Royal Asiatic Shanghai – French Concession Art Gallery Walk – 18/8/18

On the Sinica Podcast with City of Devils & Two Unrepentant Beijingers

If you are remotely interested in China in all its aspects – old and new, political, social or economic – you really should listen to the Sinica Podcast with Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn. Why not start with their latest episode which has me talking about City of Devils, old Shanghai, researching Republican era China and heritage/preservation issues in China….Click here to listen/download

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Paul French, the best-selling author of Midnight in Peking. Paul has just written an outstanding new book called City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir, in which he tells a captivating story of two foreigners rising to prominence through conducting shady business in the underworld of Shanghai in the 1930s — a chaotic yet fascinating period, when the city was still known as the Paris of the Orient, leading up to the bleak realities of the war with Japan.

And…if that’s not enough…you can still listen to the Sinica episode from 2012 where we all (with the Guardian’s Tania Branigan too) all talked about Midnight in Peking – here

A Modern Miscellany Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938

I owe a great debt to academics and Sinologists – my last couple of books wouldn’t have been possible without the scholarly work of a variety of people including Frederic Wakeman, Robert Bickers, Jonathan Spence, Andrew Field and a host of others…I do try to acknowledge them where possible and (unlike Hilary Mantel!) believe that admitting your debt to academia is important. Now add Paul Bevan to the list…and his new A Modern Miscellany – a fantastic new book on old Shanghai….sadly it’s not cheap so you’ll probably need to be a member of a good library, or recommend your university library to buy….

In A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 Paul Bevan explores how the cartoon (manhua) emerged from its place in the Chinese modern art world to become a propaganda tool in the hands of left-wing artists. The artists involved in what was largely a transcultural phenomenon were an eclectic group working in the areas of fashion and commercial art and design. The book demonstrates that during the build up to all-out war the cartoon was not only important in the sphere of Shanghai popular culture in the eyes of the publishers and readers of pictorial magazines but that it occupied a central place in the primary discourse of Chinese modern art history.

A Couple of Trips to Old Shanghai with Trip Fiction and Book Trail

A couple of links that may interest those with a fascination for old Shanghai…

I did a “Talking Location” piece with Trip Fiction on Shanghai here…

And another tour of old Shanghai (with slightly different locations and photos) with Book Trail here…

A Sad Suicide at Shanghai’s Embassy Hotel in 1933

I sometimes think of old Shanghai as a city of suicide. Reading the old newspapers it is striking just how many suicides are reported, both Chinese and Shanghailander. The reasons are many and varied but mostly go to the core issues of Shanghai –

• In a town with effectively (beyond a little charity) no safety net people got sick, they didn’t have money for treatment so they committed suicide;
• old age and the fear of unemployment – no pensions and often for rootless and stateless people no families. But this wasn’t always the elderly; Beatrice Den Adel committed suicide in Shanghai at 33, a dancer she feared that as she got too old to dance she’d fall on hard times.
• Financial ruin, gambling debts, opium addiction all feature
• for women the loss, through death or desertion of a male spouse often triggered suicide and a sense of hopelessness.
• Mental illness was of course under diagnosed and under treated and seems to be behind many cases
• and, as in this case today, broken promises – especially hard for people offered a future that is then taken away leaving them stateless, alone and poor…

The Embassy Hotel was on No.7 Carter Road (Shimen No.1 Road) near the junction with the Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing Road West) in the International Settlement. It wasn’t the grandest hotel in town but it was far from the worst. It was managed for many years by Mrs. Jessie Cameron and her staff. In 1933 a Dane by the name of F.M. Bjergfeldt, who was in Shanghai on a contract working for the Danish Great Northern Telegraphy Company, was a long term resident.

Bjergfeldt had taken up with a 24-year-old White Russian emigre called Tamara Tavgueridze. She was described as his fiance. On Sunday July 2 Tamara went to Bjergfeldt’s room, drank poison, and committed suicide. Why she did it? – I don’t know. I can surmise a broken off engagement, a sense of futility living in exile…The Embassy Hotel was quite the place for suicides (many foreigners chose it as a suicide spot). It was said to be a gloomy hotel and perhaps that encouraged suicidal thoughts.

I’m afraid I don’t have a picture of the hotel, but do have this shot of the junction of Carter Road and Bubbling Well Road at the time…which does include the marvelous old Bubbling Well Pharmacy…

Film Screening: On the Track of Robert Van Gulik by Rob Rombout – SOAS, August 24

On the Track of Robert Van Gulik

Friday, 24 August 2018, 7.00pm-9.00pm
Screening in Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)

Robin Moyer: My China (1976 – Present) – Pekin Fine Arts, Hong Kong, to August 25th

Some really great China/Hong Kong photography here….For over five decades, award-winning photojournalist and fine art photographer Robin Moyer has lived and worked around Asia, capturing a continent in constant flux. His ongoing solo exhibit at Pékin Fine Arts in Hong Kong, Robin Moyer: My China (1976 – Present), is a glimpse into the country’s past and present in 43 signed black-and-white images printed in platinum and archival pigment on fine art paper.

Robin Moyer: My China (1976 – Present)

Solo Exhibition

An Exhibition Commemorating the End of The First World War – Hong Kong

I imagine this is worth a visit if you’re in Hong Kong….