RAS Shanghai Chinese History Club – The Uyghurs Across China – 9/1/18

The Uyghurs across China

Speaker: Peter Hagan

During the session we will hear and discuss Peter Hagan’s presentation on “The Uyghurs across China”; Uyghur Khaganate and the Tang Dynasty relationship, how the Uyghur society changed when the Khaganate collapsed.

Chinese History Study Group meets monthly – generally the second Tuesday of each month September through June. Our members select and research topics of personal interest, make brief oral presentations, then engage in discussion with those attending the talk. Each month one or two members discuss their topics.

For a list of future topics and presenters, please contact convener Furkan Erdogan studygroup@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Peking – 1937 – Today – A Murder Occurred

Remebering Pamela Werner – whose murdered body was discovered today, 81 years ago, by the Fox Tower in Peking…

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – “From Rebel to Reporter: 40 Years Working in China” By former CNN Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz – 23/1/18

“From Rebel to Reporter: 40 Years Working in China”

By former CNN Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz

In August 1971, Jaime FlorCruz was a left-leaning Filipino student, leading a study tour to China for idealistic Filipino activists. But back in Manila then-strongman Ferdinand Marcos put his name on an immigration blacklist and declared martial law. FlorCruz risked arrest — and worse — if he were to return to his homeland under Marco’s repressive rule. As a result, he and four other Filipinos from his group embarked on a new life in China, an experience he described (on hindsight) as being “stranded in the right place at the right time.” In his talk Jaime will recount his unique nearly five-decade-long journey through Chinese contemporary history. He’s worked on a state farm and a fishing boat. He entered Beida after it reopened following the Cultural Revolution, counting among his schoolmates famous names such as Li Keqiang and Bo Xilai. And, after the late Deng Xiaoping declared an era of “reform and opening up”, FlorCruz began an unexpected career in journalism. He worked first for Newsweek, then Time, and finally as CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief before retiring in Dec. 2014 — after the longest single unbroken stay in Beijing by a foreign correspondent.

WHAT: Former CNN Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz on “From Rebel to Reporter: My Four Decades Working in China”
WHEN: Jan. 23, 2018, Tuesday from 8:00 – 9:30 PM
WHERE: The Bookworm, Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing tel: 6586 9507
HOW MUCH:
Free for RASBJ and Bookworm members but advanced registration required;
RMB 80 with advanced registration for non-members/general public (includes welcome drink);
RMB 100 at the door on a SPACE AVAILABLE BASIS
RSVP: https://yoopay.cn/event/55554187

Remembering Eunice Tietjens #7 – My Servant

In 1915, or thereabouts, Eunice Tietjens was staying at a Christian mission station in Wusih (Wuxi) in Jiangsu…clearly she had a servant of a certain age with bound feet…

My Servant

The feet of my servant thump on the floor.

Thump, they go, and thump – dully, deformedly.

My servant has shown me her feet.

The instep has been broken upward into a bony cushion. The big toe is pointed as an awl. The small toes are folded under the cushioned instep. Only the heel is untouched.

The thing is white and bloodless with the pallor of dead flesh.

But my servant is quite contented.

She smiles toothlessly and shows me how small are her feet, her “golden lillies.”

Thump, they go, and thump!

Wusih

Remembering Eunice Tietjens #6 – The Dandy

This poem was written around 1915 when Tietjens was visiting Wusih (Wuxi) in Jiangsu near Shanghai…at the time the notion of the dandy was as much about refined habits and leisurely hobbies as it was (as I think is more common today) mostly about appearance and dress….

The Dandy

He swaggers in green silk and his two coats are lined with fur. Above his velvet shoes his trim, bound ankles twinkle pleasantly.

His nails are the longest.

Quite the glass of fashion is Mr. Chu!

In one slim hand – the ultimate punctilio – dangles a bamboo cage, wherein a small brown bird sits with a face of perpetual surprise.

Mr. Chu smiles the benevolent smile of one who satisfies both fashion and a tender heart.

Does not a bird need an airing?

Wusih

Remembering Eunice Tietjens #5 – New China: The Iron Works

Around 1915 Tietjens, staying at a Christian mission nearby, visited the Hanyang Arsenal and Iron Works in Wuhan, built in 1893 as a major contribution to the notions of the Self-Strengthening Movement….

New China: The Iron Works

The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow; gigantic machinery clanks, and in living iridescent streams the white-hot slag pours out.

This is to-morrow set in yesterday, the west imbedded in the east, a graft but not a growth.

And you who walk beside me, picking your familiar way between the dynamos, the cars, the piles of rails – you too are of to-morrow, grafted with an alien energy.

You wear the costume of the west, you speak my tongue as one who knows; you talk casually of Sheffield, Pittsburgh, Essen…

You touch on Socialism, walk-outs, and the industrial population of te British Isles.

Almost you might be one of us.

And then I ask:

“How much do those poor coolies earn a day, who take the place of carts?”

You shrug and smile.

“Eighteen coppers. Something less than eight cents in your money. They are not badly paid. They do not die.”

Again I ask:

“And is it true that you’ve a Yamen,  police judge, all your own?”

Another shrug and smile.

“Yes, he attends to all small cases of disorder. For larger crimes we pass the offender over to the city courts.”

**

“Conditions” you explain as we sit with a cup of tea, “conditions here are difficult.”

Your figure has grown lax, your voice a little weary. You are fighting, I can see, upheld by that strange graft of western energy.

Yet odds are heavy, and the Orient is in your blood. Your voice is weary.

“There are no skilled laborers” you say, “Among the owners no cooperation.

It is like – like working in a nightmare, here in China. It drags at me, it drags”…

You bow me out with great civility.

The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow, gigantic machinery clanks and in living iridescent streams the white-0hot slag pours out.

Beyond the gate the filth begins again.

A beggar rots and grovels, clutching at my skirt with leprous hands. A woman sits sorting hog-bristles; she coughs and sobs.

The stench is sickening

To-morrow! did they say?

(Hanyang)

Remembering Eunice Tietjens #4 – The Sikh Policeman

Written during Tietjens’ (who was an American) visit to Shanghai sometime before 1917…the Shanghai Municipal Police’s Sikh Branch was established in 1884. Sikh policemen wore red turbans.

The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject

Of what, I wonder, are you thinking?

It is something beyond my world I know, something I cannot guess.

Yet I wonder.

Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate them with an automatic hatred – the hatred of the wel-fed for the starved, of the warlike for the weak.

When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, from your white teeth.

With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals.

You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be of them you are thinking.

Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master whom you serve.

No more do you know of us the “Masters” than you know of them the “dogs”.

We are above you, they below.

And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect and splendid, lithe and male.

Your scarlet turban frames your neat black head,

And you are thinking.

Or are you?

Perhaps we are only stung with thought.

I wonder.

Shanghai

Remembering Eunice Tietjens #3 – The Altar of Heaven

written sometime before 1917 during a visit to Peking….

The Altar of Heaven

Beneath the leaning, rain-washed sky this great white circle – beautiful!

In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on one towards Haven. And on each terrace the white balustrade climbs in aspiring marble, etched in cloud.

And Heaven is very near.

For this is worship native as the air, wide as the wind, and poignant as the rain,

Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.

Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!

Peking