Just happened to see this item listed as up for auction by Hannam’s of Hampshire in England this month with an £80-£120 reserve:
“A 19TH CENTURY CHINESE YELLOW EMBROIDERED SILK COVER Qing. 105 cm square. Note: Sold with paper note, Liberated material from Grand Father Harry Beasley, whilst in the army, from the Winter Palace Peking, during the boxer rebellion.”
Interesting that items like this, obviously looted from the Summer Palace (not “Winter” as the listing says – that’s a whole other story!) still come up so openly… & described as “Liberated” (this appears to be a comment, perhaps ironic – alongwith the Winter Palace error – from a former owner – see below))…see the item and description on the auctioneers site here
BTW: Lieutenant Colonel Harry “Pops” Beasley (1876-1949) served in India, Burma & China (8-Power Allied Army) & on the ANZAC Corps in WW1. He later went on to become a champion contract bridge player.
My long read for the South China Morning Post last weekend on the Fette-Li Rug Company of Peking and Tientsin…click here…
At the turn of the twentieth century any discerning American home whose inhabitants displayed ‘taste’ had an oriental rug, invariably a Chinese one. But, by the 1930s tastes were evolving and while there was still a great appreciation of the aesthetics of Chinese rugs, the traditional patterns and skilled weaving, there was also a desire for rugs that incorporated the modern, abstract designs and vibrant, striking colours of the art-deco age. One Chinese company sought to successfully assimilate these two desires marrying traditionally woven carpets with new avant garde designs – the Fette-Li Rug Company of Beijing and Tianjin.
Legendary old Jewish Harbin researcher Dan Ben-Canaan’s Tombstone Histories of Jewish lives in Harbin.
Tombstone Histories is a venture into the strange past of a great Chinese city. Harbin, established in northeastern China in 1898 by Russians and others, was for a time home to some 38 different national communities, before war and revolution destroyed their lives. Harbin also became a safe house and waystation for Jews escaping pogroms and hatred in Europe, and Tombstone Histories presents the Jewish experience in the city in a personal and unforgettable way. It paints a revealing picture, never shown before, of Jewish daily life in this faraway and alien land, of how people functioned, struggled and sometimes thrived in a space that was so different and unfamiliar. Tombstone Histories offers glimpses of the lives of the rich, the poor and those in between with daily stories and reminiscences of close to sixty families. History so often ends up as just a series of tombstones, but this book provides the other side to the story—the personal details of lives which allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the human experience, especially survival.
My piece for the Mekong Review from November 2022 on the evolution of the spy novel with a Chinese element is up as the Review‘s “Free Read” for a while. You can read it here…and there’s lots more on their website here plus, of course, you can subscribe and support a most excellent publication.
Chinese Autobiographical Writing: An Anthology of Personal Accounts, edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey is professor emeritus of history at the University of Washington. Her many books include The Cambridge Illustrated History of China and Emperor Huizong. Cong Ellen Zhang is professor of history at the University of Virginia. She is author of Transformative Journeys: Travel and Culture in Song China and Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China: Family, State, and Native Place. Ping Yao is professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles. She is author of Women, Gender and Sexuality in China: A Brief History. Together, they are the editors of Chinese Funerary Biographies: An Anthology of Remembered Lives.
Personal accounts help us understand notions of self, interpersonal relations, and historical events. Chinese Autobiographical Writing contains full translations of works by fifty individuals that illuminate the history and conventions of writing about oneself in the Chinese tradition. From poetry, letters, and diaries to statements in legal proceedings, these engaging and readable works draw us into the past and provide vivid details of life as it was lived from the pre-imperial period to the nineteenth century. Some focus on a person’s entire life, others on a specific moment. Some have an element of humor, others are entirely serious. Taken together, these selections offer an intimate view of how Chinese men and women, both famous and obscure, reflected on their experiences as well as their personal struggles and innermost thoughts.
With an introduction and list of additional readings for each selection, this volume is ideal for undergraduate courses on Chinese history, literature, religion, and women and family. Read individually, each piece illuminates a person, place, and moment. Read in chronological order, they highlight cultural change over time by showing how people explored new ways to represent themselves in writing.
A nice one pataca stamp Macao stamp from 1950 featuring the Porta do Cerca, or old barrier gate between Macao and China. A bit more built up these days!!
An interesting stamped letter from 1938 for a number of reasons – 1) identifies the offices of the Indo-China Steam Navigation at 27 The Bund; 2) the postage cancels commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the transfer of the Chinese capital from Peking to Nanking (in 1927 obviously); 3) on the right hand side you can see the mark of the Steamer Postmaster.
BTW on the adressee: Wilfrid “Fox” Hamlin (more commonly spelt Wilfred – so this may be a typo on trhe letter) was born in 1883 in Shanghai. AS a young man he appears to be have been a Post Office employee based briefly in Chinkiang (Zhanjiang) in Jiangsi provoin ce on the Yangtze. He also seems to have work in insurance for Cornhill in Shanghai for a time before joining the Shanghai Municipal Police in 1928 but seems to have left the SMP’s employ within a year and then presumably joined the Indo-China Steam Navigation company as a Purser. He married Rose Ellen Loxton and had 2 children. Wilfred and Rose (but seemingly not their children) were interned in Yangchow A Camp in Shanghai in 1943, later being moved to Chapei Camp (he was recorded as a ‘clerk’ on the camp records). He died in Vancouver in 1949
