Yamanaka Sadajiro’s London Showroom

Yamanka Sadajiro was a major force in the world of Chinese and Japanese antiques and curios in the first half of the twentieth century. Although he was from Osaka and started dealing Japanese objet he soon moved to specialise in Chinese items and opened an acquisitions office in Peking. As well as New York and Boston, and later various other American locations – Chicago, Maine etc – Yamanka had a successful and long running London branch that operated from 1900 to WW2. It was based at 127 New Bond Street, a building that still exists. Some photos below….

PS: there is a chapter on Yamanaka and his family business in Chang Qing and Huang Shan’s The Great Plunder

Li Bai on the BBC – 1938-2022

Just a quick one – Heard In Our Time on BBC R4 the other day (still on BBC Sounds if you missed it) on Li PO/Li Bai. Both panellists Tian Yuan Tan & Frances Wood read some Li Bai in Chinese – I think the last person who did that on BBC radio was Chiang Yee on BBC North in 1938, as noted in…Donald Boyd, Regional Director of BBC North, reported that he had auditioned Chiang but felt his English was not ‘good enough to read translations of his poetry’, but that he could read them in Chinese and this might work in ‘a highbrow poetry space’. Tian Yuan Tan & Frances Wood got to do their own translations in 2022. You can listen to the programme on Tang Dynasty poetry here.

Suffering a China Lockdown?…Keep Connected with the Bespoke Speaker Series…

China’s European Headquarters: Switzerland and China during the Cold War

Ariane Knusel’s China’s European Headquarters is all new information to me….fascinating…

During the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China used Switzerland as headquarters for its economic, political, intelligence, and cultural networks in Europe. Based on extensive research in Western and Chinese archives, China’s European Headquarters charts not only how Switzerland came to play this role, but also how Chinese networks were built in practice, often beyond the public face of official proclamations and diplomatic interactions. By tracing the development of Sino-Swiss relations in the Cold War, Ariane Knüsel sheds new light on the People’s Republic of China’s formulation and implementation of foreign policy in Europe, Latin America and Africa and Switzerland’s efforts to align neutrality, humanitarian engagement, and economic interests.

Old Shanghai’s Goose Cafe on the North Szechuen Road

I’m sorry but I really can’t remember who sent me this wonderful card for the Goose Cafe? If you did please get in touch and i’ll credit you. I don’t know the date, but i’m guessing late 1930s/40s given the accent on the Japanese entertainment. The Cafe was up in the (by the late 1930s) Japanese-controlled Northern Shanghai. North Szechuen Road (Sichuan Road North) was by the 1940s home to any number of nightclubs, bars and cabarets catering to Japanese soldiers in Shanghai – every Japanese soldier in the China war was promised some R&R in Shanghai rather like Nazis and Paris. The the Blue Bird Dance Hall and Cafe Lion both played jazz, performed by exiled Japanese jazz bands, much enjoyed by many of the Japanese officer class though forbidden back home.

Anyway, the Goose Cafe was on the long North Szechuen Road up by the junction with Barchet Road (Xinxiang Road). I’d like to know more about the manager “C. Ruth” if anyone happens to know?

Jing Tsu’s Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern…

Jing Tsu’s Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern….

China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology. In Kingdom of Characters , Jing Tsu shows that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: to make the formidable Chinese language – a 2,200-year-old writing system that was daunting to natives and foreigners alike – accessible to a globalized, digital world.

Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese script – and the value-system it represents – to the technological advances that would shape the twentieth century and beyond, from the telegram to the typewriter to the smartphone. From the exiled reformer who risked death to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup, generations of scholars, missionaries, librarians, politicians, inventors, nationalists and revolutionaries alike understood the urgency of their task and its world-shaping consequences.

With larger-than-life characters and a thrilling narrative, Kingdom of Characters offers an astonishingly original perspective on one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic transformations.

Old Shanghai Institutions: Cafe Parisien

Cafe Parisien was one of those places that seemed to be always there. Down on the Avenue Eduard VII (the French side of Avenue Edward VII – not Yan’an Lu down towards the Bund) it was arguably the first place to ever book a jazz band in Shanghai around 1919 – the Cafe Parisien Orchestra with piano player Harry Kerrey (who remained at the venue till 1923). It’s ballroom was popular for events and dinner-dances – the Rotary Club would rent out the whole venue annually.

Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea

Katie Stallard’s Dancing on Bones looks like a fascinating study…

Dancing on Bones is the story of how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.

History didn’t end. Democracy didn’t triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones, probing the version of history that leaders in China, Russia, and North Korea teach their citizens.

These three states consistently top the list of threats to the global order and US national security. All are governed by autocratic regimes. All have nuclear weapons and believe that the era of American hegemony is fading. All three share a sense of historical grievance, rooted in the wars of the last century – specifically World War II and the Korean War – that their leaders exploit to shore up popular support at home and fuel increasingly aggressive foreign policy. Decades after the real guns fell silent, these wars rage on in China, Russia, and North Korea, reimagined in popular media, public memorials, and patriotic education campaigns. This is not history as it was, but as the current rulers need it to be. Since coming to power in China, Xi Jinping has almost doubled the length of the war with Japan, Vladimir Putin has brought back bombastic military parades through Red Square, and Kim Jong Un has invested vast sums in rebuilding war museums in his impoverished state, while historians who try to challenge the official line are silenced and jailed. But this didn’t start with the current leaders and it won’t end with them.

Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, Dancing on Bones is the story of how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule. If we want to understand where these three nuclear powers are heading, we must understand the stories they are telling their citizens about the past.