing on extensive research from multilingual archival material from Asia, Europe, Australasia and America, this book brings to light the multiple global connections framing the experiences of neutrality and collaboration in the Portuguese-administered enclave of Macau.
Cost: £15 per person HKS members / £25 non-members
Timings:
2.00pm: Cash Bar and Book Signings with authors
3.00pm: ‘In Conversation with the Authors’ followed by Q&A
4.00pm: Meet the Authors
5.00pm: Finish
‘In Conversation with the Authors’
Les Bird
Vaudine England
May Holdsworth
Simon Roberts
Other authors at the book signing:
Rachel Cartland
Hugh Davies
Sir Malcolm Jack
Jean O’Hara
Patricia O’Sullivan
We are delighted that the following authors have kindly accepted our invitation to join our first ‘In Conversation with the Authors’ panel event, where they will discuss their current books. There will also be ample time for questions and audience participation is encouraged!
All of the books listed below will be available for purchase and signing on the day or feel free to bring your own copies to be signed.
More details here
I wrote a piece about the birth of the Yakuza in Japan for the new issue of All About History magazine – the legends & the reality – the Samurai foundation myth & the story of the early tekiya temple fair peddlers & bakuto gamblers. There’s a lot else too, inc a history of Tiananmen Square….
Book #23 on The China Project Ultimate Bookshelf Midway through the reign of the Qianlong Emperor in the most prosperous period of China’s last imperial dynasty, a mass hysteria broke out among the people. They feared that sorcerers were clipping off the ends of men’s queues (the braids worn by imperial law), chanting magical incantations, and stealing their souls. Kuhn’s book examines this epidemic of fear and the official prosecution of the supposed Soulstealers that ensued.
Click here to read…
When 8 year old Kim Gordon set off for China in 1965, it set in train a tale of passion, imagination and still unanswered questions. Kim’s parents were committed communists in the thick of Mao’s cultural revolution. Kim became a Red Guard, one of an army of children and teenagers marshalled in support of Mao and he had a ringside view of the vast rallies in Tiananmen Square. But when the political tide turned against foreigners, the family was imprisoned for two years in a tiny hotel room, Room 421.
The Gordon family had no contact with the outside world for two years and their families back in Britain had no idea where they were. With only a block of paper and a wild imagination for company Kim passed the time by writing letters that could never be sent, and thrilling plays which he’d act aloud playing all the parts himself. His story reveals much about families and loyalties; on the grip of ideology; and the ingenuity of a child shut in an empty room. A rich and strange reminiscence not just of China but of the human heart.
Charlie Brand plays young Kim in this dramatic, intimate documentary.
Producer: Monica Whitlock
On BBC Sounds or Click here
And for those who know their old Peking well – though called the ‘Peking Hotel’ the Gordon’s were not kept in the better known Peking, or Beijing, Hotel but rather in the large, square, soviet style Hsin Chiao Hotel (New Sojourn). This is now, I think, the 700 room Beijing Novotel Xinqiao Hotel (which fancies itself 4 star but…) which had a statue of Chairman Mao in the lobby till 1971.
Vaudine England’s excellent history of Hong Kong, Fortune’s Bazaar, is out now… and the South China Morning Post has published an excerpt online – “Prostitutes and ‘kept women’ in Victorian Hong Kong – and how they shaped its character”.
Click here to read….
I’m excited to see the publication of Marie-Astrid Prache-de Mézerac’s Et Shanghai Demeure (And Shanghai Endures), a biography of the wonderful Russian-emigre, later French poet (and in between Shanghai dancer, beauty queen and lover of Sir Victor Sassoon) Larissa Andersen. Larissa was a minor character in my book City of Devils and I always wanted to find time to research and write about her more – but she enters and exits the tale fairly rapidly. Anyway, Marie-Astrid has now done the job and her book is now published by Paulsen in France (here)…. And if you’re in France in June she’s on tour….
