All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Talking about Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books) with the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – a host of foreigners in Beijing inc Robert Byron, Desmond Parsons, Bertha Lum, Barbara Hutton Wallis Simpson & Harold Acton et al – click here for youtube link…
Below are a series of photographs of what i believe is the courtyard home at #1 Hsien Yu Hsiang Hutong (or Fresh Fish Alley). The photos were taken in the 1930s by Orre Nobles (more below). The adddress had interesting strong of tenants starting with Harry Hussey, a Canadian architect (though studied in Chicago) who worked in Peking, Tientsin and elsewhere from around 1911 designing buildings for the YMCA in China, most of which are in what some have called the “Chinese Revival” style (really just a spin on the “Colonial Revival” style in the USA). He also designed the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), which of course still stands (with various additions and subtractions over the years) just off Wangfujing. Hussey was not universally popular – his design for PUMC was subject to some imposed revisions by the Peking authorities (notably the addition of traditional eaves on the western style buildings, as per the recommendation of the diplomat-scholar ETC Werner) – especially with other foreign architects (notably the Americans Murphy and Dana who thought him unethical and overly powerful due to having Rockefeller backing – PUMC being Rockefeller financed).
After Hussey it seems the rent was taken on by the Australian-born HJ (Harold) Timperley, of the Guardian. Timperley had arrived in China in 1928 and set up a small agency which translated and interpreted articles from the Chinese press while working for the Manchester Guardian. Timperley claimed that before him #1 Hsien Yu Hsiang Hutong, “had been a famous haunt of newspaper folks.â€Â He actually didn’t stay there long, he was to be largely Shanghai-based but lived for a time in Peking, leaving in about 1930. Then the lease moved to the Minnesota-born but Seattle-based printmaker, painter, designer and illustrator Orre Nobles, who had a contract in China with the Fette Rug Co. desiging rugs to be made in Peking and sold in America.
Nobles took these photos during his tenure from about 1930-1931 and then handed the rent book over to Thomas Handforth who is now best remembered for his children’s book Mei Li that was based on his experiences of China (and a real girl he met there) and has remained (at least until recently) a perennial favourite children’s book. It won the Caldecott Medal for illustration. While there Handforth sub-let rooms briefly to a sojourning English landscape artist Derek Hill and the newly arrived in town Harold Acton.
For those who like their hutongs and compound homes tastefully decorated – feast your eyes….
Getting that old Shanghai office furniture thing just right….you need Chen Lien Chong for all your needs from safes and vaults (hey, it’s a high crime city!) to, as you can see here, a rather nice blackwood Captain’s Chair. A small mystery is the office address – I don’t know a Peninig Road, either in the pre-war road names or the post-war (the variius changes between 1943 and 1949) – but there was a Penang Road (now Anyuan Road) and the ‘Eastern’ end would have been up towards the Suzhou Creek. Their factory was on Honan Road (Henan Road now) and if anyomne knows where Kun Luen Road was (or was previously called pre-war) do let me know.
Talking Shanghai, art, biennales & cultural capital ambitions with Jenny Lin, author of Above Sea: Contemporary Art, Urban Culture, and the Fashioning of Global Shanghai (Manchester University Press) for the China-Britain Business Council Focus mag this month. Click here to read.
Just starting Rat Island, which comes recomemended and looks like a pretty fast paced novel by John Steele…
New York, 1995. Cop Callum Burke arrives in New York from Hong Kong, drafted in as part of an international investigation into organised crime.
With the handover of Hong Kong to China only a couple of years away, gangsters are moving their operations out of the territory and into New York ahead of the looming deadline.
Burke’s experiences with East Asian crime and the Triads’ links to the Irish Mob make him the perfect man to send in undercover.
But as he infiltrates these vast and lethal criminal networks, bodies start to pile up in his wake and his conscience threatens to send him over the edge.
And when Burke’s NYPD handlers push him to continue the investigation at all costs, he may have to cross the line from cop to criminal just to stay alive…
Readers of Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, Steve Cavanagh, Richard Price and John Sandford will love this dark and morally complex novel which presents a searing portrait of mid-1990s New York as you’ve never seen it before.
Starting in July 1947 Northwest Orient Airlines launched their new US-Asian routes – to Tokyo, Seoul, Manila and Shanghai….
One Giant Pure Silk Neckties ‘Made in Shanghai’ and from all good department stores (and old Shanghai had some good department stores back then). Their sales office was on Chunking Road (Chongqing North Road now) near the race course; not sure where their factory was (possibly there, but unlikely i feel). This ad from JB Powell’s China WEekly Review in 1947. Sadly it is a business that seems not to have survived the 1949 takeover or moved elsehwere. After 1949 i guess pure silk ties were rather frowned on!
If anyone happens to know where i can get/borrow a copy of this without breaking the bank please do let me know? It was published, in English at least, in the 1970s. Paolo Rossi was the urbane and cosmopolitan Italian consul in Shanghai from 1948-1952 and witnessed the fall of the city first hand and includes a lot of useful detail….
