All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
My review of Adam Brookes’s excellent Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City (Penguin)….in this weekends SCMP Post magazine…here…
British explorer, writer, scholar, diplomat, and soldier Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) died in Trieste where he was British Consul. Burton is primarily associated with the Near- and Mid-East as well as Africa rather than the Far East. His travels and writings are too numerous to mention here, but if you’re not familiar with him and his work then he has an extensive Wikipedia page.
Anyway, I came across these paintings of his Trieste house painted in 1889 by Albert Letchford (1866-1905), an English artist resident in Italy and also provided some (actually 72) illustration to books in Burton’s 17-volume translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. The paintings reflect various aspects of Burton’s life – his ambivlance yet fascination with religion, his books and files, artworks and momentos as well as (in the first painting) a Chinese/Japanese parasol and in his bedroom (bottom painting) a Chinese/Japanese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling.
These paintings now reside in the Burton Collection in Orleans House, Twickenham, West London.
More than 1001 Days and Nights of Hong Kong Internment by Chaloner Grenville Alabaster and edited by David St Maur Sheil, Kwong Chi Man, and Tony Banham as part of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series…
More Than 1001 Days and Nights of Hong Kong Internment is the wartime journal of Sir Chaloner Grenville Alabaster, former attorney-general of Hong Kong and one of the three highest-ranking British officials during the Japanese occupation. He was imprisoned by the Japanese at the Stanley Internment Camp from 1941 to 1945. During his internment, he managed to keep a diary of his life in the camp in small notebooks and hid them until his release in 1945. He then wrote his wartime journal on the basis of these notes. The journal records his day-to-day experiences of the fall of Hong Kong, his time at Stanley, and his eventual release. Some of the most fascinating extracts cover the three months immediately after the fall of Hong Kong and when Alabaster and his colleagues were imprisoned in Prince’s Building in Central and before they were sent to the camp, a period little covered in previous publications. Hence, the book is an important primary source for understanding the daily operation of the Stanley Internment Camp and the camp’s environment. Readers will also learn more about the daily life of those imprisoned in the camp, and Alabaster’s interaction with other prisoners there.
David St Maur Sheil is the great-grandson of Sir Chaloner Grenville Alabaster and has been conducting research into his family’s long history in Hong Kong and China. Kwong Chi Man is an associate professor in the History Department of Hong Kong Baptist University. Tony Banham has studied the Battle of Hong Kong for a quarter of a century and has written on the subject, aided in the production of television documentaries, and helped many children of veterans in their researches into their parents’ war years.
Four marvellous painting of author and art critic Douglas Sladen’s #32 Addison Manions flat from 1915 painted by the Japanese artist resident in London Yoshio Markino. Sladen was a champion of Markino’s work and a keen lover of Japanois in the late 19th and ewarly 20th centuries. Sadly the building is gone, but Markino’s paintings remain…Addison Mansions comprised two blocks of apartments on Blythe Road, Hammersmith, opposite the Olympia Exhbition Centre built around 1888. (pic of the building at bottom of post).
This years Indiana University Kenshur Prize for 18th century studies awarded to Henrietta Harrison for The Perils of Interpreting (Princeton University Press). I had a chat with Henrietta about the book & translation for the China Britain Business Council magazine Focus recently -click here
January 1925 and if you lived in Saratoga (California) you might have been worried that you weren’t going to get the Chinese lantern you’d craved. But fear not, they arrived…
Heads up…Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon in translation (By Jeremy Tiang) out Oct 4 from World Edition books – a quite amazing novel blurbed by Yan Lianke & Ian McEwan (has he ever blurbed a Chinese novel before?) “Cocoon is a stupendous novel, a beautiful & formidable achievement on the grandest scale” oh, & me!
WHAT: An online talk by author Adam Brookes on his book Fragile Cargo: the World War II race to save the treasures of China’s Forbidden City, moderated by Paul French, followed by Q&A (online)
WHEN: Sept. 7, 2022 Wednesday from 8:00-9:00 PM Beijing time
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: RASBJ is thrilled to feature author Adam Brookes discussing his hot new book Fragile Cargo: the World War II race to save the treasures of China’s Forbidden City . The talk will be moderated by Paul French, author of “Midnight in Peking”. For a taste of things to come, here’s an interview Paul did with Adam for the China-Britain Business Focus. Many of you have attended RASBJ’s numerous events focused on the Forbidden City – and now’s your chance to hear one of the most rollicking tales of all.
Here’s how the publisher described this book: “1924: Two days before Christmas, a small and clandestine group of professors, curators, and historians made their way through the enormous gates and towering vermillion walls of Peking’s Forbidden City, for centuries the home to the Chinese emperors…. [For years}, Japanese pilots [had been] bombing Shanghai. In the increasingly vulnerable city of Peking, the Palace Museum’s curator made a difficult and monumental decision: to safeguard the treasures, they would need to be evacuated…. What followed was an unbelievable and perilous journey through a vast country facing tremendous upheaval and conditions as varied as icy winter storms to boiling heatwaves. Now, the full story is finally revealed and the men and women who helped saved China’s precious cultural history are given their due in this unforgettable book.“
MEMBERS ONLY: This online event is free and exclusively for members of RASBJ and RAS branches. If you wish to join the RASBJ to attend this event, please sign up for membership at https://rasbj.org/membership/ at least 72 hours before the event.
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