All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
My occasional round up of what’s new in Chinese writing in translation for the China-Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine…. click here
From a new Penguin reprint of Lao She’s Mr Ma and Son, to Dorothy Tse’s excellent Owlish, here’s what to read this month to understand China better…
I found this book in an art bookshop in London – Chinese Creeds and Customs Vol III by VR Burkhardt (who worked at the British Embassy in Peking between 1913-1923). The bookwas published in 1958 by the South China Morning Post. It includes some information on the Fox Tower (Dongbienmen) which interested me as obviosuly it is a key location in my book Midnight in Peking. It also intersted me as recently a blogger accused me of inventing the Fox Tower! A slightly odd accusation as the book includes a map of Peking from the 1930s identifying the Fox Tower, which is also referred to in numerous books from Juliet Bredon back in the day to Michael Aldrich more recently.
Burkhardt knew Peking very well and even sketched the Tower for his book.
Brian Sze-hang Kwok’s Fading Neon Lights celebrates what is now an endangered species in Hong Kong…
Suspended above us with intricate patterns and flamboyant colours, the neon signs of Hong Kong easily guide us to local businesses, Chinese restaurants, bars, and department stores. Apart from marketing and advertising, these neon signs actually convey much more — and mean much more to those who view the signs as a part of their home.
This book documents Hong Kong’s neon signs whilst taking on a historical, socio-cultural, and contextual study of visual culture around the city. It explores the inter-related components of neon signs, including each sign’s unique visual aesthetic and design, the history of craftsmanship and training, and how the streetscape relates to Hong Kong’s consumer culture. With an underlying theme of photographic conservation and an array of vibrant images, the author brings the everyday signage of Hong Kong to life.
For anyone interested in the new Chinese language translation of Carl Crow’s 400 Million Customers, it’s up on the amazons now –
Big news in 1920 – a vegetarian restaurant opened in Peking….Juliet Bredon was so excited she added a footnote to her book Peking (1920) noting its opening…(of course it was not the first restaurant to serve this sort of food, but probably the first to attract foreign interest…)
‘A newly opened vegetarian restaurant is one of the novelties of the capital. Not only is every vegetable known to China prepared there, but these vegetables are served in imitation of practically every known meat dish. At a recent feast given in this place, 27 different varieties of Chinese food were served. The roast duck consisted of a preperation made of bean curd; fried eels were the rind of a certain kinf od melon cooked in vegetable oils; vegetable pork and beef were found to consist of bamboo shoots and mushrooms, and so on, the novelty of the entertainment being that the vegetables not only tasted like the various meat dishes but were moulded to look them also.’
A relatively rare example of Kowloon-side art-deco. Built by a Belgian construction company in the 1930s, this cluster of 16 pre-war buildings was designed as ‘Modern Flats’ for middle-class families at the time with shophouses and an arcade at street level. Some were demolished and redeveloped after the war, leaving only ten remaining buildings, and hence the gap inbetween some that disturbs the full length flow of the building. Therefore the numbering of the pre-war cluster is 190-204 and 210-212 Prince Edward Road West
The roads were named after Prince Edward in 1922 after he visited the construction of this road, later Edward VIII (later The Duke of Windsor), after his visit to Hong Kong. In the 1930s, Prince Edward Road was extended to the area of Ngau Chi Wan.
On the 18 September 1906 Hong Kong was walloped by a tropical cyclone . The natural disaster caused property damage exceeding a million pounds sterling, affected international trade, and took the lives of around 15,000 people: about 5% of the then Hong Kong population (a total of 320,000 people).
Early days of photography but one keen amateur took some photos (sadly not great quality in these images) time stamped at 9:15am, 9:30am and 9:45am…
This week on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf we start a look at some books that provided early ‘scorecards’ in the wake of massive change – book #13 is Financial Times journo James Kynge’s China Shakes the World (2006)…click here to read…
Worth remembering Kynge was writing it in 04-05 when exports rose 35%, imports 36%, FDI was $64bn & GDP growth peaked at 11.4%. That was world shaking.
