All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
How fascinating to see that the archives at Sadlers Wells have turned up a letter from Peggy Hookham’s (Dame Margot Fonteyn’s) mum Hilda from their home in Shanghai to the Sadlers Wells Ballet School in London….She of course got accepted….and so her days of ballet school in Tientsin with Madame Tarakanova and then in Shanghai with George Gontcharov were over and the rest is, as they say, history…
Nicole Barnes Intimate Communities looks to be a fascinating study of Republican era healthcare…
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only survived the war but emerged from the trauma with a more cohesive population. Intimate Communities argues that women who worked as military and civilian nurses, doctors, and midwives during this turbulent period built the national community, one relationship at a time. In a country with a majority illiterate, agricultural population that could not relate to urban elites’ conceptualization of nationalism, these women used their work of healing to create emotional bonds with soldiers and civilians from across the country. These bonds transcended the divides of social class, region, gender, and language.
Ogden’s ( a Liverpool tobacco firm) original collectable cigarette cards were collected by million of people – the fag firms used them to stiffen the packs and advertise their brands simultaneously. Here, as part of a set showing views of various cities around the world is Tientsin (Tianjin)….
In the London Library I came across a copy of the Sri Lankan Tamil philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy’s book Fourteen Dances of Shiva, published in 1918. This is an interesting copy to find in London as it was published by The Sunwise Turn Company of New York and contains, as you can see below, their stamp.
However the book was then sent to their London agents, Luzac & Co. of Great Russell Street (in Bloomsbury). The Sunwise Turn bookshop and publishing house was run by Mary Mowbray-Clarke in the nineteen-teens and twenties and was a hotbed for modern art, ideas and anarchy. Luzacs & Co were near the British Museum and specialised in importing books from foeign publishers and books on matter Oriental as well as selling the odd antiquity or two. They clearly sold the book to the London Library.
101 years later I borrowed it…
An addition to my occasional series of various people with Chinese parasols. Here Gertrude Stein with the ‘modern poet’ Archibald Craig at Stein’s summer retirement home at Belley, eastern France in 1928…
I’ve always been interested in the oft-forgotten French treaty port of Kwangchow-wan (now Guangzhouwan) in Guangdong province. It wasn’t very large and was never home to more than 200,000 people but did have a sort of capital – Fort Bayard and some French institutions – the Governor’s house, some catholic missionaires, a Sino-French school etc. Japan occupied the territory in 1943 as part of its wider takeover of all French Indo-China.
What recently interested me was discovering that Kwangchow-wan had a pavilion at the 1906 Exposition Coloniale in Marseille.
The Kwangchow-wan pavilion (below) was close to the other pavilions of Indo-China – Laos, Cambodia, etc…Compared to the other exhibits Kwangshow-wan’s was quite small…but still in attendance. Today the city – either as Kwangchow-wan or Guangzhouwan is pretty much forgotten – a backwater now as its was then.
Tickets now available for world premier of Hello Gold Mountain, an original composition by Wu Fei for chamber orchestra, inspired by real stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe before and during World War II.
HELLO GOLD MOUNTAIN is an original composition by Wu Fei for chamber orchestra, performed by chatterbird ensemble, featuring Wu Fei on guzheng and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (Silk Road Ensemble) on oud — the traditional Chinese and Jewish plucked string instruments respectively.
The work is inspired by real stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe before and during World War II, and built lives in China.
Visit our website, Hello Gold Mountain, to learn more about the project.
Purchase a Preferred Ticket to receive seating in a reserved seating area, as well as access to a pre-concert cocktail hour with one free beverage (beer or wine).
The premiere of Hello Gold Mountain is made possible by the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support for the project comes from the Danielle Rose Paikin Foundation and the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Build Communities grant.
Sat, February 23, 2019
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST
Ingram Hall
Children’s Way
Nashville, TN 37212
United States
ITS Travel was running ads for all manner of holidays to China in 1980…
