All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
From reform-era history and present-day policy to wartime history and protest fiction, regular contributors to The China Project (including me) round up their top picks from the China bookshelf of 2022. Click here to read.
The great Russian exile (until he later returned to the USSR) cabaret entertainer Alexander Vertinsky liverd in Shanghai for some years. Here’s his Christmas Eve party 1936 at the Balalaika nightclub…a White Russian get together for sure and a close up on the menu…
I don’t know much about American funeral director advertising trends but hats off to the Vermont town of Brattleboro and the funeral directors Moran and Rohde, down there on Oak Street. They decided to run an ad in December 1929. Being a tad classier than those showing discount coffins, affordable all-in-one packages or an array of brass fittings to see you onto the the side Moran and Rohde went with a soothing image of the marble bridge at the Summer Palace in Peking while noting that another interesting bridge in China is to be found at Hangchow (Hangzhou). Well death is figuratively a crossing so….
A biography of Fridtjof Nansen, the polar explorer and champion of the Nansen passports, originally and officially stateless persons passports. Nansen passports were internationally recognized refugee travel documents from 1922 to 1938, first issued by the League of Nations’s Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to stateless refugees. To anyone studying the lives of Russian exiles in China between the wars knowing about Nansen is invaluable.
Alexis Jenni’s biography is in French, though will hopefully find an English language publisher too….
Comment passe-t-on de champion de ski à Prix Nobel de la paix ? De héros polaire à créateur d’un statut pour les réfugiés ? Alexis Jenni raconte à la façon d’un roman la vie extraordinaire de Fridtjof Nansen, homme doué en tout, qui fut champion du monde de patinage, consacra ses travaux scientifiques au système nerveux, dessinait fort bien et écrivait d’une plume remarquable. L’histoire d’un homme qui traversa le Groenland à ski puis tenta d’atteindre le pôle Nord et devint héros national norvégien. Un homme qui oeuvra pour le rapatriement des prisonniers de guerre, puis créa un passeport destiné aux centaines de milliers d’apatrides laissés pour compte par l’effondrement des empires en 1918. Un homme qui sauva des milliers de vies et qui se demandait avec mélancolie s’il n’avait pas raté la sienne
An interesting article on the perfidies of Golden Bat cigarettes in China in WW2 by artist Samuel Porteous click here
1927 – what a year in Shanghai! Labour troubles, fighting between the Nationalists and the Communists, the streets running red with blood, gangsters gone wild…but remember, it’s Shanghai, and even in 1927 property was the big winner!!
H. P. Wasson and Company, aka Wasson‘s, was an Indianapolis, Indiana department store. In 1929 they had a “Peking” themed Christmas promotion – candleabras, embroideries, kettles, tea sets, ginger jars, incense burners and….opium bowls (from a buck to $6.95)!….
Shanghai 1937 – a disastorous year, the Japanese attacked, the “Bloody Saturday” bombings, the Settlement and Frenchtown surrounded and the start of Guodo (Solitary Island) period….and the last handkerchiefs to make it out to America…fortunately in time for Christmas…
