Flash HKUP Book Sale – 23/24 March – In-Store & Online

Rediscovering Travel Writing – RAS China Event Video

A video from the Royal Asiatic Society China of my talk on the launch of the China Revisited Series (from Blacksmith Books and avalable here) and a discussion with historian Jeremiah Jenne on rediscovering “lost” travel writing on China…click here to watch

China Revisited – Recovering Lost Travel Writing

China Revisited is a new series of rediscovered travel writing on China from the Victorian, Edwardian, and Interwar periods from local independent publisher Blacksmith Books. Each book is abridged, introduced and annotated by historian and author Paul French. The series aims to “recover” largely forgotten and invariably dismissed works that often perpetuate the cliches and stereotypes of their authors and times. Yet often the writing reveals moments in China’s history, providing snapshots of a country now forever changed. And problematic as these texts can be they do show us the terms of engagement and preoccupations of both westerners and Chinese in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. This presentation looks at the first three books in the series and asks how we can best appreciate and understand these historic works through the lens of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Heads Up: The Ultimate China Bookshelf at Leeds Uni – 30/3/23

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 – March 28, Poughkeepsie

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.

The Teatro Don Pedro V, Macao

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…

The Book of Beijing – “A City in Short Fiction” – out March 30

Following the interesting The Book of Shanghai (2020) collection of stories from various local writers, comes The Book of Beijing… both are from the Comma Press ‘Reading the City’ series.

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 on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – Riichi Yokomitsu’s Shanghai (1928)

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).

The Sassoons at The Jewish Museum – the catalogue

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.