The Chinese Orange Mystery, 1934

I note that American Mystery Classics are republishing some old Ellery Queen novels, including 1934’s The Chinese Orange Mystery. There’s actually no particular China-connection beyond the murder victim being a collector of Chinese stamps and a missing Chinese orange (as they used to call tangerines). The novel was one of Queen’s “nationality” mysteries along with other titles such as The Siamese Twin Mystery and The Spanish Cape Mystery. Anyway, regular readers of this blog will know I do like to show a lot of covers and the first US edition cover for this book quite interested me as it has some Chinoiserie themes….

cover of the first US edition, 1934

Pamela Wynne’s Orientalist Book Covers

Pamela Wynne was a popular romance writer from the 1920s to her death in 1959. She published over 60 novels. Born in London and educated in Switzerland, in 1905 Pamela married William Herbert Schroder Scott in Bombay. They had three children; the marriage ended in 1932 and Wynne moved back to England and lived at Sissinghurst. Her extended stay in India provided fodder for may of her books that came with the requisite Orientalist covers….

John Blofeld’s Map of 1930s Peking

I was just re-reading John Blofeld’s marvellous City of Lingering Splendour which covers his sojourn in Peking between 1934 and 1937…it has a rather good map of the old city’s outline and major districts too…you can click on it to enlarge….

Cheltenham Literary Festival 2018 – East Meets West (and I talk about the DPRK)

I’ll be on a panel at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this coming Saturday, as part of their East Meets West programme (which includes the likes of Xiaolu Guo, David Peace, Sarah Howe, Min Jin Lee, Ian Buruma, Madeleine Thien etc).

My panel is

The Korean Peninsula – Peace at Last

For decades the Korean peninsula has lived in the shadow of unresolved conflict and an escalating nuclear threat from the hostile and paranoid regime in the North. Following the extraordinary Trump/Kim summit in Singapore, can the international community relax and look forward to peaceful coexistence with a born-again North Korea? Chatham House Director Robin Niblett brings Jieun Baek, author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution, author and Korea watcher Paul French and Hazel Smith, Professor of International Security and Korean Studies and author of North Korea: Markets and Military Rule, to the table to debate the possible outcomes.

that event here

everything that’s on in Cheltenham here

Map of Shanghai at the time of the January 28 1932 Incident

The January 28 incident or Shanghai incident (January 28 – March 3, 1932) was a conflict between China and Japan. I won’t go into it in detail here – suffice to say the cartographers of the American newspapers got to work straight away. This map appeared in many American newspapers on January 31 1932….

City of Devils Comes to the Wigtown Book Festival, Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland – 26/9/18

Yes, it’s back to Wigtown – Scotland’s official book town – me, old Shanghai, talking with Roland Gulliver of the Edinburgh Book Festival and then….everything Wigtown is famous for – bookshops, pubs, salted marsh lamb…

worth the trip – click here for details

To the Far East with Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen in the 1930s…

Sam Chambers of Sinoship sourced these lovely 1930s images from the Norddeutscher Lloyd line while in Hamburg (near Norddeutscher’s old base of Bremen) recently….

Enjoy – and note perhaps the spellings of Dalny (Dalian) and Tsingtau (Qingdao, and a former German treaty port of course)…also note the putting in at the port of Moji. I have rarely seen Moji on schedules from this time (or any other) with nearby Kobe (250 miles or so away) being the normal port of call. However, it was a highly western influenced port and town from the late nineteenth century as seen in the photographs here.

Shanghai Inter-Hotel Cable Codes Guide, 1930

Before telex machines, pagers and mobile texts – all that LOL, BTW etc etc – there were cable codes that allowed for regularly sent short messages to save time and costs. Hotels in Shanghai, and throughout the Far East, worked out their own set of codes (you may need to click on the image below to see better)….for instance short codes for reserving rooms, transfers, forwarding mail – should you wish a bath simply send one of the codes followed by “B”. The bottom example shows you how efficient the system could be….