All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
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
Peter Harmsen’s Darkest Christmas is out soon from Casemate Publishers….
“One single, crucial 24 hours—Christmas Day 1942. A world hanging in the balance. Peter Harmsen masterfully reveals the raging war across the globe through the hopes and fears of its inhabitants whether soldier, civilian or prisoner. A broad canvas, yet one that repeatedly becomes incredibly personal and often heart-wrenching. Among the vast library of books on World War II Darkest Christmas stands out as uniquely poignant and original.”
Paul French, New York Times best-selling author of “Midnight in Peking” and “Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day“
A lovely copy of Shanghai of To-day (yes, they hyphenated it), published in 1927 as a souveneir of 38 plates of photographs of the International Settlement. Published by the great Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong publishing house Kelly & Walsh.
It also included an introduction by OM Green, then the editor of the North-China Daily News. Green was perhaps the paper’s most strident and opinionated (some would say hardline) leader in its history andwas to serve as editor through to 1930 and remain active in writing about China until after the Second World War. Green was a forceful apologist for the British position in Shanghai and continued his advocacy of British superiority long after he left the paper and the city.
The Marvellous Book, written and self-published by Star Talbot, was a hundred Studies of different types of Chinese Porcelains. It was also a marvellous item in itself, at least at its first printing in Shanghai in 1930 where each edition came in gilt decorated silk and the plates had tissue guards. The first edition was limited to a thousand copies. Talbot, an independently wealthy collector of Chinese porcelain from about 1900, included notes on each of the photographs in English, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, French and German. The book gives the address of 249 Nanking Road, but whether this was Talbot’s home, office, showroom (or combination of all three) I do not know. The book is pretty rare now.
The China Project kindly suggested i might like to abridge a chapter from my collection Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books) for their readers. I thought perhaps the chapter on Lev Karakhan, the first Soviet Ambassador to China might be interesting and offer some background on the ever rocky Russia-China relationship…You can read it here
I have done a few ‘old Shanghai signage’ posts before (just put ‘signage’ in the search engine and you can see them). This one though is from Beijing and I’ve never noticed one of these signs before – for a rickshaw rank, or waiting lot. It is apparently 1908, has been colourised (not by me) is supposedly adjacent to the South or Zhaoheng Gate (昭亨门; Zhāohēng Mén).
The little rickshaw logo is cool….
A nice opportunity to highlight Gareth Fuller’s latest work, an amazing Shanghai map….more details and more images of this fantastic map here…
Artist-explorer Gareth Fuller releases his latest large-scale drawing: a portrait of Shanghai as experienced through the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of his ongoing ‘Purposeful Wandering’ series, Gareth Fuller unveils a new intricate place-drawing – a work that captures the city of Shanghai as China moved in and out of lockdowns between 2020 and 2021. Fuller distils the visual curiosities one of Asia’s most significant
megacities into one canvas, collecting stories, research and visual anecdotes over a period between two of the world’s strangest years. The artist’s work manifests as illustrative transcripts of places he
explores and inhabits over time, unfolding through a doublephased process of pedestrian discovery and meticulous handdrawing. As with all of his work, Shanghai builds a topography of all
that is real and imagined within a specific place, at a specific time.
John D Wong’s Hong Kong Takes Flight (Harvard University Asia Center) is a great background on the history of aviation – China Clippers, Kai Tak, the 1930s, 40s and 50s – as well as a discussion about the dreary state of aviation and travel to and from Hong Kong today. I interviewed John for the China Britain Business Council magazine, Focus. Click here to read my Q&A with him.
