I am always slightly fascinated by why many famous English writers of the inter-war period never made it to China – Orwell went East of course, but never to China; Graham Greene likewise. Evelyn Waugh, like so many people at the time, had a fascination with China. I have written about one aspect of this in my recent piece for the South China Morning Post Magazine on Mrs. “Tinko†Pawley, her friend Charlie Corkran, & her dog Squishy – how they were captured by Bandits in 1932 Yingkou and how Waugh used his close interest in their case to write a short story…set in Africa! https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2180648/how-chinese-bandits-kidnapping-blond-british
Waugh, left, in Ireland
But why did Waugh never go? Well, he nearly did…in 1930. A busy year for Waugh – his second novel Vile Bodies was published and was a well reviewed bestseller; he separated from his wife (also called Evelyn) and converted to Catholicism. He spent the summer in Ireland at Tullynally Castle (the home of the Pakenham family in County Westmeath) with friends including Alastair Graham (one of his “loves” and the model for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited) and the author Elizabeth Harman (who was to marry Frank Pakenham, seventh earl of Longford). Here Waugh spent his days consulting atlases and the library researching a trip to China and Japan.
Graham, Waugh and Harman in Ireland, summer 1930
However Alastair Graham had been working for the Foreign Office in Cairo where he had met some Abyssinian (Ethiopian) princes. The tales of them, their attire and country fascinated Waugh. When he heard that a new emperor was to be crowned in Addis Ababa that November (Ras Tafari, thence Emperor Haile Sellasie) he immediately dropped all thought of China, got an accreditation from the Times and headed for Africa. His dispatches from Abyssinia are collected in the Penguin Modern Classic, Remote People…
Few places in the world have represent the Chinese diaspora like New York’s Chinatown. From it’s early period in the Nineteenth Century as a neighborhood for migrant Chinese workers, Chinatown grew to symbolize a future home for workers and families enthralled by the American Dream. But, for most Chinese migrants, immigration to the United States meant exploitation, racial segregation, and systemic exclusion from the dominant culture.
This talk with Peter Hagan will cover the early history of New York’s Chinatown, the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Tong Wars, and immigration in the post World War II Era that has given rise to the image of one of Manhattan’s most famous and recognized neighborhoods.
The Chinese History Study Group meets monthly – generally the second Wednesday of each month, October through July. Our members select and research topics of personal interest within the themes, make brief oral presentations, and then engage in discussion with those attending the talk. Each month one or two members discuss their topics.
A Call to Writers for
the 2019-20 M Literary Residency
Applications for the Residency open on January 1, 2019 and will close on March 31, 2019 midnight GMT. The winner will be announced on May 31st, 2019. SUBMISSIONS: https://mliteraryresidency.submittable.com/submitThe M Residency allows writers with an interest in China to deepen their understanding of this vital and fascinating place. Established in 2009 and fully funded by the M Restaurant Group, the residency has its roots in M’s Shanghai and Beijing Literary Festivals, and aims to foster artistic, cultural and intellectual links between individuals and communities. For 6-8 weeks in 2019, one writer will have the opportunity to write undisturbed in the heart of this bustling city. The residency is open to writers of prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction and screenwriting.Some Of Our Past Recipients…To apply, please use our Submittable page https://mliteraryresidency.submittable.com/submit. For more information regarding the M Literary Residency programme, please visit our official website.All submissions are due by March 31, 2019 midnight and must be in English or include an English translation.
We’re thrilled to announce the
official dates
of the Shanghai International Literary
Festival.
From March 14-27, 2019, the M Restaurant
Group
will be bringing you the
brightest stars of the literary world.The full programme will be released
on February 4th
and
tickets will be exclusively sold on our
official website.
Our headliner sessions move
fast so make sure
to bookmark the ones
you’re dying to see and act quickly once tickets go on sale.
Stay tuned for
more information in January…and always check our WeChat for the
latest!
For more upcoming
events, please follow our official WeChat or visit
our website.
关注米æ°è¥¿é¤åŽ…官方微信或访问米æ°è¥¿é¤åŽ…官方网站了解更多活动详情。
The picture below is of Mrs. Flora Jackson, who was the listed proprietor of Jackson’s Newsagents (& Provisions Store) at no.22 Cloth Fair (just by the junction to Red Lion Passage – now sadly demolished) in Smithfield, City of London. It is March 1912 and she has, as you can see, a display of Chinese lanterns in her window…
Now, this image comes from a wonderful book of old London photographs – Panorama’s of Lost London, by Philip Davies (Transatlantic Press, 2011). The images are mostly from the London Metropolitan Archive. The caption to the photo (provided, I assume, by Davies, reads: ’20 Cloth Fair and entrance to Red Lion Passage looking west, 26 March 1912 – Note the patriotic paper lanterns for sale in the shop window…’ Incidentally it is the Kelly’s Post Office London Directory of 1911 that tells me Flora Jackson was at no.22 – but no matter. It’s the lanterns we’re interested in….
Now this reference to ‘patriotic lanterns’ intrigued me. Chinese paper lanterns were imported into England in quite large numbers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The vogue for them had really got going in 1887 at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations as towns and villages across the land hung Chinese lanterns out to celebrate (see my post of that – https://chinarhyming.com/2013/11/25/the-1887-jubilee-perhaps-a-highpoint-in-chinese-lanterns/
By the turn of the century and after World War One garden parties, tea dances, street parties and decorated homes all often featured these Chinese paper lanterns which were, I believe, quite inexpensive, decorative and pleasingly exotic. (see here for Chinese lanterns at the dances at the Metropole Hotel in London in 1926 – https://chinarhyming.com/2013/10/20/chinese-lanterns-dancing-all-night-at-the-metropole-in-1926/
1912 though has no particular patriotic connotation in England. Nor do the lanterns appear to be particularly aimed at any sort of British patriotism. Of course it is the first year of the establishment of the Chinese Republic, but do we really think that Jackson’s Newsagents of Cloth Fair was celebrating the end of the Qing Dynasty and the creation of Dr Sun’s Republic? Possibly?
I might venture that it appears as if a makeshift Chinese-style shrine has been created in the display too. I checked the records in case that window wasn’t Mrs Jackson’s, but a Chinese curio store next door – it was her window. And so I have a few possibles:
Mrs Jackson simply sold Chinese paper lanterns and either she, or the sales rep, created the window display?…
Mrs Jackson had a Chinese husband? If anyone has access to ancestry.com they might like to check that out…
Mrs Jackson saw a sales opportunity around Chinese New Year – however, that was late January in 1922 (year of the Dog, by the way) so (if the book’s label of March is correct) she’s carrying on the theme a bit long…
Mrs Jackson really did want to celebrate the establishment of the Chinese Republic and created a window display to mark that momentous event.
I would, of course, welcome any thoughts or ideas?
Finally, looking through the archives I found this shot of Mrs. Jackson’s shop that shows you her front window that is cut off in the picture above…this one was taken by Edward Yates, two years earlier in 1910 and shows the provisions part of her store and clearly that her shop was no.22 .
Rosie Milne, the force behind www.asianbooksblog.com, asked me if i wanted to do a monthly column on Asian-themed books. Of course I said yes…
I’ve opted to call my monthly missive on forthcoming books, tsundoku, the Japanese word for all those books that pile up by your bedside just begging you to get on and read them. It seemed fitting for a column that aims squarely at encouraging you to build that pile a little higher each month…
Tsundoku will assemble a random assortment of Asia-related books – novels, non-fiction, photography, graphic art – that comes across my own desk. Being a writer on various matters Asian, as well as a regular reviewer, I often get an early peek at forthcoming books. So tsundoku is essentially me passing on a few recommendations…
Here’s the first one….http://www.asianbooksblog.com/2019/01/tsundoku-1-february-2019-new-year-new.html
And readers are welcome to send me their own (uncurated!) tsundoku piles for inclusion (paul@chinarhyming.com)
Last week I blogged about the Shanghai Restaurant on rue Cujas in Paris that was regularly visited by the Japanese painter Tsuguharu Foujita and the surrealist poet Robert Desnos. It is long gone but I appealed for anyone with good French search skills. (you can see that post here -https://chinarhyming.com/2019/02/01/the-shanghai-restaurant-rue-cujas-paris-5arr-1930/
Well, many thanks to Andrew Park, a Phd student at Hong Kong University who knows a thing or three about French online sources…Here’s an ad he dug up for the Shanghai Restaurant from La Semaine a Paris…
And while I still don’t have a photograph of the Shanghai Restaurant, I do have one of the Lotus Chinese restaurant from the 1930s that was at no.2 rue de L’ecole-de-Medicine…I’m sure you’ll agree it looks wonderful…
Here’s a Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel interview by the author and journalist Jonathan Chatwin, with me, about researching China. I think this series is usually more academic writers so perhaps this one is useful for those looking to write about China more commercially…https://chinachannel.org/2019/01/29/paul-french/
