One More Midnight in Peking Walking Tour Before it Gets a Bit too Chilly Up There in Beijing – 27/10/18

This Saturday, October 27th, there is one more official Penguin China & Bespoke Beijing Midnight in Peking Walking Tour before its gets a bit chilly in Beijing to go our walking for a few hours…

Together in one Box – the Von Sternebrg-Dietrich Collection

Christmas is coming…and here’s what I think is a perfect gift…all the Von Sternberg/Dietrich flicks in one set from Criterion (here)

So here’s a couple of China Rhyming accompanying articles

On Shanghai Express – Harry Hervey’s original treatment for the movie

On Morocco – Amy Jolly’s Chinese Doll

Tasked by studio executives with finding the next great screen siren, visionary Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg joined forces with rising German actor Marlene Dietrich, kicking off what would become one of the most legendary partnerships in cinema history. Over the course of six films produced by Paramount in the 1930s, the pair refined their shared fantasy of pleasure, beauty, and excess. Dietrich’s coolly transgressive mystique was a perfect match for the provocative roles von Sternberg cast her in—including a sultry chanteuse, a cunning spy, and the hedonistic Catherine the Great—and the filmmaker captured her allure with chiaroscuro lighting and opulent design, conjuring fever-dream visions of exotic settings from Morocco to Shanghai. Suffused with frank sexuality and worldly irony, these deliriously entertaining masterpieces are landmarks of cinematic artifice.

Lancing Girls of a Happy World & the Singapore Writers Festival this November 11

I’m delighted to be doing an event with Adeline Foo, author of Lancing Girls at the Happy World, at the Singapore Writers Festival this coming November 11th discussing the underworld and entertainment links between old Shanghai and old Singapore – Resurrecting the Bad Old Days: Researching the Dark Side of Pre-war Shanghai & Singapore. Adeline’s book is a great read for those who want a fuller story of Shanghai’s entertainment industry and its regional reach before and just after the war…

“Dancing was fun; it didn’t seem like a job but a party every day.”

“They practised dancing seriously; it was their life!”

“It is an ugly profession; to prostitute oneself… is a commonly accepted practice.”

Glitz, glamour, and sleaze is what people may remember of the cabaret girls of yesteryear. With curiosity and an open mind, Adeline Foo sets out to uncover the lives of these women and how, even with few dreams and hopes to strive for, these women lived with much heart and courage despite society’s disapproving eye. The music of the dance hall may have faded away, but this book carries the echoes of their dance steps, connecting us with a forgotten past that was inspired by faith, hope and charity.

HKILF 2018 – Why Genre Matters – 4/11/18

I’m in conversation with Jo Lusby, the co-founder of Pixie B Ltd and former North Asia head of Penguin Random House, on the subject of why genre matters to writers and readers. It’s easy enough browsing bookshelves for your latest read, but how does genre classification affect and inform a writer’s work, and when can the rules be broken?

details and tickets here

The City of Devils is Back to Hong Kong – HKILF – 4/11/18

I’m doing a session on City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival on Sunday 4/11 at the great new Tai Kwun arts centre on Hollywood Road (pictured below)…there will be pictures; there will be old Shanghai nostalgia…

Ticket details here

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – Jim Thompson, Silk King – 21/10/18

Jim Thompson – Silk King

The Quest for Forbidden Lands – Russians in Inner Asia

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2018 – China and Cross-Cultural Humour 1890-1940: A Panel Discussion – 6/11/2018

An excellent academic event taking place as part of the HKILF 2018 at HKU…(and it’s free)

China and Cross-Cultural Humour 1890-1940: A Panel Discussion

This panel, featuring Professor Julia Kuehn and Dr Wendy Gan from the School of English, University of Hong Kong and Dr Anne Witchard from the University of Westminster, UK, will investigate the circumstances and motivations of cross-cultural humour during the period.

Looking at a range of comic texts, from chinoiserie-inspired tales, fin-de-siècle travel writing, cartoons, yellow peril propaganda to advertising and musical comedy theatre, the panel, moderated by Dr Anya Adair from the School of English, University of Hong Kong, will explore western discourses about China and cross-cultural humour at the turn of the 20th century. Is humour meant to be inclusive or exclusive? Does it challenge the status quo, and is it a productive negotiation of power relations? Might it demonstrate not superiority or ridicule, but common ground?

Wendy Gan is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. She has published widely on British women’s middlebrow writing from the early twentieth century (with a regular focus on those novels set in China), as well as British women modernists. Wendy’s most recent book is Comic China: Representing Common Ground, 1890-1945 (2018).

Julia Kuehn is Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong. She has published on China-related travel writing, especially in the nineteenth century, but also across time. Her publications include the edited collections A Century of Travels in China (2007), China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces (2009) and Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China (2013). Julia is currently working on First Opium War travelogues.

Anne Witchard is Reader in English Studies at the University of Westminster UK. She has published widely in the area of Sino-British cultural relations. Her most recent book is England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and The Great War (2014). She is currently working on a project titled Dancing Antic Hays: Performing Modernist Chineseries.