One of the most impressive and eye-catching exhibits at the British Museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition is a stunning straw farmer’s coat from the mid-nineteenth century made from palm- and rice-fibres, a cape composed of folding layers of straw. To display it the British Museum conservation team individually cleaned the thousands of straw stalks that make the cape waterproof.
It took me a while to remmeber where I had seen such straw capes in a more contemporary setting but then I remembered – this picture of 1940s (I think) rickshaw pullers lined up and awaiting fares in Macao on a rainy day…
An original English letter written in February 1943 by “Huryozyokokyoku” (sic), the Delegate for Japan of the International Red Cross Committee in Yokohama. The typed document details the disposition of undelivered mails for Prisoners of War broken down by destination incl 180,000 undelivered mails to Malaya, 8,100 to Burma, 7,500 to Shanghai etc…
An interesting couple of things about the London Library copy Chiang Yee’s The Silent Traveller in London (published by Country Life books in 1938 in the UK). At some point this copy has been rebound but, in a nice touch, the binders have taken some of the original cloth cover with the title and Chiang Yee’s name in Chinese calligraphy and added it to the front. The original inside cover pages decorated with Chiang’s sketches of London ducks and pigeons remains too.
This copy was presented to the Library in October 1940 by FA Kirkpatrick. I think this is the historian Frederick Alexander Kirkpatrick (1861-1953) author of a number of books specialising in nineteenth century history, South America and a history of the Spanish conquistadores.
The current rebound copy with original cloth calligraphy panel
An original 1938 edition of The Silent Traveller in London
A take on the British Museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition with some thoughts for those doing business with/in China…from the China-Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine…click here….
Visited Lewes in East Sussex and the Anne of Cleves house so wasn’t expecting a China connection or any Chinoiserie. Ready for an immersion into Tudor life in this wonderfully preserved fifteenth century house given to Anne after her short-lived marriage to Henry VIII (though apparently she never actually lived there). But…
The house happens to include this late seventeenth/early eighteenth century “Soho” tapestry (so called as they were made in the Soho area of London). This one was actually made by John Vanderbank, whose studio was in the Long Acre/Holborn area. He often manufactured for the “Great Wardrobe” – the department tasked with supplying items to royal households. Vanderbank was apparently known for his “Indian Manner”, more commonly known now as early Chinoiserie. You can see that the characters portrayed in this imaginary East, Cathay, China can appear Indian in Chinese garb while others sit in traditional Indian poses. In other details more obviously Chinese scenes are depicted.
Obviously Vanderbank didn’t know China personally but was working from early lithographs of Chinese and Indian scenes that made their way to England.
Rereading Jan Morris’s brilliant Hong Kong: Epilogue to Empire (1988) I saw this photograph included. It is simply entitled ‘Expatriates, 1980s’. Two middle aged white men, smoking and drinking with what may be a bit of rather sad and lonely Christmas bunting behind them. Only these are not two unimportant men.
The man on the left – bald and with a trademark monocle – is the veteran Australian-born foreign correspondent, FCC fixture and John le Carre’s model for Old Craw in The Honourable Schoolboy(1975), Richard “Dick” Hughes (1906-1984) and Dikko Henderson in Ian Fleming’s Bond novel You Only Live Twice (1964). The photo was, according to Morris’s credits, was Ken Hass (born 1948), an American photographer who I believe later taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Now….though Hughes was dead by the time Morris visited to research the final chapters of Hong Kong, they had met on previous visits. So she clearly knew he was in the photo she selected.
My question is, who is the other man? What I do know is that he is the man featured taking a piss in the famous view from the toilets at the former FCC building in the now demolished Sutherland House (a scene and view immortalised by le Carre in THS. I mentioned this recently in my South China Morning Post piece on le Carre’s 1970s Hong Kong visits. A photo of it by Richard Lloyd remains in the current FCC men’s toilets on Lower Albert Road. I think it’s the same man, perhaps a few years later – see picture below.
But who is he? I know I should I know, but frustratingly I don’t. But I bet I know someone who does? Help please? Not knowing is bugging me!!
Continuing our theme of Chinese writers living outside China and comparing and contrasting their temporary homes (in this case an almost permanent exile) with their homeland, Chiang Yee’s The Silent Traveller in London (1938) – click here – Book #29 on The China Project’s Ultimate China Bookshelf…. (full archive here)
