Old Letter Boxes of Asia – Macao

Another in my occasional old letter boxes of Asia collection…here’s Macao (and a recap of Dalian and Hong Kong below…)

Famous China Comparisons Continued: Kunming is like the countryside around Rome

Regular readers will know I am a great lover of famous men (and it is all men so far I’m afraid but submissions are open from all periods and genders) making comparisons between China and other places (invariably provincial England). Here is a round up of the best so far:

• The usually erudite and brilliant W Somerset Maugham wrote ‘…the bamboo, the Chinese bamboo, transformed by some magic of the mist, look just like the hops of a Kentish field’;
• The American comedian Will Rogers compared the countryside around Harbin to Nebraska when he visited in the early 1930s;
• In the 1870s Jules Verne compared Hong Kong to a town in Kent or Surrey;
• In 1933 Peter Fleming toured China and compared Chengde to Windsor;
• He then compared Peking with Oxford for some reason! – gotta love the Flemster!!;
• Later in 1938 Auden and Isherwood described the countryside around Canton as reminiscent of the Severn Valley;
• And then during his stay in China during the Second World War the (yet to be at the time) famous Sinologist Joseph Needham compared Fuzhou to Clapham and, perhaps most bizarrely, wartime Chongqing to the charming Devon seaside resort of Torquay!
• Noel Coward’s excellent comparison of 1921 Shanghai as ‘a cross between Brussels and Huddersfield’
• EM Forster’s science fiction short story from 1909 called The Machine Stops where he writes, ‘What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking?’

And now we can add the great French explorer of the Mekong, Francis Garnier, who, in 1870, noted that the city of Kunming evoked the countryside around Rome….he may have been on to something…

Macao’s General Post Office Building

Macao’s 3-story General Post Office at the junction of Senado Square and Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro was completed in 1929. Worth a ‘then and now’ picture i think….

Strangers on the Praia – all 4 episodes to download…

Earlier this month I recorded a short story of mine, Strangers on the Praia, in four parts for Hong Kong’s RTHK3 radio station. As well as being broadcast live RTHK3 have archived the episodes as a podcast for anyone, anywhere to download….

Strangers on the Praia is based on the true stories of the few European Jewish refugees who decided to move on from the Shanghai Ghetto to try their luck in “neutral” Macao, then a Portuguese colony.

you can access and download all the episodes here –

http://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item_all.php?pid=1578&lang=en-US

Coming Down Alert: And Still They Come for Shanghai Frenchtown…

If i had a penny for every time someone tells me that the Shanghai government is not going to destroy anymore of Frenchtown I’d be able to buy a rather fine bottle of wine or three to toast the old French Concession in its dying days….The wholesale destruction of Dongtai Road (Rue Hennequin) and surrounding streets, the ongoing destruction of the Jinling Road (Rue du Consulat) area, Yanqing Road’s (Route de Grouchy) west side, specifically around No.12, as far as Donghu Road (Route Doumer) and Huating Road. And, just last year, Huangpi Lu (Rue Bayle) and Hefei Lu (Rue du Pére Froc). Now it’s the turn of the block on the corner of Taicang Lu (Rue Longkiang) and Huangpi Nan Lu (Rue Bayle)…

JL George Furniture – Made in Shanghai…

I’ve blogged about JL George furniture of Shanghai before (use the search engine to your right, as ever).

George’s was up on Avenue Road, now Beijing West Road, that ran parallel to the Bubbling Well Road right to the western edge of the Settlement. Like many retailers of the 1930s looking to dodge sudden rent rises (nothing new there then) George appears to have moved around – at 1475-1477 in 1930 but also listed at No.805 at times. Their telephone number was 34732, by the way.

J.L. George appeared to be obviously foreign-owned though using Chinese craftsman – mostly originating from Dongyang in Zhejiang. In fact the company was owned by Shuang Hong Tai. We could speculate why Shuang used a western name of course – issues of trust and reliability were similar then as often today. Whatever the reason, Shanghailanders made the store popular.

Shuang hired low cost rural carpenters and craftsmen and brought them to Shanghai. This was a tradition begun in the early 1900s in Hangzhou before the furniture “factories” realised the potential size of the coastal Shanghai market and the spending power of Shanghailanders. Each one of their objects was stamped “Made in China” (which had a rather better reputation then than now!). The company moved to Hong Kong in 1949 to escape the communists and remained in business for some time after that as J.L. Georges. Interestingly, looking at various adverts from the 1930s – the company switched between J.L. George and J.L. Georges quite often. Items of furniture made by J.L. George come up for auction quite often, but due to the not completely great quality, the abundance of items they produced and their relative newness they don’t attract much money. However, they are of interest as being a staple brand found in Shanghailander homes.

I get sent photos of a lot of JL George furniture, which is always interesting to see. However, 90% of what i get shown is post-1949 Hong Kong-made pieces. These are more commonly and attract somewhat less interest at auction. Wonderful then that Patti Bradfield from America shared with me images of some of her parents Shanghai-made JL George. They originally belonged, I believe, to an uncle of hers who was interned in Shanghai during the war.

Finding Kukan is Finally Coming to Shanghai…3/5/19

you don’t want to miss this, if you’re in Shanghai…

Filmmaker Robin Lung turns detective to uncover the forgotten story of Li Ling-Ai, the un-credited female producer of KUKAN, an Academy Award-winning color documentary about World War II China that has been lost for decades.

In the late 1930s China is in dire straits. The country will collapse under Japan’s military juggernaut if it doesn’t get outside help. Chinese American firebrand Li Ling-Ai jolts Americans into action with a new medium — 16mm Kodachrome color film. She hires photojournalist Rey Scott to travel to China and capture a citizen’s perspective of the war-torn country, including the massive bombing of the wartime capital Chungking (now Chongqing). Their landmark film KUKAN screens for President Roosevelt at the White House, is called “awesome” by the New York Times, and receives one of the first Academy Awards for a feature documentary in 1942. Why have we never heard of Li Ling-Ai? And why have all copies of KUKAN disappeared? Filmmaker Robin Lung goes on a 7-year quest to find the answers.

And now the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai is screening Finding Kukan…

More Demolition in the old Shanghai Jewish Ghetto…

The Shanghai government did say that it would not be undertaking any further demolition in the former Jewish Ghetto in Tilanqiao. While this may be true for the western parts of the ghetto around the old synagogue it is not the case at the eastern end of the ghetto where it runs up against the substantially widened Dairen Road (Dalian Lu) and into Yangtszepoo (Yangpu) District.