Sadly time constraints meant that I edited out the small piece I had in my BBC Radio 3 documentary A Chinese Odyssey on the poet (who had been in China prior to WW2 teaching) William Empson. Orwell casts a long shadow at the BBC Eastern Service during the War and Empson gets a little forgotten. Anyway, just to show that he was in touch with the NW3 Chinese intellectuals, here’s a letter from Empson to Chiang Yee in 1944 arranging a talk. Chiang Yee at the time was in Edinburgh arranging an exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery……
I was recently in the BBC Written Archives at Caversham and came across some letters from the artist and author Chiang Yee (‘The Silent Traveller’) and his friend the playwrite Hsiung Shih-I. What is interesting here, and what I had never seen before was that Chiang Yee produced personalised notepaper, painted with flower motifs and each individual sheet was different and individually hand-painted. Chiang clearly produced some for his friend Hsiung and used some himself. Below are several examples of this beautiful paper….
A letter from SI Hsiung in 1940 to a BBC producer on Chiang Yee-painted headed paper.
A January 1938 letter from Chiang Yee to a BBC producer on his own painted notepaper
A 1940 letter to Clementine Churchill, wife of Winston, on Chiang Yee hand-painted notepaper
My BBC Radio 3 documentary on Chiang Yee, Hsiung Shih-I, Dymia Hsiung and others living in Belsize Park, NW3 during the 1930s and early war years, A Chinese Odyssey is now available to listen to online…click here
I happened to watch once again the 1955 movie of Han Suyin’s famous novel Love is a Many Splendored Thing – Jennifer Jones as the Han Suyin character and William Holden as ‘Mark Eliot’, her American foreign correspondent love interest (in reality of course it was the Peking-born journalist and son of George Morrison ‘…of China’ fame, Ian – who did die covering the Korean War). Anyhow, being involved in matters Macao history at the moment, this time around i particularly noticed the Fatshan appears briefly.
The Fatshan famously started out in the 1930s as a Hong Kong-Canton ferry, was seized by the Japanese and eventually, in 1971 tragically sunk off Lantau Island with a terrible loss of life. And, in the 1950s, was plying the Hong Kong-Macao ferry route. Love is a Many Splendored Thing is set in 1949, though filmed in 1955.
As it’s that time of year – CNY, Spring Festival, Lunar Festival etc – here’s a reup of my Crimereads Crime and the City special on msyteries, noirs and whodunnits set in Chinatowns….click here
husband & wife poets “Shelley” Wang Lixi and Lu Jingqing, who moved to London in 1933
Paul French explores a unique moment in British-Chinese solidarity between 1937 and 1945 when a small group of Chinese artists and intellectuals forged a unique bond between Britain and China through their work and presence. Paul French recovers the story.
On the first night of the Blitz, a bomb destroyed the Hampstead home of the best-selling Chinese artist and author, Chiang Yee. That night began the scattering of what had been an incredibly productive, influential and vibrant circle of Chinese émigré poets, journalists, playwrights, translators and artists who had gathered in London NW3.
Chiang Yee, Hsiung Shih-I, Dymia Hsiung and Hsiao Chien were in effect a ‘Chinese Bloomsbury’. Both in love with Britain, despite its Imperial racism, and in turn popular and well known on the British cultural scene crafting popular travel guides to the British terrain, a best-selling West End play, Lady Precious Stream, and broadcasting frequently to Britain and the Empire about China’s fate and freedom in a world hurtling to war.
Despite their influence and impact at the time, their historical presence has been almost totally overlooked. Paul French and actor/playwright Daniel York Loh retell this unique odyssey, a moment of war-born internationalism that placed such a creative group at the heart of empire .
