All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Reprinted in the “Junkman”, GRG Worcester, formerly of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, in his magesterial study The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze (1971)… Feel free to sing along….
Last week I blogged about how a picture in Jan Morris’s 1988 book Hong Kong has me wondering. There is Dick Hughes (the model for le Carre’s Old Craw in The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Fleming’s Dikko Henderson in the Bond novels). With him was a man who pops up in many photos of Hong Kong and, I think, most famously in the David Llyod shot of the view from the toilets at the old HK FCC at Sutherland House (now demolished – though made famous as a scene in The Honourable Schoolboy. See the post for more here….
So thanks to Geoff Wade in Canberra who spotted that it is the prolific author and journalist David Bonavia, former writer on China, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Correspondent with The Times (London) and author, among many other books of The Chinese: A Portrait (1980). I should have known this as I constantly refer to his great study of the Warlords.
Sadly Hughes died in 1984 and Bonavia in 1998.
The original Chinese-language edition of Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara (1976) was incredibly popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and throughout China, with the author representing a very different type of Chinese woman. Book 30 on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf….click here
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.
Excellent to see that Liang Qichao will be joining the Penguin Classics list this October….
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….
