Hong Kong Panoramas, 1890s

Several panoramas of Hong Kong harbour from both sides taken by members of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in the 1890s…

Nanking Road, Old Shanghai – courtesy of Meaghan Walsh Gerard

My thanks to Meaghan Walsh Gerard of Savannah, Georgia for sending me this lovely Kodak snap of Nanking Road (Nanjing East Road).

The photo paper dates it as 1930s and it is titled on the reverse, as you can see – a worthwhile US$2.98 and so kind of her to send it to me.

BTW: Meaghan is a prolific and excellent book and film reviewer (which I think is how we first met ages ago) – her website is here. But I must thank her massively and repeatedly for helping me access the Harry Hervey archives at the Georgia State Historical Society when a combination of a) the archive imminently closing for some time for major building works and b) covid prevented me from getting over there in person.

In case you don’t know Hervey was a Charleston and Savannah inhabitant who was obsessed with Asia and ‘the Orient’. He wrote a number of exotic novels before even visiting. In the 1920s he then did a couple of extensive tours of Japan/Korea/Hong Kong/Macao and mainland China, as well as South East Asia and French Indochina. I reproduced some of his travel writing in my first China Revisited reprint (with Blacksmith Books) – Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Herveys 1920s Hong Kong, Macao & Canton Sojourns.

But most importantly Hervey wrote the original treatment for the movie Shanghai Express and sold it to Josef von Sternberg – cue Marlene, Anna May and one of the best movies ever. I dug that out of the Stanford Archives and then found that Hervey’s own archives were also at the Georgia State Historical Society including letters and a bunch of obscurely publoshed, or totally unpublished, but really very interesting, short stories featuring Peking. Meaghan got those for me and I wrote about them in a chapter of my collection Destination Peking – Harry Hervey’s Peking of the Imagination.

So once again – thank you Meaghan…

Book #24 on The China Project Ultimate Bookshelf – Stephen R Platt’s Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (2012)

Book #24 on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – tackling the Taiping with Stephen R Platt’s Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom….click here

RAS Beijing – Author Mike Chinoy discusses “Assignment China” with moderator Melinda Liu – June 28

Author Mike Chinoy discusses his new book “Assignment China” with moderator Melinda Liu

WHEN: June 28, Wednesday, 7:00 to 8:00 PM Beijing Time (online)

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: Published recently by Mike Chinoy, “Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic” tells the story of foreign correspondents in China and their coverage of stories from the 1940s’ civil war to the COVID-19 pandemic. The author uses the journalists’ own words to document the insights, trials and tribulations of the foreign media in China over a period of 70-plus years. Chinoy will discuss how the foreign media sought to “test the boundaries, challenge the restrictions on coverage…and explore parts of Chinese society that had long been off limits”, in conversation with foreign correspondent Melinda Liu.

HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Click “Register” or “I will Attend” and follow the instructions. After successful registration and payment, you’ll receive a confirmation email. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder. If you encounter difficulties paying via WeChat Pay, you may wish to try Alipay instead. Members of partner RAS branches: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. You will receive several emails from RASBJ: one confirming receipt of your registration request, another requesting payment, and a third confirming your registration and payment, with a link to join the event. In cases of non-payment, you will not receive login information. If you have questions please contact communications@rasbj.org

A Q&A With Vaudine England on Fortune’s Bazaar for the China-Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine – June 2023

My monthly author Q&A for the China-Britain Business Council magazine Focus this June is with Vaudine England & her excellent new history of Hong Kong, Fortune’s Bazaar (CorsairBooks) – click here…

Yamamoto Photographic Studios, Peking & Tientsin

This is the logo of the Yamamoto photo studio in Peking from about 1914….

Bristol University’s Historical Phootgraphs of China (HPC) site has this to say of the man and his company:

Sanshichiro YAMAMOTO 山本讃七郎 (1855-1943) was a Japanese photographer, born in Okayama Prefecture. He had a photography studio in Shibahikage-cho (near present day Shimbashi Station) in Tokyo, Japan, from 1882 to about 1897. When news of the Boxer Uprising swept the world, he quickly went to Peking (Beijing) to photograph the historic activities of foreign troops in the capitol, including the Japanese. After photographing the aftermath in Peking (Beijing), he finally settled down in Tientsin (Tianjin) and opened his third photographic studio (Yamamoto Shōzō Kan or Yamamoto Syozo House), from where he sold photographs, souvenir photobooks and coloured post cards, taken in and around Beijing and North China. Yamamoto’s photographs were published in Views of the North China Affair, Picturesque Views of Peking and View and Custom of North China (1909).

Xu Zechen’s Beijing Sprawl Published…

For anyone who likes Wang Shuo’s novels or Jia Jiangke’s films (particularly Xiao Wu) then Xu Zechen’s newly translated (but composed of stories originally published in Chinese from around 2008 I think) Beijing Sprawl (Trans: Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen) is a great read from Two Lines Press….

Neutrality and Collaboration in South China – Macao During the Second World War

Helen FS Lopes’s new study of Macao’s neutrality and collaboration in WW2 looks fascinating….

The South China enclave of Macau was the first and last European colonial settlement in East Asia and a territory at the crossroads of different empires. In this highly original study, Helena F. S. Lopes analyses the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Macau during the Second World War. Exploring the intersections of local, regional and global dynamics, she unpacks the connections between a plurality of actors with competing and collaborative interests, including Chinese Nationalists, Communists and collaborators with Japan, Portuguese colonial authorities and British and Japanese representatives. Lopes argues that neutrality eased the movement of refugees of different nationalities who sought shelter in Macau during the war and that it helped to guarantee the maintenance of two remnants of European colonialism – Macau and Hong Kong. Drawing on extensive research from multilingual archival material from Asia, Europe, Australasia and America, this book brings to light the multiple global connections framing the experiences of neutrality and collaboration in the Portuguese-administered enclave of Macau.