If you’ve found it bit hard of late to pick up a copy of Simon Napier-Bell’s iconic tale of how he took Wham! to China it’s back out in a new edition – I’m Coming to Take You to Dinner….and it’s hilarious, and it tells some great tales of mad China, mad Brits, how to and how not to do business….
“A veteran manager of groups like the Yardbirds, Napier-Bell was just about ready to retire when Wham! fell into his lap…those interested in what goes on backstage and behind the scenes will find Napier-Bell’s stories worthwhile and entertaining.” –Publishers Weekly A gossipy, rollicking music memoir about bringing Wham! to communist China in the ’80’s–now, in paperback London, 1983. Pop impresario Simon Napier-Bell has had enough. Tired of managing groups, and sick of the constant grief at home, with his two ex-boyfriends bickering and bleeding him dry, he’s ready to give up the music business for good. But before he gets the chance, he falls in love with a new passion: a dynamic young duo, George and Andrew, jointly called Wham!. Soon, he finds himself offering to arrange for Wham! to be the first-ever Western pop group to play in communist China – a masterstroke of publicity which, in one swift move, would make them one of the biggest groups on the planet. What follows is an exciting and unpredictable globe-trotting adventure in the company of a cast of petulant pop stars, shady businessmen and a confusion of spies, students and officials, as Napier-Bell edges closer to inadvertently becoming one of the first Westerners to break down the walls of communist China. As one reviewer put it, “some of it reads like a big, gay Bond thriller.”
Contiuing Manning’s photos of Peking…he took these general shots during his stay in the mid-1930s while serving with HMS Dragon at the Royal Navy China Station…
Royal Navy Lieutenant J S Manning served in the 1930s on HMS Dragon (built in Glasgow in 1917, scuttled off Normandy after D-Day, 1944). HMS Dragon headed for the China Station around 1933, though its tour was brief and she was soon reassigned to the America and West Indies Station in 1935. Still Lieutenant Manning, clearly a keen amateur photographer, did get to see Hong Kong and Peking and take some photos. I’ll post them over the next few days while I’m in the road travelling to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Today…. Manning’s photos of the Forbidden City…
Saturday, August 14, 1937 – that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit by a typhoon of ‘violent intensity’. The typhoon passed, but what did strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen before. The clock outside the Cathay Hotel stopped at 4.27 p.m. precisely as the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund; the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great World amusement centre in the French Concession. Bloody Saturday reconstructs the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. Read my Penguin Special on the events of that day – amazon.co.uk or amazon.com
Almost eighteen months after Bloody Saturday, in December 1938, American newspapers ran a series of reminiscences of the events with US 4th Marines stationed in Shanghai at the time with accompanying photographs of the devastation of that day…
Saturday, August 14, 1937 – that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit by a typhoon of ‘violent intensity’. The typhoon passed, but what did strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen before. The clock outside the Cathay Hotel stopped at 4.27 p.m. precisely as the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund; the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great World amusement centre in the French Concession. Bloody Saturday reconstructs the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. Read my Penguin Special on the events of that day – amazon.co.uk or amazon.com
in the aftermath of the Japanese attacks on Shanghai and the dreadful bombings of Bloody Saturday the foreign concession powers upped their troop numbers. Here in late August US Marines deploy from San Diego to Shanghai – “Shanghai or Bust”
Saturday, August 14, 1937 – that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit by a typhoon of ‘violent intensity’. The typhoon passed, but what did strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen before. The clock outside the Cathay Hotel stopped at 4.27 p.m. precisely as the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund; the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great World amusement centre in the French Concession. Bloody Saturday reconstructs the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. Read my Penguin Special on the events of that day – amazon.co.uk or amazon.com
In the wake of Bloody Saturday although the order to evacuate all foreign nationals from the Settlement and Frenchtown was never formally given many did leave on ships for Hong Kong as well as further afield, to Australia and other destinations. Though many of the husbands, in the police, fire service, ambulances and Shanghai Volunteer Corps, had to stay…
Saturday, August 14, 1937 – that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit by a typhoon of ‘violent intensity’. The typhoon passed, but what did strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen before. The clock outside the Cathay Hotel stopped at 4.27 p.m. precisely as the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund; the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great World amusement centre in the French Concession. Bloody Saturday reconstructs the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. Read my Penguin Special on the events of that day – amazon.co.uk or amazon.com
A few days before Bloody Saturday with the Japanese shelling Chapei (Zhabbei) and Paoshan (Baoshan) from their cruisers on the Whangpoo (Huangpu) and artillery in Hongkew (Hongkou) and Yangtszepoo (Yangpu) the authorities of the foreign concessions issued a joint procolomation on what to do in the evantuality of air raids.
Chapei on fire, August 1937, as seen from the Bund
