All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
My latest column (in Portuguese) for Paragrafo (#99) the arts and literature supplement to Macao newspaper Ponto Final. On Han Suyin’s autobiographically inspired novel A Many Splendoured Thing (1952) and how it represented Macao as a transgressive location at the time… illustration as ever by Rai Rasquinho – click here
A Chinese-made silver cigarette box c.1935 with a three spirited imperial five-clawed dragons. The center of the lid features a circular engraved presentation medallion which reads: ‘PRESENTED TO A.A. MALCOLM BY CHINESE STAFF RIVERSIDE S.P.C. MARCH 1935’.
A fairly standard presentation cigarette box but the inscription makes it interesting. Riverside S.P.C. refers to the Riverside Station of the Shanghai Power Company (S.P.C.), which was one of the largest power plants in Asia during the 1930s. Originally commissioned as a coal-fired plant with a 65-meter chimney in 1897 and later known as the Nanshi Power Plant it is now redeveloped as the Power Station of Art (PSA), China’s first state-run contemporary art museum, located on the Huangpu River.
Malcolm, who lived on Haerbin Road (now Harbin Lu) worked for the SPC until the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and then, I believe, was interned. Malcolm had obviously been in Shanghai some time – in 1925 he is listed as a “charge engineer” (responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of battery storage control systems) working for the “Electricity Department” of the Shanghai Municipal Council.
My forthcoming book (August 27), The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (Elliot and Thompson)is now available to download on Netgalley! If you’re a reviewer you can request to download the book early and share their honest review on the platform…. click here… you can of course also pre-order here…
And, if you’re in the USA fear not, the US edition will be out in early November from St Martin’s Press – all the details and pre-ordering links here
In 1981 Hockney visited China with the poet Stephen Spender, which inspired their collaborative 1982 book China Diary. Hockney also explored traditional Chinese landscape scrolls in his acclaimed 1988 documentary film A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, where Hockney examines a 72-foot-long 17th-century Qing Dynasty scroll.
Shanghai International Settlement (often called the International Concession as here) four-digit licence plates with identifying stickers. These were first issued in 1902. Many cars practically had three plates – these plus a French Concession “F” plate, and a plate for the surrounding Chinese-administered district idenitifable by the Nationalist China blue sky with white sun emblem.
The one shown here is for 1941 – presumably the last issued? The Japanese occupied the International Settlement on December 8th and the foreign concessions were formally dissolved never to be restarted by agreement with the Nationalists in Chongqing in 1943. This one was for a Buick.
Alisan Fine Arts – 21/F, 1 Lyndhurst Terrace – Central
More details – https://www.alisan.com.hk/en/exhibition-detail?id=277
Marking 45 years, Alisan Fine Arts’ “Then and Now” programme opens with The Chinese Avant-Garde in Paris, examining artists shaped by the post-war French capital. Featuring Zao Wou-ki, Chu Teh-chun, T’ang Haywen and Walasse Ting, the show traces how each forged a distinct visual language by bridging Chinese traditions with European modernism. From Zao’s atmospheric abstractions and Chu’s calligraphic energy to T’ang’s meditative ink works and Ting’s vivid, expressive figures, the exhibition maps a pivotal moment in global art history.
Highlights include rarely seen works like Chu Teh-chun’s Untitled series and Walasse Ting’s “A Loving Gaze,” alongside major canvases and works on paper spanning the 1950s to 1990s. Together, they reveal how diaspora artists asserted new identities within the avant-garde. Presented as part of French May 2026, the exhibition forms part of the wider “Then and Now” programme alongside Alisan Atelier’s New Voices in Paris Now: Between Memory and Matter.
I have a (very) few copies of my book of my short book Midnight in Peking in Spanish to give away – Medianoche en Pekin (Plataforma Barcelona). As ever email paul@chinarhyming.com – it’s first come, first served and I can mail anywhere except the PRC and the USA…
A picture of Shanghai right before the communists arrived in 1949. Chinese students and professors at Tongji University sell their personal effects to buy rice for students whose homes were either destroyed or occupied by communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. January 1949, photograph by Warren Lee.
