Henry Steiner’s Hong Kong from Zolima….. When Henry Steiner moved to Hong Kong in 1961, it was only meant to be for nine months. More than 60 years later, he is the most important graphic designer in the city’s history. Join us as we explore Hong Kong through the lens of Steiner’s work, from the idea of East meets West, to the graphic identity of world-leading companies like HSBC, to Hong Kong icons like the Jockey Club, Hong Kong Land, Peak Tower, Ocean Terminal, Wellcome, Lane Crawford and more.
A brilliant first volume from Hong Kong’s Zolima Culture Guide… click here to buy…
This coming Saturday i’ll be speaking to the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing’s annual post-AGM dinner at the old Grand Hotel de Pekin (now Hotel Nuo on Chang’an Jie) on those old denizens of the bars, restaurants and rooftop dancefloor of the GHP from Wallis Simpson to Harold Acton, the American jazz bands and the likes of Nelson Rockefeller Jr and the author JP Marquand…. https://rasbj.org/membership/
The Opium War (1839-42) appears in virtually every telling of nineteenth-century world history. No individual, Chinese or British, looms larger in that event than Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. In 1838, Lin was hand-picked by the emperor from among the empire’s best and brightest officials to combat the opium trade at Guangzhou. Only eighteen months later, the emperor just as quickly dismissed Lin from the post and soon thereafter banished him to northwestern China. In most tellings, this is the last one hears of Lin. And yet, in the last decade of his life, Lin remained highly respected among his peers, immensely popular across the empire, and continued to serve as one of the emperor’s top imperial troubleshooters.
In this talk, Professor Atwill (NYU Shanghai) focuses on Lin’s post-Opium War career to upend traditional accounts of mid-nineteenth century China and to allow us to see with new eyes how Qing China faced global challenges in a rapidly changing world.
David G. Atwill is Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History at New York University Shanghai.
Wallis’s old China haunts are surprisingly well preserved – the Palace Hotel on the Bund, the Astor in Tianjin, the Grand Hotel (now the Nuo) in Beijing but in Hong Kong all is gone – the Repulse Bay Hotel, the HongKong Hotel both gone and her old lodgings on Hankow Road in Tsim Sha Tsui where sadly not a trace lingers…
Radio hardly ever gets lengthy and detailed reviews like this – and I’m amazed – but Chris Bennion in the Telegraph is also making the massive point that my drama-doc The Defectors (on BBC Sounds now – click here) is one of the final dramas BBC Radio 3 will ever do unless we can change their minds to value drama on 3…..There is an online petition you can sign here
There’s a very special dinner after this year’s RAS Beijing AGM – dinner at the old Grand Hotel de Pekin (where Wallis Simpson and a host of other luminaries, stars, disreputable types and wannabes stayed over the years) with some remarks by me. Apparently 1920s dress is encouraged but not obligatory….
You are cordially invited to come to RASBJ’s annual post-AGM dinner at the Old Peking Hotel and hear Paul French on late Qing to 1930’s Beijing and its expatriate community.
Drinks will be served from 7pm, and dinner from 7.30-9.30pm.
WHAT: RASBJ post-AGM dinner featuring award-winning author Paul French as keynote speaker
WHEN: Saturday, March 22, 2025, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Beijing standard time. Doors open at 7:00 PM
WHERE: Beijing Hotel Nuo (the former Peking Hotel), 33 East Chang An Avenue, Dongcheng, Beijing tel: 8526 3388
Home of so many famous foreigners and Chinese – the famous, the creative, the right, the powerful – Beijing’s Shih-Chia (Shijia) Hutong saw them all…. and they need to be remembered. SO, courtesy of the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing, I’ll be holding a dinner with the fantastically knowledge director of the Shijia Hutong Museum “Matthew” Hu Xinyu on the evening of Wednesday March 19.
