Next Wednesday evening I’m talking true crime, Midnight in Peking, old Beijing architecture from hutongs to the Fox Towers to the Legation Quarter, atmosphere and architecture, investigations and locations as well as a little “dark tourism” at The Royal Institute of British Architect’s excellent new weekly club, Architects Underground, in the beautiful RIBA building on Portland Place in London. There’s also drinks, music and a talk on Stephen King’s movies too….tix at Eventbrite….https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-architects-underground-halloween-special-tickets-74979221871
A new look from Nury Vittachi & Simon J. Blake at the infamous (and now with about 3 other books on the subject) MacLennan murder/suicide in 1980 and the issues around the continued criminalisation of homosexuality in Hong Kong until 1991….
Hong Kong, 1980. A British police officer minutes away from being arrested by colleagues for sex crimes is found dead in his locked bedroom. There are multiple wounds to his chest; his used service revolver by his side. There’s only one possible conclusion: suicide. Yet a painstaking reinvestigation uncovers a different story: one involving a secret pedophile ring servicing the city’s most powerful men, high-level cover-ups, international geopolitics and the involvement of a secretive unit of police officers tasked with tracking down and arresting homosexuals–the Witchhunters. The operation ultimately resulted in the tragic death of police inspector John MacLennan–a watershed moment leading to the eventual decriminalization of homosexual acts in Hong Kong in 1991. For decades, many people have suspected that the young officer died because of information he possessed. This book reveals for the first time what MacLennan knew.
Just read Anne de Courcy’s Chanel’s Riviera in which the English artist Sir Francis Rose comments on the opium culture of the French Riviera in the 1920s and 1930s…
Francis Cyril Rose, also Sir Francis,
4th Baronet of the Montreal Roses, was an English painter vigorously championed
by Gertrude Stein who spent a lot of time on the French Riviera with his
esteemed travel writing wife Dorothy Carrington. In the 1920s he referred to
opium as “the gentleman’s drugâ€, ‘We Europeans of the 20s and 30s only smoked
opium bought in sealed purple tins, which were smuggled from Indo-China where
it was openly sold by the French in the same way that Benares opium was sold by
the British government in all the tobacco shops in Hong Kong.’ Rose noted that
if the purple tins weren’t available then the Bohemian denizens of the Riviera had to buy raw opium which looked like a
great clot of mud and involved days of cooking and filtering and a produced a
smell some loved and others detested.
From a sleepy fishing village during the Ming period to a vibrant cosmopolitan metropolis, Shanghai has undergone tremendous changes that are well illustrated in the diversity of its maps through the centuries.
Vince Ungvary will discuss the history of mapping Shanghai, starting with early 1500s maps to those published just after the 1949 revolution. The huge range will include maps from the Qing dynasty, early European maps of Shanghai in 1690, maps of the International and French concessions from the 1850s to the 1920s, and Japanese war-time maps. We will also learn about Chinese maps for the purposes of political propaganda, taxation, religious, tourism, transport and real estate from these various eras. Vince will also bring some rare, original antique maps to view in person and purchase.
Vince Ungvary is an Australian professional antique map dealer specializing in antique maps of China. Vince completed a master’s degree in Asian Studies and has been an avid antique map collector for more than 20 years, providing rare maps of Asia and China to museums and private collectors around the world.
Entrance fee
Members: 60 RMB  Non-Members: 100 RMB(one drink included) Venue – The TavernRadisson Blu Plaza Xingguo Hotel, 78 Xingguo Rd（兴国路78å·1楼）
The Metropole was built on the junctions of Honan Road (Henan Road Middle) and Foochow Road (Fuzhou Road) in 1930 with Hamilton House attached. It still looks good on the outside though the inside has been disrespected – most recently the charming American Bar ripped out to create (of all things!) a gym! So the interior is now not really anything to bother about…Here’s an ad for the hotel back in the day when you could have had a cocktail and a fascinating chat in the bar with some sojourner or Shanghailander as opposed to going to a gym and watching censored CNN or some such….and you can forget any idea of an ‘excellent Grill Room’…
