All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
An illustration of houseboats, singsong girls and foreign sailors in Canton, set in the 1860s. Drawn by artist, folk singer and “Last Working Shantyman” Stan Hugill for his book Sailortown (1967). Hugill apparently visited Canton, Hong Kong and Macao during his career in the pre-WW2 era as a merchant seaman.
The old Shanghai Rowing Club (which ran the annual Hen-lee regatta on Suzhou Creek – geddit!) was at the junction of the Huangpu and Suzhou Creek and the old boathouse did survive till quite late – until the bollixing up of the area with the fire at the old Union Church, the bourgeoisification of the old British Consulate and the imposed mass of faux American-style art-deco that is the Peninsula Hotel on the Bund. Anyway, some memorabilia recently popped up for auction….
Thomas “TG” Purvis (1861-1933) was a ship’s captain turned maritime artist. He sailed around the world to just about everywhere, ran a photographic studio for a time, took some time off and studied art in London at the Camberwell School of Art in 1904. In 1915 he left his family in London, moved to Hong Kong, and worked on ships again until about 1925. Though he loved and had long worked on sail ships he lamented their decline while having to work on steamships. He never went home. The picture below – Junks off Hong Kong – was painted while in Hong Kong in 1926. He died in Hong Kong in 1933. Several of his five children became noted artists too.
The latest in my occasional series of old Shanghai signage (use the search box if you want to see other examples). This sign was captured in a photograph of the general area up around Jessfield Park (Zhongshan Park) in the 1930s. It’s a dirt lot car park (and note the rickshaw puller having a little rest behind the sign) with an “IN” sign but also stipulates for “OWNER DRIVEN CARS ONLY”. I assume this was to stop chauffeurs loitering and taking up spaces?
Antonia Finnane (who has written several excellent books on Chinese fashion history) has a new book – How to Make a Mao Suit: Clothing the People of Communist China, 1949–1976 (Cambridge University Press)…
When the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, new clothing protocols for state employees resulted in far-reaching changes in what people wore. In a pioneering history of dress in the Mao years (1949–1976), Antonia Finnane traces the transformation, using industry archives and personal stories to reveal a clothing regime pivoted on the so-called ‘Mao suit’. The time of the Mao suit was the time of sewing schools and sewing machines, pattern books and homemade clothes. It was also a time of close economic planning, when rationing meant a limited range of clothes made, usually by women, from limited amounts of cloth. In an area of scholarship dominated by attention to consumption, Finnane presents a revisionist account focused instead on production. How to Make a Mao Suit provides a richly illustrated account of clothing that links the material culture of the Mao years to broader cultural and technological changes of the twentieth century.
The incredible story of American Motors Corporation’s 1980s deep dive into China with the Beijing Jeep venture on The China Project’s Ultimate China Bookshelf. Jim Mann captured it all in Beijing Jeep (1989)….. Click here
Xuelei Huang’s Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell (Cambridge University Press) is not be sniffed at (sorry…)
In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the ‘smellscapes’ of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.
For those who don’t get a proper copy of the South China Morning Post weekend magazine in their hands & rely on the online version you may not appreciate how good the covers consistently are (& my John Le Carre tale was featured front & centre last issue)…. Many thanks to designer Mario Rivera (@mariogramme on instagram) – the article is here by the way…
