The colledction of essays Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950 was published by Hong Kong University Press a couple of years ago. I contributed an essay Chiang Yee and his wwartime work. There are other essays by Paul Bavan, Ke Ren, Frances Wood, Anne Witchard, Sarah Chang, Tessa Thorniley, Diana Yeh, Craig Clunas and Da Zhang. And now a Chinese translation is out this month.
Kassia St Clair’s The Race to the Future about the 1907 Peking to Paris car race is a terrific read…
10 June 1907, Peking. Five cars set off in a desperate race across two continents on the verge of revolution.
An Italian prince and his chauffeur, a French racing driver, a conman and various journalists battle over steep mountain ranges and across the arid vastness of the Gobi Desert. The contestants need teams of helpers to drag their primitive cars up narrow gorges, lift them over rough terrain and float them across rivers. Petrol is almost impossible to find, there are barely any roads, armed bandits and wolves lurk in the forests. Updates on their progress, sent by telegram, are eagerly devoured by millions in one of the first ever global news stories. Their destination: Paris.
More than its many adventures, the Peking-to-Paris provided the impetus for profound change. The world of 1907 is poised between the old and the new: communist regimes will replace imperial ones in China and Russia; the telegraph is transforming modern communication and the car will soon displace the horse. In this book bestselling author Kassia St Clair traces the fascinating stories of two interlocking races – setting the derring-do (and sometimes cheating) of one of the world’s first car races against the backdrop of a larger geopolitical and technological rush to the future, as the rivalry grows between countries and empires, building up to the cataclysmic event that changed everything – the First World War.
The Race to the Future is the incredible true story of the quest against the odds that shaped the world we live in today.
An oil on unstretched canvas ‘Shanghai, St Nicholas Church’, indistinctly signed and dated 1940. St Nicholas Church was a Russian Orthodox Church (and still stands though is no longer used as a church) in the former French Concession of Shanghai at 16 rue Corneille, now known as Gaolan Lu.
My thanks to Katya Knyazeva, a great historian of old Shanghai, who reminded me that of course this picture shows St Nicholas with its original blue domes – something you don’t always think about when you see the black and white photos of the church and have been reapinted now for many years in nouveau riche gold a la 1990s Shanghai style. It went through a period as the Ashanti Dome restaurant (famously with the nipples on the angels in the ceiling frescoes paintined over) and then a cafe for retired cadres. Not sure what it is now.
In Rickshaw Boy, Lao She offers vivid descriptions of Republican-Era Beijing while crafting a timeless story about the vicissitudes of a worker’s life. In this weeks The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf entry we revisit this proletarian classic: click here
Illustration for The China Project by Alex Santafé
It also became a movie in 1982 when adapted by director Ling Zifeng…
This recently came up for auction and has in interesting provenance.
A Chinese oil on canvas portrait, early 19th century, possibly Lamqua. The bearded Government Official wearing a hat and beaded necklace, the blue robe with rank badge.
The seller inherited items from her great grandfather Captain John Dewar (ship master). He was born in Shanghai in 1866 and died in 1950. His wife Susan Smith Oudney (1875-1967) whose father was William Oudney a master mariner owned two clipper ships including The Coach Inn. John and Susan married in Shanghai in 1896.
For those interested in such vulgar things – it went for a (I reckon quite reasonable given provenance) £2,500 at auction.
For those in Hong Kong photographer Basil Pao will be talking about his book of set photography, The Last Emperor Revisited from Hong Kong University Press on November 9.
OK – so this is now out there in the world as happening next year – my new book explores Wallis Simpson’s time in China published in the UK by Elliot & Thompson & the US with St Martins Press
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson – he ‘explores the untold, colourful origin story of a woman too often maligned by history’
The latest in my occasional series of old Shanghai signage (use the search box if you want to see other examples). Nice to know, should you have found yourself stumbling around on a Shanghai ferry pier that the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) provided lifebuoys should you fall in the Whangpoo…
