Midnight in Peking Walking Tour – November 10th 2018

the next Midnight in Peking walking tour is tonight!! last chance….

Chinese Parasols in the California Desert, 1948

I notice i haven’t posted a parasol picture for a while (there’s been loads – just put ‘parasol’ in the search engine). This image of model Virginia Stewart in Joset Walker for Harper’s Bazaar, shot in the desert near Yuma by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, May 1948….

The Way We Were: A Photographic Journey Back to 1970s and 80s Hong Kong – Hong Kong – 3-18 November 2018

The Way We Were: A Photographic Journey Back to 1970s and 80s Hong Kong

Entitled The Way We Were, this exhibition features photos of nostalgic street scenes steeped in colonial and local culture, city panoramas and images of life on the sea. The show is a documentation of, and flashback to, Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s, expressing a city that abounds in colour, diversity and the contagious 工合 (gung1 hap6) attitude.

These images are exhibited alongside Keith Macgregor’s passion project called Neon Fantasies. In this series, Macgregor imagines what Hong Kong could have looked like if its neon signs weren’t removed or eclipsed by LED signage. Photographed street scenes are digitally collaged with images of the city’s most iconic neon signs—most of them long gone—creating eye-catching images that are simultaneously historical and futuristic.

Macgregor, who is now over 70 years old and based in London, still frequently returns to the city he called home for over three decades to capture its ever-changing cityscape.

Where: usagi Hong Kong – Shop B, G/F, Wah Shin House, 6-10 Shin Hing Street – Central

Literary Shanghai – Special Edition – Shanghai in Singapore

The journal Literary Shanghai has produced a special edition for the Singapore Writers Festival this November – Shanghai in Singapore – with a bunch of original contributions (including from me) and new translations….it’ll be everywhere at the festival and available in various bookshops in Singapore and China as well as via Literary Shanghai…

Ida Hurst – Typist in China, 1941

Ida Hurst was apparently an intrepid traveller between the wars and also a typist! I would very much like to read her book from 1941, Typist in China, but I’m a bit stuck finding a copy – anyone got one?

Peonies and Ponies Launch ad – Horizon 1941

The first Chatto and Windus ads to appear for Harold Acton’s classic comic novel of the Peking ex-pat scene that is yet to be bettered or even challenged…in Cyril Connolly’s Horizon April 1941 issue…

Things Americans Were Told About China in the 1920s

from the American newspapers in 1921….

Hong Kong International Literary Festival Opening Night – 2/11/18 – JC Cube, Tai Kwun

The HKILF opening night is rapidly approaching and it’s in a fantastic new venue, the JC Cube (below) at the new Tai Kwun arts centre on Hollywood Road (and its free)…7-8pm, 2/11/18 – click here

Join us for a dynamic, eclectic and entertaining evening as we celebrate the start of Hong Kong’s 18th International Literary Festival!

Drawing together local and international literary talent, we present a night of storytelling inspired by the theme of journeys. Festival participants Geoff Dyer, Paul French, Nashua Gallagher, Emmy the Great and Jenny Zhang will share their tales of here, there and what lies in between.