Some Interesting Old Macao Graves…

From a trip a while ago to the old Protestant Cemetery in Macao….

Jack Holt & Dorothy Revier in The Warning, 1927

A story of the British Silent Service operating on the coast of China finds Tom Fellows, captain of an opium-smuggling ship, going into a notorious Chinese joint called “The House of a Thousand Delights,” where he finds a beautiful girl, Mary Blake, bound and captive. He starts a brawl, rescues Mary in the mêlée that follows, and then loses her when she flees to a hotel. He follows her and finds she is mixed up in some mysterious activity. However, he knows more about her than she does him (because he isn’t what he is supposed to be – and she isn’t, either), he stays close by, even to the point of using a machine-gun to dispel a mob at a Chinese temple.

A few stils from the movie and a contemporary review below…

Spark to fire – Mekong Review

A bit of my review in the Mekong Review of Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s new book on HK, Vigil, is up online, but to read it all you’ll need to subscribe which, if you are interested in matters Asia, would be a smart thing to do anyway….

Japan and its Neighbours (and their valuable assets!), 1941

An excellent National Geographic Society map from 1941 indicating exactly what commodities Japan was able to snaffle up as its expansion across the Asia-Pacific region continued…..

The Old Bund – Jardine Matheson’s Foyer…

A nice shot of the old foyer of the Jardine Matheson building at No.27 the Shanghai Bund . The building is not in bad shape – it’s got a Rolex showroom on the ground floor now for people without much original taste in wristwatches and had an extra floor added in the early 1980s for some bizarre reason….

Talking Murders of Old China, true crime & research on the Writer’s Routine Podcast…

I recently recorded an episode of the Writer’s Routine podcast (check it out as it has some seriously heavy hitters on there and loads of good interviews). Mine’s perhaps a little different as i’m talking about my Audible Oirignal Murders of Old China, China writing in general, true crime and research methods as well as the specificities of writing for audio.

Click here to listen

China’s Wartime Road to Russia – Ulan Bator to Chengdu…

In 1938 it was announced that, with the Burma Road still pretty basic, and the old military supply road that ran from Ulan Bator in Mongolia to Kalgan (Zhangjiakou) cut by the Japanese invasion, 1,000,000 labourers were at work on a new military road to unite Nationalist China and Soviet Russia.

According to the map above the new road would run from UB to Lanchow (Lanzhou) in Gansu and then down to Chengtu (Chengdu) in Sichuan. Not sure it ever got finished though as it was ultiamtely the Burma Road that would become China’s major supply line.

A Little More of Sir Philip Sassoon’s Port Lymne…

Following on from yesterday’s pictures of Port Lymne – here’s a few more…