All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
A range of German illustrated postcards covering Weihai, the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory, Tsingtao (Qingdao), the Boxer Rebellion and German East Asian Expeditionary Corps dating back to 1898. These seem to have been produced in China, in Shandong and Peking, for mailing back to Germany, or collecting, mostly be members of the Ostasiatichen Expeditiekorps.
There are few pictures of the interior of the old Hong Kong Hotel (closed 1952) on Pedder Street. I think this is because it was, as Wallis recalled, dark, gloomy and a bit depressing, while the food at Gripps (the hotel’s restaurant) was universally described as awful, “British inspired” and as remembered by Wallis, “boiled, boiled and then boiled again”. Still, apart from the Repulse Bay Hotel where she’d briefly stayed, it was the best the colony had to offer in 1924. And there was this impressive awning….
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
On this 80th anniversary of WW2 we’re remembering one of the key opening salvos of the global conflict – August 14 1937, the devastating and confused bombing of Shanghai’s downtown districts, at that time the worst aerial carnage the world had seen…. what became known as “Bloody Saturday”
PAUL FRENCH ON BLOODY SATURDAY
Tuesday August 12, 8pm
REGISTER: https://jinshuju.com/f/UCk0Ef
Or email info@historic-shanghai.com
We’ll be reconstructing the events of that day from eyewitness accounts, newspapers, and photographs to see what happened when the streets became battlegrounds, the Cathay and the Great World (Da Shijie) took direct hits, how the city and its people responded, and how it changed Shanghai forever and is an integral part of the descent into total global war.
(You can read my Penguin China Special as a Kindle e-book or paperback here….
A piece by me on Wallis Simpson in China in the 1920s for The Independent – apologies it’s paywalled but some of you might be subscribers….click here…
There’s a Blue Plaque to Arthur Waley – and I didn’t know. Should have as a) it was put up in 1995 and b) it’s in my home territory of North London at 50 Southwood Lane, Highgate, London, N6!
Pierre Singaravelou‘s Tianjin Cosmopolis (Columbia University Press)….(translated by Stephen W Sawyer)…
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Tianjin was the diplomatic capital of the Middle Kingdom, where foreign consuls met Chinese dignitaries, and a hub of commerce and culture. Yet in the eyes of foreigners, the city remained provincial. After the tumult of the Boxer Rebellion, however, Tianjin transformed, when a little-known international political project turned it for a time into one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world.
Pierre Singaravélou tells the story of Tianjin’s emergence as a transnational metropolis, arguing that the city’s experience challenges conventional narratives of the origins of globalization. He focuses on the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, when a number of imperial powers established an international military government that sought to modernize the city and its environs. Under its reign, people from all over the West and Asia flocked to Tianjin, in a whirlwind of commercial and cultural exchange. This provisional government embarked on ambitious public works and public health projects, attempting to transform not only the city’s infrastructure but also its residents’ behavior—all while the imperial powers seized large foreign concessions. Singaravélou traces the many tensions of the global city: between accommodation and resistance for Tianjin’s residents, between colonization and internationalization within the provisional government, and between cooperation and competition among the imperial powers. Bringing together global and local perspectives, Tianjin Cosmopolis offers a new vantage point on the imperial globalization of the early twentieth century.
Anting Men (Andingmen) Street, 1922, photographed by Donald Mennie – not that far by rickshaw from Wallis’s home on Shijia Hutong…. she would head that way to visit the Yonghegong (Lama Temple) sometimes….
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
I’ll be talking Wallis Simpson and 1920s China on The Ticket with Kathy Clugston on BBC Radio Ulster at 6pm tonight…. (BBC Sounds afterwards) …. click here
