All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
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
An interview in Macao News with Bill Lascher about Mel Jacoby’s time in pre-war Macao (and a little bit about my part in the journey to print!) and the collection of Mel’s photos of China, Macao and Asia in the 1930s and World War Two – A Danger Shared (Blacksmith Books). Click here to read….
China Revisited is a series of extracted reprints of mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century Western impressions of Hong Kong, Macao and China. The series comprises excerpts from travelogues or memoirs written by missionaries, diplomats, military personnel, journalists, tourists and temporary sojourners. I publish them with Blacksmith Books in Hong Kong and add introductions and annotations throughout…
Save 20% by buying this bundle which includes the following items in the series. Please click on their titles below to read full details.
1 x Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey’s 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton Sojourns
1 x Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879
1 x LING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s
Now available – China Revisited #5….
Charles Halcombe served for much of the 1880s and 1890s with China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service. His career included sojourns in both Canton and Hong Kong. Halcombe long harboured dreams of becoming a journalist. Unusually he married a Chinese woman, Liang Ah Ghan, the daughter of a Chefoo merchant during his stay. His seven-year career in China, his writing ambitions and his marriage all strongly inform his impressions and the retelling of his experiences.
In these excerpts from The Mystic Flowery Land we join Halcombe arriving by sampan at Hong Kong’s old Pedder’s Wharf before accompanying him on an extended literary stroll along Queen’s Road. With him we enter the “rum-mills” and Chinese theatres, meet the Sing-Song girls, indigent Europeans, and inveterate gamblers of the colony. On Hollywood Road Halcombe explores the fascinating Man-Mo Temple. In Canton Halcombe investigates the riverine life of the city – the infamous “flower boats”, the working river and coastal steamers, the numerous temples to the sea Gods.
But it is perhaps Halcombe’s description of the terrible bubonic plague that hit Hong Kong in 1894 that stands out to the reader today as both shocking in its tragedy and pertinent to our own times.
Available from Blacksmith Books, Bookazine and elsewhere…..