An interesting little anecdote I came across in Tobias Hof’s Galeazzo Ciano: The Fascist Pretender, the bio of Mussolini’s son-in-law, Foreign Minister and, between 1930 and 1933, Consul in Shanghai.
Apparently Ciano had been able to do many favours to the radio pioneer Marconi before going to Shanghai. Radio and telegram links bewtween Italy and China were not great and lagged behind those to Britain and America. Mussolini wished to regularly hear from his daughter Edda (Ciano’s wife and pregnant in Shanghai) while also wanting news of deals Ciano was doing to sell Italian aircraft and munitions to China. So Marconi was called upon to seriously upgrade radio communications between Rome and Shanghai. It was such a big deal the New York Times, in 1932, reported that Il Duce was now able to talk to his duaghter in far away Shanghai (click here)
Jennifer Dobbs’s book Lost in China is the true story of two Anglo-American children separated from their parents in China during World War II, and their unforgettable journey to America a year later. The Dobbs family lived in Shanghai in the late 1930s, where the children spoke Mandarin and Jennifer rode to school in a rickshaw. As war progresses, the family travels to heavily bombed Chungking, through mountains harboring bandits, and on the dangerous Burma Road. When their mother and father fly to Hong Kong on a short trip and get caught up in the Japanese attack, the Dobbs children are left parentless, with no idea when their parents will return—or if they are even still alive.
For a year, the children remain in Western China, and the two are separated when John is taken to stay with another family, where he survives a near-drowning incident. Finally, after spending a month traveling three-quarters of the way around the world via the US military’s World War II ferry routes, they reunite with their mother in a rain-swept, deserted airfield in Washington, DC—and face a shocking discovery about their father. Lost in China is both a riveting firsthand account of a family broken apart in World War II China and a daughter’s tribute to her beloved father.
A fascinating little historical detail from Caroline Moorehead’s jbiogust published biography of Edda Mussolini (wife of Count Galaezzo Ciano, the former Italian Consul to Shanghai). In late 1943 after the Armistice of Cassibile signed on 3 September 1943 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies resulting in Italy joining the Allies and what the Germans believed to be the betrayal of Germany by Italy, Count Ciano and Edda fled to Germany – Munich to be precise. There, they thought, Hitler would provide them with identities and smuggle them out to South America. They did take new passport photos – Ciano, with a fake moustache, was told he would be an Argentinian of Italian descent. Edda was to have a new life as “Margaret Smith”, an English woman born in Shanghai. As Edda had loved their time in Shanghai (though not Ciano’s constant womanising) she might just of got away with it – though her resemblance to her father might have been an issue!
When, how, and why did the Himalaya become the highest mountains in the world? In 1800, Chimborazo in South America was believed to be the world’s highest mountain, only succeeded by Mount Everest in 1856. Science on the Roof of the World tells the story of this shift, and the scientific, imaginative, and political remaking needed to fit the Himalaya into a new global scientific and environmental order. Lachlan Fleetwood traces untold stories of scientific measurement and collecting, indigenous labour and expertise, and frontier-making to provide the first comprehensive account of the East India Company’s imperial entanglements with the Himalaya. To make the Himalaya knowable and globally comparable, he demonstrates that it was necessary to erase both dependence on indigenous networks and scientific uncertainties, offering an innovative way of understanding science’s global history, and showing how geographical features like mountains can serve as scales for new histories of empire.
Ruth Rogaski’s Knowing Manchuria is a fascinating new study of the region mixed with some very strange tales…
According to Chinese government reports, hundreds of plague-infected rodents fell from the skies over Gannan county on an April night in 1952. Chinese scientists determined that these flying voles were not native to the region, but were vectors of germ warfare, dispatched over the border by agents of imperialism. Mastery of biology had become a way to claim political mastery over a remote frontier. Beginning with this bizarre incident from the Korean War, Knowing Manchuria places the creation of knowledge about nature at the center of our understanding of a little-known but historically important Asian landscape.
At the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia, Manchuria is known as a site of war and environmental extremes, where projects of political control intersected with projects designed to make sense of Manchuria’s multiple environments. Covering more than 500,000 square miles, Manchuria’s landscapes include temperate rainforests, deserts, prairies, cultivated plains, wetlands, and Siberian taiga. With analysis spanning the seventeenth century to the present day, Ruth Rogaski reveals how an array of historical actors―Chinese poets, Manchu shamans, Russian botanists, Korean mathematicians, Japanese bacteriologists, American paleontologists, and indigenous hunters―made sense of the Manchurian frontier. She uncovers how natural knowledge, and thus the nature of Manchuria itself, changed over time, from a sacred “land where the dragon arose” to a global epicenter of contagious disease; from a tragic “wasteland” to an abundant granary that nurtured the hope of a nation.
Had a great conversation with Adam Brookes about his new book Fragile Cargo, arranged by the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing, who have now loaded it up on Youtube if anyone’s interested…
China in A Time of Turbulence: through the Lens of Popular Culture, 29 October 2022 at 13:00.
The Chinese society underwent a series of turbulent events in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. There were continuous internal rebellions and external conflicts, and the country witnessed the collapse of its last imperial dynasty and established a new republic which brought profound social changes. Little has been studied how this part of history was reflected in popular culture.
At this event we are introducing two books, observing China at the time from two unique perspectives.
Cartooning China: Punch, Power & Politics in the Victorian Era by Amy Matthewson –
This book explores the series of cartoons of China and the Chinese that were published in the popular British satirical magazine Punch over a 60-year period from 1841 to 1901.
Filled with political metaphors and racial stereotypes, these illustrations served as a powerful tool in both reflecting and shaping notions and attitudes towards China at a tumultuous time in Sino-British history. A close reading of both the visual and textual satires in Punch reveals how a section of British society visualised and negotiated with China as well as Britain’s position in the global community. By contextualising Punch’s cartoons within the broader frameworks of British socio-cultural and political discourse, the author engages in a critical enquiry of popular culture and its engagements with race, geopolitical propaganda, and public consciousness.
The Adventures of Ma Suzhen: ‘An Heroic Woman Takes Revenge in Shanghai’ by Paul Bevan – This comic novel was written during a highpoint in the popularity of xia “knight-errant” fiction. It is an action-packed tale of a young woman who takes revenge for her brother, Ma Yongzhen, a gangster and performing strongman, who has been murdered by a rival gang in China’s most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai. After publication of the book in 1923, the character of Ma Suzhen appeared on stage, and subsequently in a film made by the Mingxing Film Company. The book version translated here, displays a delightful combination of the xia and popular“Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies” genres, with additional elements of Gong’an “court case” fiction. The translation is followed by an essay that explores the background to the legend of Ma Suzhen – a fictional figure, whose exhilarating escapades reflect some of the new possibilities and freedoms available to women following the founding of the Chinese Republic.
If you’re in Shanghai on October 31 there’s a get together of ol Shanghai folks for halloween – and i’ll be there via zoom to talk about murder, mayhem & some of the ghosts of the old city
