In May 1941, Shanghai’s German Consul-General wired Berlin to arrange a Buddhist monk’s urgent transfer to Hitler’s headquarters. The priest, the message claimed, would use dark magic to summon Oriental magi, rouse rebellions and win Asia for the Third Reich. Prompting the dispatch was an absurd partnership between Josef Meisinger, Asia’s most notorious Nazi officer, and Hungarian adventurer Ignatius Trebitsch Lincoln, former British MP, alleged secret agent for Britain, Germany, the United States, Russia, China, Japan and Buddhist abbot under the alias Chao Kung. Unknown to them, Meisinger and Lincoln’s plot coincided with a fatal showdown between German, Japanese and Chinese political forces in occupied Shanghai. Beyond examining their character, circumstances and contemporaries, Shanghai-based consultant Gábor Holch’s presentation highlights persistent characteristics of expatriate existence in China: an amnesiac relationship with the past, the promise of a clean slate and grandiose plans for the country and for humankind. The speech is based on Gabor Holch’s essay in the 2020 Journal for The Royal Asiatic Society China, “Alone and Surrounded: Ignatius Trebitsch Lincoln’s final years in occupied Shanghai”.
Gabor Holch is a Shanghai-based intercultural leadership consultant, coach, author and speaker with a focus on East-West leadership and expat assignments, as well as History Club Convener of The Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) China. He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations and European Studies, an MPhil in Diplomacy and a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) degree in Mandarin. A former OSCE field mission official, China-based since 2002 and working globally, Gabor has served 100+ clients in 30+ countries. He is a visiting lecturer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a number of business programmes in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. He has authored three books and a variety of articles in academic and business publications.
LInda Jaivin’s always a lively writer and well worth reading while this is a great idea…The Shortest History of China…
Modern China is at once an economic powerhouse and authoritarian state, an increasingly assertive superpower and an icon of modernity. Chinese history is no less contradictory. Heroes to some are villains to others; times of peace and prosperity give way to violence and famine; creativity flourishes in the midst of censorship and repression. Jaivin distils this vast, complex story into a vivid narrative, from ancient times to Xi Jinping, the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of the ‘wolf warriors’. She dismantles ideas of a monolithic China, revealing a nation of startling diversity. And she gives China’s women, from ancient warriors, inventors and rebels to their 21st-century counterparts, long overdue attention.
Finally, as age-old spectres of corruption and disunity continue to haunt the People’s Republic, she considers what lies ahead, both for China and the world.
October sae the first two Destination Peking themed walks – aesthetes, authors, scholars and scoundrels – organised by Bespoke Beijing, led by Jeremiah Jenne, inspired by my essay collection Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books). Here’s a few pics to show what you missed but could be enjoying if you are in, around or visiting Peking…. And, as it’s inspired by me, it all ends with a cocktail (Harold Acton’s Gloom Chaser as featured in Peonies and Ponies – recipe here)…
I admit the story I posted a while back of Pal Moran and his fall from boxing glory to a vagrancy charge and attempted suicide in Shanghai was a bit depressing. So, as a corollory, how about the 1928 tale of Tommy Dixon, a hotel bar manager who got a very lucky break.
Tommy, from Boston, Mass., was serving a customer, a ‘Beachcomber’ drifting through the town, back in the summer of 1928 who gave him a hard luck story. A barman of the old school (then just ‘the school’ I guess) heard him out and gave him $5 (Chinese). Of course the itinerant Beachcomber promptly spent $4 on booze, but then put the final dollar on a horse at the races. The nag came i first and, being generally considered by most punters to have three legs and an udder, did not have great odds and so consequently paid out $4,300 on the buck bet. Then, would you credit it, the Beachcomber came back to the hotel bar and gave Tommy half his winnings, $2,150. Sweet!
Liang Hong’s China in One Village (translated by Emily Goedde) came out in June but i missed it – which would be a mistake if you do too….
After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Henan Province. What she found was an extended family riven by the seismic changes in Chinese society and a village turned inside out by emigration, neglect, and environmental despoliation. Combining family memoir, literary observation, and social commentary, Liang’s by turns lyrically poetic and movingly raw investigation into the fate of her village became a bestselling book in China and brought her fame.
For many months, Liang walked the roads and fields of her village, recording the stories of her relatives—especially her irascible, unforgettable father—and talking to everyone from high government officials to the lowest of village outcasts. Across China, many saw in Liang’s riveting interviews with family members and childhood acquaintances a mirror of their own lives, and her observations about the way the greatest rural-to-urban migration of modern times has twisted the country resonated deeply. China in One Village tells the story of contemporary China through one clear-eyed, literary observer, one family, and one village.
Suzhou became an important hub of Islamic intellectual culture in the Chinese context when Muslim soldiers, merchants, officials and interpreters arrived alongside the Yuan dynasty armies, and again when the 16th century scholars Zhang Zhong and Zhou Shiqi translated scriptures from Persian to Chinese. The city boasted 10 mosques in the early 20th century, and one remains in operation today. In this talk, Dr Alessandra Cappelletti uses the mosque to reconstruct the identity of Muslim cultural ‘otherness’ and assess how a lack of collective memory and socio-cultural transmission has affected the city’s Islamic communities.
Dr Alessandra Cappelletti is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of International Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in Suzhou. She has a double PhD from the Oriental University of Naples and Minzu University of China in Beijing.
