Talking China Bubbles with Tom Orlik…

My Q&A in China Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine with Tom Orlik on his new book China: The Bubble that Never Pops – click here

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – Mahjong in Maida Vale -the Chinese intellectual community in UK in 1930s and 1940s

WHAT: Mahjong in Maida Vale -the Chinese intellectual community in UK in 1930s and 1940s, by Frances Wood,  an RASBJ Zoom talk followed by Q&A
WHEN: July 22, 19:00-20:00 Beijing Standard Time.
NOTE: THIS EVENT BEGINS AT 7 PM BEIJING TIME

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: “Mahjong in Maida Vale” was inspired by a study day in Oxford celebrating the writer and artist Chiang Yee, recalls Frances Wood who considers it a work in progress.  She started to think about the Chinese intellectuals who came to the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, many of whom stayed on. A friend remembered sitting in a north London drawing room, eating sunflower seeds to the sound of clacking tiles as her mother played mahjong with three older ladies- the painters Fang Zhaoling and Zhang Qianying and the writer and artist Ling Shuhua. Why were they in UK? How did they live? What did they eat? What happened to them?

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: After studying Chinese at the universities of Cambridge and Peking, Frances Wood worked as Curator of the Chinese collections in the British Library for nearly 30 years. She has written  , amongst others, Blue Guide to China, Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking, Did Marco Polo Go To China?, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943, The Silk Road, and The Diamond Sutra: the Story of the World’s Earliest Dated Printed Book.
 
HOW MUCH: This event is free and exclusively for members of the RASBJ and of other RAS branches. If you know someone who wants to join RASBJ, please ask them to contact MembershipRASBJ on Wechat or email membership.ras.bj@gmail.com
 
HOW TO JOIN RASBJ: to become a member (or, for PRC passport-holders, to become an Associate)  email membership.ras.bj@gmail.com or on Wechat add MembershipRASBJ, giving your full 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 living overseas and RMB 100 for students. To learn more about the RASBJ, please go to www.rasbj.org 
 
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT:  If you wish to become an RASBJ member in order to attend this talk, please join RASBJ at least two days before the talk so that you can be sure to receive the event notice with the advance registration link.

The Shanghai Porch…

I was having a discussion somewhere else about the rise of piano shops, tuners, musical instrument dealers and so on in Shanghai (yes, I do have that sort of discussion with people sometimes!). Naturally thoughts turned to the pioneer of the piano in Shanghai, the English musical instruments dealer (and later gramophones and so on) Sydenham Moutrie. Moutrie headed east around the 1870s setting up stores in Shanghai, Peking (as i’ve blogged before here), and Yokohama. All well and good – but what interested me in this advert (c.1913/1914) for Victrola gramophones was the use of the word ‘porch’ in Shanghai….

Now usually when people discuss the phenomenon of semi-colonial architecture in Shanghai – ‘compradore architecture’ as it’s sometimes called – they talk of verandas (or verandahs). But here Mr Moutrie, a good Englishman uses the very English word ‘porch’. Now whether technically porch is English for the Portuguese word veranda or Veranda is Portuguese for the English word porch is debateable. However, it is interesting that the term porch (rarely heard now in any discussions of Shanghai architecture – and often nowadays meaning a small addition to the front door or entry hallway rather than a grander covered shelter at the front and sides of the property) was used indicating perhaps the more prevalent use of English English in early twentieth century Shanghai.

A Fashionable Century Hardcover – Qing Textiles, Fashion & Commerce

Rachel Silberstein’s new book looks fascinating. Clothing and accessories from nineteenth-century China reveal much about women’s participation in the commercialization of textile handicrafts and the flourishing of urban popular culture. Focusing on women’s work and fashion, A Fashionable Century presents an array of visually compelling clothing and accessories neglected by traditional histories of Chinese dress, examining these products’ potential to illuminate issues of gender and identity. In the late Qing, the expansion of production systems and market economies transformed the Chinese fashion system, widening access to fashionable techniques, materials, and imagery. Challenging the conventional production model, in which women embroidered items at home, Silberstein sets fashion within a process of commercialization that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops, and subcontracted female workers. These networks gave rise to new trends influenced by performance and prints, and they offered women opportunities to participate in fashion and contribute to local economies and cultures. Rachel Silberstein draws on vernacular and commercial sources, rather than on the official and imperial texts prevalent in Chinese dress history, to demonstrate that in these fascinating objects-regulated by market desires, rather than imperial edict-fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture.

Attack on Tientsin, July 1937

I think when we recall the Japanese occupations of Tientsin (Tianjin) and Peking in July 1937 we think of them as reasonably non-destructive. Certainly, after some fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge (Luguochao) and environs central Peking suffered very little damage. I had assumed a similar occupation of Tientsin. However, this photograph from the time indicates that there was some destructive bombing and artillery. I’m afraid i don’t know what this building was but it appears to have been a reasonably large and substantial structure completely gutted…

Singapore Book Council Academy workshop with Paul French – Kinokuniya Promotion…

I’m doing an online workshop for the Singapore Book Council later this month Based on a True Story: Writing Compelling Literary Non-Fiction. Anyone can sign up – i hope you do. But there’s some free tix if you’re fast at Kinokuniya books store’s Singapore instagram account…if you’re fast!

My Review of Jonathan Kaufman’s The Last Kings of Shanghai – South China Morning Post

I reviewed Jonathan Kaufman’s Last Kings of Shanghai – tracking the dual fortunes of the Sassoon and Kadoorie clans in Shanghai and beyond – for the South China Morning Post – click here.

Finding Rewi Alley: Following the footsteps of China’s most loved Kiwi

A short documentary on Rewi Alley from Andy Boreham that dodges a few elephants in the room (presumably as the director is involved in Chinese state media), but is an interesting watch all the same…Click