Finding Kukan – American Screenings this April

for anyone who doesn’t know the story or hasn’t heard of this great documentary…

Filmmaker Robin Lung

Filmmaker Robin Lung turns detective to uncover the forgotten story of Li Ling-Ai, the un-credited female producer of KUKAN, an Academy Award-winning color documentary about World War II China that has been lost for decades.

In the late 1930s China is in dire straits. The country will collapse under Japan’s military juggernaut if it doesn’t get outside help. Chinese American firebrand Li Ling-Ai jolts Americans into action with a new medium — 16mm Kodachrome color film. She hires photojournalist Rey Scott to travel to China and capture a citizen’s perspective of the war-torn country, including the massive bombing of the wartime capital Chungking (now Chongqing). Their landmark film KUKAN screens for President Roosevelt at the White House, is called “awesome” by the New York Times, and receives one of the first Academy Awards for a feature documentary in 1942. Why have we never heard of Li Ling-Ai? And why have all copies of KUKAN disappeared? Filmmaker Robin Lung goes on a 7-year quest to find the answers.

There’s a trailer here

And details of upcoming screenings in Chicago and Los Angeles in April here…

Demolishing Dalian – A Long-running Story

The Guardian ran a story the other day, by Francesca Perry, on a new wave of architectural heritage destruction in Dalian. Sadly Dalian’s gradual architectural demolition is long running and all-encompassing (housing, shops, hotels, entire streets) not withstanding some attempts at a sort of Disneyfication of “Russian” streets and plenty of facadicide. It’s also been the case that where attempts at preservation or refurbishment have been tried they have not been well executed. The now disgraced Bo Xilai, when mayor of Dalian (1993-2000), liked (as part of his self-glorification campaign) to have it regularly reported that he was restoring the city to its former glory. The reality is that, apart from a few poorly executed projects such as Russian Street, he did no such thing and indeed quite the opposite.

First off the whole scale destructions of the 2000s – I  would point you to my blog post from February 2009 when I was in Dalian to witness the wholesale destruction of Harbin Jie which, as you can see, was originally a fairly grand street of European style villas. This was not simply one street but about half a dozen similar streets – a few showcase examples may remain but the cluster of excellent houses has been obliterated.

Harbin Jie coming down in early 2009

Secondly to the poor quality of preservation/refurbishment in Dalian – there are many examples of poor and shoddy preservation but here is a blog post from a visit to the city in August 2009 when there was a spate of replacing the elegant red roof tiles on many buildings (including on the show piece Zhongshan Square/Bankers Circle) with poor quality plastic imitations. This was accompanied by the almost wholesale ripping out of original Crittal (most probably manufactured at Crittal’s Shanghai factory) or iron window frames and their replacement with architecturally incorrect and vile uPVC (the tendency to replace Crittal, wood and iron window frames with uPVC is, i know, a global scourge of bad taste and poor refurbishment). How well these tiles have lasted I cannot say, but even from a distance they look horrid compared to the originals, which were easy enough to replace with similar.

plastic tile replacements on the CITIC Building, Zhongshan Square, Dalian in 2009

So while there is still a lot to fight to preserve in Dalian, we should also remember that the city has, sadly, suffered a good quarter century of destruction already.

Crime and the City – My New Series on Literary Hub

Apologies for self-promotion….

Herewith begins a new fortnightly series I’m writing for the Literary Hub – Crime & the City – we start with Amsterdam….but, you won’t be surprised to hear, Asian cities will feature quite prominently as the months pass…..

Tsui Kwo Yin – What a wedding gift! – a cloak of Tibetan goat

The late Qing Dynasty Chinese diplomat Tsui Kwo Yin (Cui Guoyin) is not well remembered by China. He is seen as ineffectual at best and actually harmful to the cause of China at worst. Tsui was a senior diplomat though, representing China in major countries such as America, Japan and Peru. However, his English language skills were not deemed sufficient to really get his points across to the American media at a time when China sought to both protect its countrymen against discrimination and voice its disapproval of the Chinese Exclusion Act.  He is also criticised for being bad at small talk (silly, but probably quite a useful skill for a diplomat) and a bit of an introvert. But this is a slightly different and more positive anecdote…from Juliet Nicolson’s A House Full of Daughters about her mother, grandmother (Vita Sackville West), great grandmother (the Victoria noted below) and great-great grandmother, the Spanish dancer and beauty Pepita.

In 1892 Victoria West (below) was married to Lionel Sackville-West. Victoria’s parentage is a tricky business (to complicated to go into fully here – I’d suggest reading A House Full of Daughters) but she had spent time in Washington DC in the 1880s when her father (also called Lionel Sackville-West – the uncle of the Lionel above and so they were first cousins, which was generally acceptable then) was British Ambassador to the USA. She was very popular, her looks and character much admired (she was reputedly proposed to at least 25 times by many famous men) and obviously also, along with her father, well-remembered.

So well-remembered that Tsui Kwo Yin sent her a wedding present from Washington to the Sackville-West family estate of Knole (in Sevenoaks, Kent). What he actually sent was a cloak of Tibetan goat. I don’t know whatever happened to that cloak (perhaps Juliet Nicolson knows?) but what a grand gift!! A nice gesture from someone rather written out of Qing-era diplomatic history now…

Here we have Minister Tsui himself, illustrated shortly after his Ambassadorship in Washington finished (1893) and himself and his retinue departing America for China….

Chinese Labour Corps Project Launch Event – 19th April 2017 – SOAS, London

Early Photographs of Hong Kong 1860-1927 – from 30/3 to 29/4 – Hong Kong

Early Photographs of Hong Kong 1860 – 1927

a collection of original photographs

including a selection of fine original panoramas

of the waterfront and the harbour

 

Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival – 9-26 May 2017

Here’s the programme for the 2017 Asia House Literary Festival this May in London with a bunch of good events (including me with Suki Kim on North Korea – more to follow on that….

Details of all events here. China Rhymers will probably be most interested in Xiaolu Guo on her new autobiography; Choo Waihong and Isabel Hilton on the Mosu and Zhang Lijia on Shenzhen hookers!

Sincere – “Shop Where You Save” – 1930

This advertisement for Sincere Department Store is from 1930 though the store had already been open for over a decade. Of course the building is still there on Nanjing Road, though (like so much along Nanjing Road) has never recovered its former glory.