All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
My latest column for Macau Closer magazine is a look back at Ernest K Gann’s 1954 novel Soldier of Fortune that takes place between Hong Kong and Macau and later became a Hollywood movie with Clark Gable and Susan Haywood. How does Macau come out of the novel…and the movie? Click here to read….
I’m rather pleased with this UK paperback of Her Lotus Year…. thanks to all at Elliot & Thompson in London… many thanks to Anne Sebba, Amanada Foreman and Lisa See for their blurbs and also to Caroline Moorehead in The Spectator and the legendary Nicky Haslam in The Oldie.
Available from July 10 everywhere books are sold in the UK… (and a bargain at £10.99 I reckon…)
These sketches recently came up for auction – very interesting indeed. Clearly the artist was in Macao and possibly near Canton, in or around the time of the First Opium War (1839-1842) – certainly, as Captain John Spencer Churchill died at Macao in 1840 these sketches are slightly later. The sketch of the attack on Canton in 1840 suggests the artist was with the Navy in China – perhaps HMS Volage or HMS Hyacinth. Sadly though they remain unattributed.
The Protestant Graveyard, Macao, c.1840
Mark Kitto’s China Running Dog (Plum Rain Press)… (those who know Kitto will see elements of auto-biography here!)…
A young man in his early twenties has two basic needs: mates and respect. And a third of course. That’s a given and it was there for the taking in Shanghai in the year 2000, a greed-crazed free-for-all in a moral and lawless vacuum created by the Chinese Communist Party.
Johnny Trent, small-time entrepreneur from Basildon in the UK, has neither mates nor respect. That’s why he went to China, where he meets Felix Fawcett-Smith, fresh off the boat and from the other side of the tracks. An unlikely friendship begins.
Johnny impresses the well-bred Felix with his street smarts until Felix takes Johnny’s advice too literally – and too far – and slip into Shanghai’s murky underbelly. He enters a world where the Party and power and connections to them are all that matter, where criminals are given sainthoods and saints sent to hell.
Johnny tries to stop Felix’s spiral, not least because Felix is taking a sweet, angelic girl, Anita, down with him and Johnny has feelings for Anita that he has never dared to put into words. But Felix thinks he knows best. Like Johnny, all he wants is respect.
He gets a lot more, a lot worse. It’s up to Johnny to save whoever he can, besides himself.
Published as part of the Penguin Archive series, Jasmine Tea, is a bit of a con as all the stories are also in the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Lust, Caution. However, Jasmine Tea is a good story and The Golden Cangue, also included in the short collection of 3 short stories, is one of my favourites and set in Shanghai. So nice to have, but repetitive….
I’m rather pleased with this UK paperback of Her Lotus Year…. thanks to all at Elliot & Thompson in London… many thanks to Anne Sebba, Amanada Foreman and Lisa See for their blurbs, and also to Caroline Moorehead in The Spectator and the legendary Nicky Haslam in The Oldie for their kind words.
The cover image is Cecil Beaton by the way….(more below)
Available from July 10 everywhere books are sold in the UK…
For those interested in the cover image. It is Wallis shot by Cecil Beaton for the British edition of Vogue on December 2, 1936. The portrait is one of six of Wallis Simpson in the Cecil Beaton photography exhibition that opened at Caroll Carstairs’ New York gallery at #11 East 57th Street on January 4, 1937 around the time British Vogue called Wallis “The Best Dressed Woman in Town”.
Simon Hall’s Three Revolutions: Russia, China, Cuba and the Epic Journeys that Changed the World (Faber & Faber)….
From the streets of Petrograd during the heady autumn of 1917, to Mao’s stunning victory in October 1949, and Fidel’s triumphant arrival in Havana, in January 1959, the history of the twentieth century was transformed in dramatic and profound ways by the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions.
In Three Revolutions, the stories of these epoch-defining events are told together for the first time. At the heart of each revolution was an epic journey: Lenin’s 1917 return to Russia from exile in Switzerland; Mao’s ‘Long March’ of 1934-35, covering some 6,000 miles across China; and Fidel Castro’s return to Cuba in 1956 following his exile in Mexico. Told in tandem with these are the corresponding journeys of three extraordinary journalists – John Reed, Edgar Snow and Herbert L. Matthews – whose electric testimony from the frontlines of each revolution would make a decisive contribution to how these revolutions were understood in the wider world.
Here, in Simon Hall’s masterful retelling, these six remarkable journeys are brought vividly to life. Featuring a stellar cast, extraordinary drama and an epic sweep, Three Revolutions raises fundamental questions about the nature of political power, the limits of idealism and the role of the journalist – questions that remain of utmost urgency today.
I recently posted on the mystery of Ivy Achoy. This was after seeing a portrait by Cedric Morris at the Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines exhibition at Charleston in East Sussex (the old home of Vanessa and Julian Bell). Among the various Morris painted portraits is one dated as 1922 (which may or may not be correct) and said to be of “Ivy Ichaloy”. It is a portrait of a Chinese woman in a cheongsam-style dress from the upper body up. Anyway Ivy Ichaloy turned out to Trinidadian-Chinese Ivy Achoy. You can read the post here and the comments that added some information from relatives and scholars in Trinidad.
And now my thanks to Trapper Byrne of the USA who sent me Ivy Achoy’s (successful) application to enter the United States in 1922 from the US National Archives; it’s part of the Chinese Exclusion Act files. (Achoy qualified for a student exemption to the immigration ban).
This also casts some doubt on the 1922 date on the Cedric Morris portrait at Charleston. It seems Achoy was in the USA and, perhaps, looks a little older in the portrait (though of course it is a painting and not a photograph so…) – below, which would make the date post-1922. I am not sure when Ivy left the US and if she travelled from there to the UK.
