All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
for anyone interested – I note Robert Bickers’s new book on Swire and Jonathan Kaufman’s forthcoming The Last Kings of Shanghai about the Kadoorie’s and Sassoons…click here
This is an online Zoom lecture by Paul French, it will be linked to his book Murders of Old China.
One country rich in history, 12 unsolved murders. Reopening the archives on China’s long forgotten past.
Why did a remote police station, built to combat pirates, find itself at the centre of a murder-suicide after a constable went on the rampage? How did Chinese gangsters avoid conviction after serving a deadly dinner to Frenchtown’s elite? And why is the Foreign Office still withholding a key document to solving a murder that took place in the Gobi desert in 1935?
By delving deep into 12 of China’s most fascinating murder cases, Murders of Old China delivers a fast- paced journey through China’s early 20th-century history – including its criminal underbelly.
Uncovering previously unknown connections and exposing the lies, Paul French queries the verdict of some of China’s most controversial cases, interweaving true crime with China’s chaotic and complicated history of foreign occupation and Chinese rival factions.
Access to online lectures
The RASHK hosts online lectures over the Zoom application, downloadable on computer at https://zoom.us/ or smartphone on any app store.
Specific details to access the Zoom calls that we will be using will be circulated via correspondence emails prior to each online lecture.
Admission: free of charge
Booking: If you intend to attend an online lecture, please email membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk to let us know in advance.
The RAS Journal is now receiving submissions for the 2020 edition. Authors intending to submit an article must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 31 May 2020, and completed articles will be due 3 July 2020.
Click here for submission guidelines.
Through the centre of China’s historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China under Communist rule. To walk the street is to travel through the story of China’s recent past, wandering among its physical relics and hearing echoes of its dramas. Long Peace Street recounts a journey in modern China, a walk of twenty miles across Beijing offering a very personal encounter with the life of the capital’s streets. At the same time it takes the reader on a journey through the city’s recent history, telling the story of how the present and future of the world’s rising superpower has been shaped by its tumultuous past, from the demise of the last imperial dynasty in 1912 through to the present day.
To register click here
University of Westminster sinologist Harriet Evans has released her long running investiogation into the Beijing hutong district of Dashalar…click here to buy.
Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing’s “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar-one of the capital city’s poorest neighborhoods and only a stone’s throw from Tian’anmen Square-lived in dilapidated conditions without sanitation. Few had stable employment. Today, most of Dashalar’s original inhabitants have been relocated, displaced by gentrification. In Beijing from Below Harriet Evans captures the last gasps of subaltern life in Dashalar. Drawing on oral histories that reveal memories and experiences of several neighborhood families, she reflects on the relationships between individual, family, neighborhood, and the state; poverty and precarity; gender politics and ethical living; and resistance to and accommodation of party-state authority. Evans contends that residents’ assertion of belonging to their neighborhood signifies not a nostalgic clinging to the past, but a rejection of their marginalization and a desire for recognition. Foregrounding the experiences of the last of Dashalar’s older denizens as key to understanding Beijing’s recent history, Evans complicates official narratives of China’s economic success while raising crucial questions about the place of the subaltern in history.
RTHK3 now has 4 podcasts recorded by me some time back on old Shanghai – Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford hit the ‘hai in 1929 to sell some movie equipment and it nearly went badly wrong; then Warner Oland/Charlie Chan was mobbed on the Bund in 1936 when he visited; a Cathay Hotel showgirl’s 1937 war that led her from Shanghai to Manila to Hong Kong and back to the Bund; & finally Penelope Fitzgerald has a package holiday in 1970s Shanghai….click here to listen….
REDISCOVERING BEIJING: THE WESTERN HILLS OF THE OLD DAYS
AN RASBJ ONLINE TALK BY MATTHEW HU XINYU
WHAT: Temples, gardens and tombs of the Western Hills,
evoking a bygone era, are introduced by cultural heritage preservation
expert Matthew Hu Xinyu, followed by QA.
WHEN: May 8, Friday,19:00-20:00 Beijing Standard Time
WHERE:Online via Zoom
HOW MUCH: Free and accessible exclusively to RASBJ members and RAS affiliates worldwide. If you know someone who wishes to join the RASBJ please ask them to Wechat JohnOlbrich at johnobeijing. See www.rasbj.org for details.
HOW TO BECOME AN RASBJ MEMBER:If you’d
like to become an RASBJ member (or, for PRC passport-holders, to become
an Associate) please befriend Treasurer John Olbrich on Wechat at johnobeijing and
send him your name, nationality, mobile number and email address plus
the annual subscription amount (or, for Associates, the suggested
donation) of RMB 300 for those resident in China, RMB 200 for those
resident overseas and RMB 100 for students. If you join RASBJ by May 6, you’ll receive login details for this event.
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: For two months, Beijing’s hutongs
and museums were closed due to the pandemic, yet a number of imperial
parks in the Western Hills remained open. During successive dynasties,
many imperial palaces, gardens, private residences, temples and tombs
were built among the Western Hills, and that tradition continued during
the first three decades of the Republican era. Matthew Hu Xinyu made use
of the opportunity created by Covid-19 to re-visit this often
overlooked area. From Tan Zhe Si, the oldest temple in Beijing, to the
garden of French doctor Jean Jerome August Bussiere to the family tomb
of the Republic of China’s first foreign minister, these rediscovered
sites inspired Hu to delve into their history, dating back to the Jin
Dynasty, and to bring to life the relics which we can still see today.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Matthew Hu, or Hu Xinyu 胡新宇,
was born and raised in Beijing; he is the China Representative of the
Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts and co-founder of The
Courtyard Institute. He has a keen interest in the history and mystery
of China, and in the world as a context and contrast. Previously he
worked as a travel professional with Wild China, and was deeply involved
with the Shijia Hutong Museum in Beijing. He’s been active in the field
of Chinese cultural heritage preservation since 2006 and says he’ll
continue to pursue that calling “perhaps for my lifetime.â€
A generally kind and interesting review of my book Destination Shanghai in Cha Journal…and to answer the reviewer’s question – book 2 – Destination Peking is coming out around Christmas this year….
Click here to read…
