The Bespoke Beijing/Penguin China Official Midnight in Peking Walking Tour is on again – April 1 2022

Happening again – covid-permitting….April 1….

James Harrison Wilson’s China : travels and investigations in the “Middle Kingdom” : a study of its civilization and possibilities, together with an account of the Boxer war, the relief of the legations, and the re-establishment of peace, 1901

Quite a detailed account across a goof few hundred pages…but more a think to look at than study for the casual scholar….here the edition from the London Library…

Paper Republic Guide to Contemporary Chinese Literature out now

Paper Republic’s definitive guide to contemporary Chinese literature in translation features detailed biographical entries covering almost 100 of the most important writers working in the Chinese language today, from Anni Baby to Zhang Yueran, by way of Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan. The biographies are complemented by in-depth essays:

• Dylan Levi King assesses the changing role of the author in Chinese society
• US-based academic Zhu Ping discusses women’s writing in Chinese
• translator and scholar Andrea Lingenfelter provides an introduction to the rich but often neglected field of Hong Kong literature
• Emily Xueni Jin outlines the increasingly influential field of Chinese science fiction
• Rachel Cheung brings us bang up-to-date with the latest in Chinese internet literature
• A powerful introductory essay by Xiaolu Guo, the Chinese-born, UK-based novelist, gives a view from the inside

Link to buy here

More details here

The Vienna Bakery, Broadway, Shanghai, 1946

The logo of the Vienna Bakery. There were a number of businesses called the Vienna Bakery in Shanghai over the decades, dating back to the start of the twentieth century. This though is from 1946 and was the Vienna Bakery on, I think, Broadway (Daming Lu)…

1948 aerial map of Shanghai’s old town

Now, thanks to Katya Knyazeva, up on the internet archive….click here

Shanghai Magie. Reportagen aus dem New Yorker

For German reading fans of Emily Hahn…Shanghai Magic, Hahn’s reporting for the New Yorker has been reissued in a new edition…..

Cartooning China: Punch, Power, and Politics in the Victorian Era – March 2022

Amy Matthewson’s Cartooning China is recently published…

This book explores the series of cartoons of China and the Chinese that were published in the popular British satirical magazine Punch over a sixty-year period from 1841-1901.

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.

With a wide array of illustrations, this book in the Global Perspectives in Comics Studies series will be an important resource for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, political history and Empire, Chinese studies, popular culture, Victoriana, as well as media studies. It will also be of interest to readers who want to learn more about Punch, its history, and Sino-British relations.

Now Online to listen/download in full my 4-part Podcast The Lady From Hong Kong….

My four-part podcast, The Lady from Hong Kong, uncovering the true case of Miss Seto Gin, arrested for smuggling opium in San Francisco in 1939, who got her into that situation, why escaping a wartorn China made people desparate and what happened to her and her lover/drug kingpin Chung Lei. Recorded for RTHK3 Hong Kong…