Heads Up – Thu, 30 Mar 2023 18:00 – 19:00 BST – Leeds University
Doing business in China right now can feel like an almost impossible task. Through Paul French and his Ultimate China Bookshelf, we can gain a better reading of the past and take away lessons that increase the chances of success in the future.
This will be a hybrid event. Register here to attend the talk in-person at the University of Leeds.
Working with The China Project former Shanghai businessman, historian and writer Paul French is building the Ultimate China Bookshelf – bookmarking titles that have stood the test of time and highlighting the wisdom in their pages.
The idea, apart from recovering some great books on China, is to help us all avoid over emphasis on the immediate specifics of the commercial landscape and think about: how we can benefit from a collective memory of past experiences of foreign business in China, how we can indulge usefully in nostalgia, how various administrations have formed the environment for foreign business, how China’s current official narrative concurs and/or diverges from ours as foreign businesspeople.
Join us for a talk that will deliver practical recommendations as well as commentary on broader questions related to how we think about China. Details of how to attend/sign in here
Jewish Refugee Musicians in Exile in Shanghai during World War II
Mar 28, 5:30 p.m.
Location: Vassar, Class of 1951 Reading Room, Main Library
A Multimedia Lecture by Musicologist Sophie Fetthauer, PhD of the University of Hamburg, Germany
Dr. Fetthauer’s lecture tells the little-known story of how over 400 Jewish refugee musicians from Europe during World War II were integrated into the cafés, nightclubs, and ballrooms of Shanghai, the so-called “Paris of the East.” The bars and restaurants in the Hongkou Ghetto, where most of these Jewish refugees settled, acquired the nicknames “Little Vienna” and “Little Berlin.”
Dr. Fetthauer is a scholar of musicology from the University of Hamburg, Germany, who has researched and authored numerous publications on music and musical life in the Third Reich focusing on biographies, institutional history, displaced person camps, and remigration, with a special focus on Jewish musicians in exile in Shanghai during World War II.
Lovely to see that the neo-classical Teatro Don Pedro V theatre in Macao is open again to the public. It is probably the oldest western style theatre in East Asia built in 1860. The current facade was added in 1873. It was used as a shelter from some stray bombing in WW2…
Beijing may be known as the engine-house of the largest and most economically influential country in the world, but in amongst the hustle and bustle of this ever-expanding city is an equally burgeoning literary scene.
This latest instalment in Comma’s popular ‘Reading the City’ series, offers a cross-section of this writing community, giving readers the opportunity to dive beneath the noisy urban exterior and see the city from the quieter, personal perspective of its many residents.
Two former school friends bump into each other and catch up fleetingly in Beijing’s busiest subway station; a journalist investigating a counterfeiters flooding the city with fake IDs begins to struggle with his own identity; the appearance of Maradona at a friendly tournament sparks hysteria among the city’s new football fans…
The characters in these stories may struggle with the pressures of a city that grows less and less forgiving every year, but, through creativity and humour, each one refuses to let themselves be lost in it.
Beijing may be known as the engine-house of the largest and most economically influential country in the world, but in amongst the hustle and bustle of this ever-expanding city is an equally burgeoning literary scene. This latest instalment in Comma’s popular ‘Reading the City’ series, offers a cross-section of this writing community, giving readers the opportunity to dive beneath the noisy urban exterior and see the city from the quieter, personal perspective of its many residents. Two former school friends bump into each other and catch up fleetingly in Beijing’s busiest subway station; a journalist investigating a counterfeiters flooding the city with fake IDs begins to struggle with his own identity; the appearance of Maradona at a friendly tournament sparks hysteria among the city’s new football fans… The characters in these stories may struggle with the pressures of a city that grows less and less forgiving every year, but, through creativity and humour, each one refuses to let themselves be lost in it.
Book #10 in my Ultimate China Bookshelf for The China Project – Riichi Yokomitsu’s novel Shanghai. Japanese critics regarded Riichi Yokomitsu as the best of his generation. His novel Shanghai, published in 1928 (but set during the May 30th Incident of 1925), depicts a melting pot where cultures mixed and ideas were exchanged—including, yes, between the Chinese and Japanese. Click here to read.
Riichi Yokomitsu in 1928, the year he published Shanghai He was already being referred to as bungaku no kamisama (a god of literature).
My previous post on the new Sassoons exhibiton at The Jewish Museum in New York also has a catalogue for those who can’t get there.
The Sassoons, by Esther da Costa Meyer and Claudia J. Nahson…
The Sassoons traces the global history of the Sassoon family, entrepreneurs and patrons of remarkable art and architecture, from Baghdad to Mumbai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and London.
The Sassons were a prosperous family as bankers and treasurers to the Ottoman sultans in nineteenth-century Baghdad, until they were driven out by religious persecution and economic pressures. Assuming the precarious status of stateless Jews, the family dispersed, establishing businesses in Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London. Their wealth enabled them to collect splendid works of art from the various cultures that welcomed them. This volume tells the sweeping global story of the Sassoon family through the works of art they collected. Lavishly illustrated with paintings, porcelain, manuscripts, Judaica, and architecture, it foregrounds family members who were patrons of art and sponsors of remarkable buildings, highlighting the role of the family’s accomplished women. Rachel Sassoon was editor of both the Times and the Observer newspapers in London at the turn of the twentieth century. The renowned war poet Siegfried Sassoon was a cousin. Victor Sassoon hosted the glitterati of the 1920s and 1930s at his Cathay Hotel in Shanghai. This fascinating and elegant book—with gilt edges and a ribbon bookmark—features a family tree and explores generations of Sassoons for whom art was not only a mark of their arrival in the rarefied world of the upper class but a pleasure in itself.
Published by the Jewish Museum with Yale University Press for the exhibition The Sassoons on view at the museum March 3 – August 13, 2023. More on the book here.
The Jewish Museum presents The Sassoons, an exhibition that reveals the fascinating story of a remarkable Jewish family, highlighting their pioneering role in trade, art collecting, architectural patronage, and civic engagement from the early 19th century through World War II. On view from March 3 through August 13, 2023, the exhibition will follow four generations from Iraq to India, China, and England, featuring a rich selection of works collected by family members over time.
Attributed to William Melville. Portrait of David Sassoon. Oil on canvas; 41 ½ × 33 in. (105.4 × 83.8 cm). Credit: Private Collection
Over 120 works—paintings, Chinese art, illuminated manuscripts, and Judaica—amassed by Sassoon family members and borrowed from numerous private and public collections will be on view. Highlights include Hebrew manuscripts from as early as the 12th century, many lavishly decorated; Chinese art and ivory carvings; rare Jewish ceremonial art; and Western masterpieces including paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and magnificent portraits by John Singer Sargent of various Sassoon family members. The Sassoons will explore themes such as discrimination, diaspora, colonialism, global trade, and war that not only shaped the history of the family but continue to define our world today.
The exhibition narrative begins in the early 1830s when David Sassoon, the patriarch of the family, was forced to leave his native Baghdad due to the increasing persecution of the city’s Jewish population. Establishing himself in Mumbai (then Bombay) and initially involved in the cotton trade, his vision led the family from Iraq to India, China, and finally England where his descendants gradually settled over the decades. His activities soon grew to include the opium trade, which had escalated after the collapse of the East India Company in mid-19th century, ending its monopoly and allowing private companies to engage in this profitable enterprise. He aligned with and benefitted from British colonial interests soon extending his business to China and England by deploying his eight sons to oversee new branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and London.
Although less known, the Sassoon women were discerning collectors. The exhibition will pay special attention to these unsung patrons of art. Rachel SassoonBeer became the first woman in Britain to edit two newspapers, The Sunday Times and The Observer, and played a crucial role reporting on the Dreyfus affair in Britain. Her painting collection, sold at auction in 1927, listed, among other great works, one drawing and 15 paintings by Corot, a Constable, and a Peter Paul Rubens. Of a younger generation, Hannah Gubbay, a Sassoon on both her father’s and her mother’s side, was a major collector of 18th century art, furniture, and porcelain, as was her cousin, Mozelle Sassoon.
The exhibition will also highlight the distinguished properties of the Sassoons in the United Kingdom. A Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, Sir Philip Sassoon made active use of his three great residences, Park Lane (now destroyed) and Trent Park in London, and Port Lympne in Kent. Surrounded by landscaped gardens (in the case of Trent Park and Port Lympne) and filled with priceless works of art, all three were used by the government for high-profile cabinet meetings and receptions of foreign dignitaries and celebrities. Paintings of Port Lympne by Sir Winston Churchill, a frequent visitor, will be featured.
The last section of the exhibition will focus on the service of a younger generation of Sassoons in the First World War. Sir Victor Sassoon served in the Royal Flying Corps, barely surviving an airplane crash that left him permanently disabled. Sir Philip Sassoon, private secretary to Field Marshal Douglas Haig, recruited his artist friends including John Singer Sargent to cover the war, and several of these works will be on display. A very different war is experienced through the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon. Though a brave and much decorated soldier, his graphic and shocking portrayal of the trenches and fierce criticism of the establishment were emblematic of a generation scarred by war’s brutality. Some of the journals he wrote and illustrated during battle, including his famous anti-war statement, will be on view.
During the Second World War, some 18,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Shanghai fleeing Nazi Europe. They were able to survive the war thanks to the money raised by members of the Baghdadi Jewish community who resided in the city at the time. Prominent among them was Sir Victor Sassoon who donated considerable funds and placed several buildings at the disposal of the International Committee for European Immigrants.
Numerous private and public collections will be contributing loans to the exhibition including His Majesty King Charles III, the British Museum, the National Gallery of London, the National Trust of Britain, the Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Library, the Houghton Hall Collection, the Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Israel Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art.
The Sassoons is organized by Claudia Nahson, Morris and Eva Feld Senior Curator at the Jewish Museum, New York, and Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor Emerita at Princeton University. The exhibition design is by Leslie Gill and Adam Johnston, Leslie Gill Architect; graphic design by Miko McGinty.
