China in 1946 – Hyperinflation and Living Costs Spiral – The Menu at the Hotel Imperial, Tientsin

China’s inflation rate went through the roof in 1946 and the Chinese $ vs US$ exchange rate had to through something of a revision! For a while in early 1946 China’s foreign exchange rate was maintained at CN$20 to one US$. It was not until March, 1946, that the exchange rate was revised and raised to 2,020 to one, and again to 3,350 to one in August of the same year. Here’s a stark representation of living costs in Tianjin in June 1946….

Song of Spring: Pan Yu-Lin in Paris – Asia Society, Hong Kong till 6th January 2019

Pan Yu-Lin

Pan Yu-Lin (1895-1977) belonged to the first generation of Chinese students to study fine arts in France. She was a pioneer in modernizing Chinese art with western painting at a time when it was rare for women to achieve independent careers as professional artists.

She studied in Europe for nearly eight years between Lyon, Paris, and Rome. At the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, Pan was the first Asian student to win a scholarship to study at Accademia del Belle Arti di Roma, where she studied sculpture and painting. She returned to China in 1928 and was immediately hired by the Shanghai Art Academy, her alma mater, as the head of western painting—the first woman to assume such a high academic position. She also taught at the Nanjing Central University Fine Art Department from 1931 onwards, and remained as a researcher and tutor at the Shanghai Art Academy’s painting research institute Yiyuan. Throughout her decade in China, she held four solo exhibitions and established various art societies. In 1937, she traveled to Paris again in search for her independent visual language.

Pan Yu-Lin remained in Paris until her death. Throughout her relocation to France, her works were widely exhibited in the salon circuit. Pan was the first Chinese artist to be collected by the City of Paris and followed by the National Museum of Modern Art in 1955. She won numerous awards overseas throughout her career, with her proudest achievement being the 1959 Thorlet award from the University of Paris granted by the municipal government.

20^th Century Chinese Female Artist Series

Female empowerment and equality in modern societies has been a much debated topic dating back over a century. While the diverse achievements of female talents across different fields have gained better light in recent years, female artists remain an under-represented and under-appreciated segment in many societies and even more so across Chinese communities.

Yet the emergence of female artists in 20th century China was a testament to both the country’s social progress and the various redefinitions of modernity that were adopted in a historical context complicated by wars and disasters. Female agency in society was among the issues argued and promoted in the mass media of the time and retains lasting ideological power today. In scholastic studies and exhibitions, however, attention has been focused on modern Chinese male artists. Exhibitions featuring the creative attainments and influences of their female counterparts from the period are few and far between, and rarely in monographic presentations.

Asia Society Hong Kong Center’s 20th Century Chinese Female Artists Exhibition Series (“the Series”), the first of its kind in Hong Kong, aims to reclaim the story of female artists. By providing local Hong Kong audiences with important examples of their artistic accomplishments, we hope to honor them with the public recognition they deserve for their contribution to the making of modern China.

From a wider community context, the Series fits into the discourse on female empowerment and equality in today’s Hong Kong, where research indicates that women continue to face challenges in male-dominated industries as well as gender stereotypes in the media and the workplace. Through education programs for children, students, families, and the general public, we will highlight achievements of women in various industries while connecting to the lives and careers of the unique female artists presented in the Series.

The second exhibition in the Series focuses on the life and works of Pan Yu-Lin, and is made possible by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. It also includes the “Jockey Club Art Education and Female Empowerment Series” which are educational talks and activities targeting participation from the local community.

Chamber 1 – A Studio in Montparnasse

This chamber features Pan Yu-Lin’s studio work during the 1940s shortly after she returned to Paris. Pan lived in the artistic hub of Montparnasse, where she frequently attended life drawing sessions in the Academy of the Grande ChaumieÌ€re. There, she began to break away from the rules of academic painting to develop her own style. While Pan created many interesting group portraits in the open studios, it was in her private home studio that she created her most significant self-portraits. They reveal her unique identity as a cross-culture modern woman and independent artist. Highlights in this chamber include Self-Portrait in Red (c. 1940), Portrait of Friendship (1940) and A Doll (1942).

Chamber 2 – The Challenge of the Nude

The chamber features Pan Yu-Lin’s works in the nude genre. Life drawing was the cornerstone of her Western fine art training, and she excelled in academic figure drawing as a student in the 1920s. After she returned to Paris, she started to break away from academic tradition and experimented with vibrant nudes inspired by the work of Heri Matisse (1869-1954). In the 1950s, she began painting nudes in ink and color on paper. She combined the fluid lines of Chinese calligraphy with Western pointillist coloring to capture the female body naturalistically, and developed a unique style embracing the East and the West. Highlights in this chamber include A Woman Lying on Her Side (1938), Sweet Dreams (1940), and Women Peeping at the Window (1968).

Literary Shanghai – The Shanghai in Singapore Edition

The journal Literary Shanghai has produced a special edition for the Singapore Writers Festival this November – Shanghai in Singapore – with a bunch of original contributions (including from me) and new translations….it’ll be everywhere at the festival and available in various bookshops in Singapore and China as well as via Literary Shanghai…

there’s a piece by me in it on the old Tipsy Cafe on Wayside Road…..

you can get copies at:

Books Actually on Yong Siak Street in Singapore

Madame Mao’s Dowry on Fumin Road in Shanghai

China Cuckoo: An Evening with Mark Kitto – Guanghwa Bookshop, Shaftesbury Ave, W1 – 5/12/18

It’s time to party likes it’s 2004 in Shanghai again!!

China Cuckoo: An Evening with Mark Kitto

In 2004, Englishman Mark Kitto was at the peak of his career in Shanghai. Heralded by the Financial Times as a ‘mini media mogul’, his city guides That’s series were the most popular English-language publications in China. But it all came crashing down when his business, in which he invested everything, was seized by the authority.

Perhaps it was time to admit defeat and come home?

Instead, Mark turned his back on Shanghai and moved his family to the beautiful yet isolated mountain region of Moganshan, an area he had fallen in love with on a rare weekend getaway. There the ex-tycoon had written his book China Cuckoo.

Spend an evening with Mark Kitto and hear tales from his books That’s China and China Cuckoo – and more besides – of life and work in China’s booming metropolis and then a quiet rural retreat, his dealings with senior mandarins and low level bureaucrats, and what he thinks will be the reality of the ‘China Dream’. He once had one himself.

Wed 5 December 2018

19:30 – 21:00 GMT

Guanghwa Bookshop

112 Shaftesbury Avenue

London

W1D 5EJ

it’s free but register here

The Problem of Discipline: ‘Shanghai’s Child Labor Problem,’ 1922-1925 – SOAS London – 3/12/18

The Problem of Discipline: ‘Shanghai’s Child Labor Problem,’ 1922-1925

Margaret Tillman (Purdue University)

Date: 3 December 2018Time: 5:00 PM

Finishes: 3 December 2018Time: 7:00 PM

Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: G3

 

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. Online Registration

Abstract

How and why did children become important for government officials and social elites? Hugh Cunningham has noted that child labor and poverty became social problems along with urbanization because their visible plight drew the attention of elites. In Shanghai’s transnational International Settlement, Chinese and Western elites saw the effects of the city’s rapid industrialization on the urban working class, especially children. This seminar will examine efforts to abolish child labor, not only to benefit the working class, but also to modernize the Chinese economy by enforcing industrial discipline. While scholars have noted some of the political reasons for the failures of child labor legislation, this seminar will attempt to conclude by placing these efforts in a longer-term historical perspective regarding social welfare movements.

Biography

Margaret Mih Tillman graduated with a PhD in history from UC Berkeley and is currently an assistant professor at Purdue University. Her first book, Raising China’s Revolutionaries was published by Columbia University Press in 2018.

Image credit: Image taken for the child labor campaign, just as the child came out from a cotton mill in Shanghai. Courtesy of Mitchell Library, Sydney.

Organiser: Co-organised by SOAS Dept of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies and SCI

Contact email: aj7@soas.ac.uk / sci@soas.ac.uk

The Door Opened: 1980s China – until 30 November 2018 – Oxford Brookes University

The Door Opened: 1980s China

9:00, Friday, 26 October 2018 to 17:00, Friday, 30 November 2018

The Glass Tank , Abercrombie Building, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane site

Details

British photojournalist Adrian Bradshaw came as a student to Beijing in 1984 just as everyday life was in flux. Caught up in the ferment of the time he went on to spend three decades documenting the transformation of China as the vast nation reformed and opened up to the world.

Bradshaw, then in his 20s, was in the company of the young people who embraced this time of opportunity. The majority of China’s population then was under 25 and it was largely their energy and creativity that powered the changes now reverberating around the world: the artists, entrepreneurs, farmers and industrialists whose enthusiasm and positivity made things happen were, at the time these pictures were taken, just beginning to sense the possibilities.

This exhibition in association with the Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes University is a vivid record of a pivotal period in modern history that deserves greater understanding.

More details – https://www.brookes.ac.uk/public-art/glass-tank/events/the-door-opened–1980s-china/

Sgt. Milton Warden – From Shanghai to Hawaii in From Here to Eternity

You know the movie – From Here to Eternity (1953) with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr – Hawaii in 1941, a private (Montgomery Clift) is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit’s team, while his captain’s wife (Kerr) and second-in-command (Lancaster)are falling in love. Pearl Harbor looms.

I saw the movie again the other day but don’t remember ever noticing before the Lancaster’s character, Sgt. Milton Warden is partly admired and revered by the men in his command for his Shanghai experience with the “15th”. The US 15th Infantry began service in China in 1900 at the time of the Boxers. They were to stay until 1938 serving in Peking and Tientsin mostly. Nice to know the scriptwriters did their research….

and the 15th for real in China…

Beijing from below: new light on the recent history of China’s capital – Harriet Evans on Dashalr at SOAS, LOndon 19/11/18

Beijing from below: new light on the recent history of China’s capital

Harriet Evans (University of Westminster)

Date: 19 November 2018Time: 5:00 PM

Finishes: 19 November 2018Time: 6:30 PM

Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: G3

 

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. Online Registration

Abstract

This talk moves away from the mainstream history of Beijing’s transformation to focus on the disadvantaged and the poor of a small neighbourhood in the centre of the capital: the subalterns at the bottom of the social hierarchy—street vendors and pedicab cyclists, the semi-employed and the down-and-outs outside the formal organizational structures of the work unit system, sometimes living hand to mouth on the fringes of the law. Based on long term ethnographic research in Dashalar and on research in the local district archives, this paper shows how, seen from the perspective of long-term local residents of Dashalar, the history of Beijing’s transformation through the Mao era and beyond tells a story of revolution and reform that challenges many of the familiar themes of dominant chronology of the PRC.

Biography

Harriet Evans is Professor Emerita of Chinese Cultural Studies (University of Westminster) and Visiting Professor of Anthropology (LSE). She has written extensively on the politics of gender and sexuality in China, and on political posters and visual culture of the Mao era. Her Beijing from Below, an oral history of everyday life in a poor neighbourhood of central Beijing, will be published by Duke University Press. She is Chair of Trustees of the London-based The Rights Practice and is a keen advocate of initiatives to bring academics and activists together to use their collective influence to promote gender and sexual rights in China and elsewhere.

Organiser: SOAS China Institute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk

Contact Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4823