The Quest for Forbidden Lands – Russians in Inner Asia

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2018 – China and Cross-Cultural Humour 1890-1940: A Panel Discussion – 6/11/2018

An excellent academic event taking place as part of the HKILF 2018 at HKU…(and it’s free)

China and Cross-Cultural Humour 1890-1940: A Panel Discussion

This panel, featuring Professor Julia Kuehn and Dr Wendy Gan from the School of English, University of Hong Kong and Dr Anne Witchard from the University of Westminster, UK, will investigate the circumstances and motivations of cross-cultural humour during the period.

Looking at a range of comic texts, from chinoiserie-inspired tales, fin-de-siècle travel writing, cartoons, yellow peril propaganda to advertising and musical comedy theatre, the panel, moderated by Dr Anya Adair from the School of English, University of Hong Kong, will explore western discourses about China and cross-cultural humour at the turn of the 20th century. Is humour meant to be inclusive or exclusive? Does it challenge the status quo, and is it a productive negotiation of power relations? Might it demonstrate not superiority or ridicule, but common ground?

Wendy Gan is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. She has published widely on British women’s middlebrow writing from the early twentieth century (with a regular focus on those novels set in China), as well as British women modernists. Wendy’s most recent book is Comic China: Representing Common Ground, 1890-1945 (2018).

Julia Kuehn is Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong. She has published on China-related travel writing, especially in the nineteenth century, but also across time. Her publications include the edited collections A Century of Travels in China (2007), China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces (2009) and Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China (2013). Julia is currently working on First Opium War travelogues.

Anne Witchard is Reader in English Studies at the University of Westminster UK. She has published widely in the area of Sino-British cultural relations. Her most recent book is England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and The Great War (2014). She is currently working on a project titled Dancing Antic Hays: Performing Modernist Chineseries.

Lady Chatterley Must Go!! How and Why Shanghai Banned DH Lawrence in 1940

An abridged essay by me on the bizarre case of the Shanghai Municipal Police deciding to spend the summer of 1940 seizing copies of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and other ‘suspect’ books…now up on the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel here….

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2018 – What I’m up to….

This November I’ll be at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which now has a great new home in the new Tai Kwun arts centre on Hollywood Road in Central. There’s a full programme online here…loads of stuff…naturally, as this is my blog, I’m going to promote my events…but I’ll sneak in a few others over the next few weeks.

• Friday 2/11/18 – Festival Opening Event – I’ll be one of several authors, including Geoff Dyer, talking on the subject of “journeys” at the opening event for the festival….here
• Saturday 3/11/18 – “Based on a True Story…” 4-5.30pm – I’m running a writing workshop on how to investigate and tell true stories in entertaining ways…if you’re doing a family history, looking at a true crime, real history, looking at writing literary non-fiction this might be helpful. Here for more details.
• Sunday 4/11/18 – City of Devils – 2-3pm – I’ll be showing a lot of pictures and telling a lot of anecdotes to try and recreate those wild days of old Shanghai and the gangsters who ran the city’s Badlands just before the Japanese occupation of the International Settlement. click here
• Sunday 4/11/18 -Why Genre Matters? – 5-6pm – I’ll be in conversation with my old publisher Jo Lusby, formerly of Penguin China and now Pixie B about genre, why it matters, why you should think about it and how to cross over it….click here

A Little Divergence – Crime and the City – Phnom Penh

A slight divergence from China, but regular readers may be interested in my latest Crime and the City column for The Literary Hub and Crime Reads – this fortnight on Phnom Penh…click here…

A History of Hong Kong in 50 Maps – Wattis Art Gallery – Hong Kong – 16/10/18-16/11/18

A History of Hong Kong in 50 Maps

A selection of unusual maps, charts and plans 1775 – 1979

John William Norrie - A New Chart of the Coast of China from Pedra Branca to St. John’s Island 1840

www.wattis.com.hk
Gallery open: Monday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

China, the CLC and WW1 Comes to the Stage – Forgotten at the Arcola Theatre, London

As regular readers will know during the last four years of the anniversary of the centenary of WW1 a lot has been happening about the old Chinese Labour Corps – the Chinese who came and worked the battlefields during the conflict. Sadly, despite the Penguin China and WW1 series of books, various conferences organised etc, knowledge of Chinese participation in WW1 remains very low.

Now another attempt to raise the CLC’s profile….Forgotten is a play by Daniel York Loh, directed by Kim Pearce – details below – it’s on at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London from 13/10/18 to 17/11/18….

‘The foreign devils will be entranced by our performance and line our path back to Shandong with gold and cherry blossoms…’

1917. Shandong Province, Northern China. Times are tough in Horse Shoe Village. Old Six and Second Moon struggle to earn enough to feed their young child. Big Dog struggles to overcome opium addiction and for Eunuch Lin, the fall of the Imperial Dynasty couldn’t have come at a worse time. Could a fierce war far away in Europe present an opportunity to put both themselves and their struggling nation on its feet?

遗忘 means ‘Forgotten’. ‘Left behind’. ‘Erased’.

Forgotten 遗忘 is inspired by the little-known story of the 140,000 Chinese Labour Corps who left everything and travelled half way around the world to work for Britain and the Allies behind the front lines during World War One.

More details and tickets here

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – Visionaries of Modern Chinese and Japanese Literature, Lu Xun and Natsume Soseki – 17/10/18