Posted: October 12th, 2018 | No Comments »
This November I’ll be at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which now has a great new home in the new Tai Kwun arts centre on Hollywood Road in Central. There’s a full programme online here…loads of stuff…naturally, as this is my blog, I’m going to promote my events…but I’ll sneak in a few others over the next few weeks.
- Friday 2/11/18 – Festival Opening Event – I’ll be one of several authors, including Geoff Dyer, talking on the subject of “journeys” at the opening event for the festival….here
- Saturday 3/11/18 – “Based on a True Story…” 4-5.30pm – I’m running a writing workshop on how to investigate and tell true stories in entertaining ways…if you’re doing a family history, looking at a true crime, real history, looking at writing literary non-fiction this might be helpful. Here for more details.
- Sunday 4/11/18 – City of Devils – 2-3pm – I’ll be showing a lot of pictures and telling a lot of anecdotes to try and recreate those wild days of old Shanghai and the gangsters who ran the city’s Badlands just before the Japanese occupation of the International Settlement. click here
- Sunday 4/11/18 -Why Genre Matters? – 5-6pm – I’ll be in conversation with my old publisher Jo Lusby, formerly of Penguin China and now Pixie B about genre, why it matters, why you should think about it and how to cross over it….click here
Posted: October 11th, 2018 | No Comments »
A slight divergence from China, but regular readers may be interested in my latest Crime and the City column for The Literary Hub and Crime Reads – this fortnight on Phnom Penh…click here…
Posted: October 10th, 2018 | No Comments »
A History of Hong Kong in 50 Maps
A selection of unusual maps, charts and plans 1775 – 1979
 The exhibition continues until 16th November 2018
Wattis Fine Art Gallery
20 Hollywood Road, 2/F, Central, Hong Kong
www.wattis.com.hk
Gallery open: Monday – Saturday 11am – 6pm
Posted: October 9th, 2018 | No Comments »
As regular readers will know during the last four years of the anniversary of the centenary of WW1 a lot has been happening about the old Chinese Labour Corps – the Chinese who came and worked the battlefields during the conflict. Sadly, despite the Penguin China and WW1 series of books, various conferences organised etc, knowledge of Chinese participation in WW1 remains very low.
Now another attempt to raise the CLC’s profile….Forgotten is a play by Daniel York Loh, directed by Kim Pearce – details below – it’s on at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London from 13/10/18 to 17/11/18….
‘The foreign devils will be entranced by our performance and line our path back to Shandong with gold and cherry blossoms…’
1917. Shandong Province, Northern China. Times are tough in Horse Shoe Village. Old Six and Second Moon struggle to earn enough to feed their young child. Big Dog struggles to overcome opium addiction and for Eunuch Lin, the fall of the Imperial Dynasty couldn’t have come at a worse time. Could a fierce war far away in Europe present an opportunity to put both themselves and their struggling nation on its feet?
é—忘 means ‘Forgotten’. ‘Left behind’. ‘Erased’.
Forgotten é—忘 is inspired by the little-known story of the 140,000 Chinese Labour Corps who left everything and travelled half way around the world to work for Britain and the Allies behind the front lines during World War One.
More details and tickets here
Posted: October 8th, 2018 | No Comments »
When we encounter news these days about relations between China and Japan, it is often along fairly depressing lines. It is easy to forget therefore that on a profound cultural and literary level, the relationship between the two nations has been a warmly appreciative one.
Nowhere is this more obviously on display than the connection between the two giants of modern Chinese and Japanese literature – Lu Xun and Natsume Soseki, both of whom occupy iconic positions in their nation’s literatures.
Lu Xun is best known for his savage satires on the plight of his native China in the early twentieth century – beset with a feudal mindset, internal divisions and left open to exploitation by warlords and foreign colonial powers.
Natsume Soseki meanwhile had revolutionized Japanese literature with his satirical masterpiece I am a Cat, which had cast a quizzical, feline eye over Japan’s own rapidly modernizing and westernizing nation state.
What is not commonly understood, however, is how closely these two major literary figures of China and Japan are connected. In this talk, author and critic Damian Flanagan will take you on a thrilling world journey from Baker Street in London to the plains of Manchuria, from a university classroom in Sendai, northern Japan to the streets of Beijing, as we uncover how these two great minds set about revolutionizing world literature.
Damian Flanagan is a writer and literary critic. He has written several books on Japanese literature, including three books on Natsume Soseki and a biography of Yukio Mishima in both Japanese and English. He also writes articles on culture, literature, property and travel for newspapers around the world, from The Irish Times to Australia’s Sun Herald. He is a regular book reviewer for The Japan Times, holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from Kobe University, Japan, and has won the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the translation of Japanese Literature.
R.S.V.P. to
Entrance fee
(includes one drink)
Members: 50 RMB
Students: 50 RMB
Non-Members:Â 100 RMB
Venue
Café Sambal
259 Jiashan Lu, Jiashan Market, Block A, No 37, near Jianguo Xi Lu
Posted: October 4th, 2018 | No Comments »
I note that American Mystery Classics are republishing some old Ellery Queen novels, including 1934’s The Chinese Orange Mystery. There’s actually no particular China-connection beyond the murder victim being a collector of Chinese stamps and a missing Chinese orange (as they used to call tangerines). The novel was one of Queen’s “nationality” mysteries along with other titles such as The Siamese Twin Mystery and The Spanish Cape Mystery. Anyway, regular readers of this blog will know I do like to show a lot of covers and the first US edition cover for this book quite interested me as it has some Chinoiserie themes….
cover of the first US edition, 1934
Posted: October 3rd, 2018 | No Comments »
Pamela Wynne was a popular romance writer from the 1920s to her death in 1959. She published over 60 novels. Born in London and educated in Switzerland, in 1905 Pamela married William Herbert Schroder Scott in Bombay. They had three children; the marriage ended in 1932 and Wynne moved back to England and lived at Sissinghurst. Her extended stay in India provided fodder for may of her books that came with the requisite Orientalist covers….
Posted: October 3rd, 2018 | No Comments »
I was just re-reading John Blofeld’s marvellous City of Lingering Splendour which covers his sojourn in Peking between 1934 and 1937…it has a rather good map of the old city’s outline and major districts too…you can click on it to enlarge….
John William Norrie -Â A New Chart of the Coast of China from Pedra Branca to St. John’s Island 1840