John P. Marquand on Shanghai, 1935

I blogged about John P. Marquand’s 1935 novel Ming Yellow a while back (here). Though nobody much reads them nowadays and their reputation has been unfairly tarnished by the rather daft yellowface films with Peter Lorre, Marquand’s series of Mr. Moto books are actually very good and insightful reads on the situation between America and Japan and the state of China in the late 1930s. You dismiss them as simple pulp or as racist at your peril! Here is Marquand on Shanghai in 1935’s Your Turn, Mr. Moto, the first book in the series (of six)….

“I doubt if any city in the world is more amazing than Shanghai, where the culture of the East and West has met to turn curiously into something different than East and West; where the silver and riches of China are hoarded for safety; where opera-bouffe Oriental millionaires drive their limousines along the Bund; where the interests of Europe meet the Orient and clash in a sparkle of uniforms and jewels, where the practical realities of western industrialism meet the fatality of the East…Believe me, I repeat, anything can happen in Shanghai, from a sordid European intrigue to a meeting with a prince.”

Accommodating Reform: International Hotels and Architecture in China, 1978-1990 – Beijing till 23/10

While this period is a bit modern for me anyone who spent anytime in China between 1978 and 1990 will know the crucial role hotels played in life – food, bars, temporary homes, a book or magazine once in while, foreign newspapers occasionally, meeting spots. So Accommodating Reform: International Hotels and Architecture in China, 1978-1990 should be interesting. Anyway, more details here of the exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and a slideshow to tempt….

Looking back at China’s early modern hotels also show me two things – a) of course just how much cities like Shanghai and Beijing have developed (below is the Portman shortly after completion in the early 1990s) and b) just how ugly and badly designed they could be (below is the Portman shortly after completion in the early 1990s)…

ChinaRhyming’s French Week #5: Man’s Fate – Andre Malraux’s Shanghai of the Absurd

A few older pieces of mine that, I think, have some merit and may be useful to those researching China fell out of copyright recently. So I’ve repackaged them for Kindle in the hope of making a few pennies to contribute towards continued research costs. I live from writing so a small charge seems justified I think. Anyway, Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate  (La Condition Humaine) remains the greatest novel of Shanghai and in need of constant re-reading and consideration – so here’s my tuppence ha’penny worth…on Amazon UK and Amazon US for less than a quid or a buck….

ChinaRhyming’s French Week #4: The Black Cat Bar on Avenue Roi Albert

What would a China Rhyming French Week be without a former Frenchtown boîte? A disgrace, of course. So here’s the Black Cat, a “charming” little bar on the Avenue Roi Albert (now rather less romantically Shaanxi Road South). Of course Black Cat bars proliferate wherever the French gather – the heritage of the Chat Noir in Montmatre and its bohemian gatherings has lived long…and long may it continue to do so.

‘Open all night’ sounds good though, as does ‘foreign hostesses’ (White Russians of course we can safely assume). However I’m afraid I know nothing of the lyric tenor capabilities of Fred Rink or the piano abilities of Ferry Klein, so can’t recommend them wholeheartedly.

ChinaRhyming’s French Week #3: Christiane Fournier & Voila Magazine on Shanghai in 1932

Voila magazine, February 6th edition, 1932 (picked up on a junk stall in a Bordeaux flea market last year). Voila was fast into print concerning the January 28th Incident in Shanghai, with a lot of background. The article and several of the photographs were by the French journalist Christiane Fournier. Fournier, born in Dieppe in 1899, spent a lot of time in both Shanghai, China and French Indo-China. She was a novelist as well as a journalist – among her books were  the controversial Homme Jaune et femme blanche (Yellow Man and White Woman), the story of a mixed marriage, in 1933 Bébé Colonial in 1935. She had a tendency to romanticise rural life in China and South East Asia, but was also observant regarding the foreign communities of the region – she was quick to point out that by the 1930s any European wearing a pith helmet was already considered a cliche and hopelessly out of date in terms of fashion.

Fournier is always interesting to read. In 1936 she was a founder of Perspectives Occidentales sur l’Indochine, published out of Saigon. It lasted until 1938. Fournier had studied philosophy in Paris and then in Ohio. she married an army officer who was posted to Indochina and lived in Saigon, teaching and writing. She contributed to Voila, but also to Le Monde and other French publication. She returned to France with her husband in 1938. I believe Fournier died in 1980.

(BTW: several of the other photos in the article are by Heinz von Perckhammer, an Austro-Hungarian photographer who is himself an interesting character – imprisoned by the Japanese during WW1 and the Siege of Tsingtao, afterwards he remained in China making his name photographing nudes in Macao brothels, as well as some good street scenes of Peking. He went back to Germany and became a photographer for the Waffen-SS in WW2 and so is, for obvious reasons, rather persona non grata these days)

ChinaRhyming’s French Week #2: The Boxers are Coming – Le Petit Parisien, October 1898

Picked up in a French junk shop for a few of those odd Euro thingies recently, the October 16th 1898 edition of Le Petit Parisien….Revoltes mis au pilori avoir attaque des Europeens (my schoolboy French translation being: ‘Revolutonaries are put on the pillory for attacking Europeans’).

The newspaper is referring of course to the 1898 Boxer Rebellion and the events in early October 1898 when a group of Boxers attacked the Christian community of Liyuantun village where a temple had been converted into a Catholic church and various other uprisings and slaughters. Paris got the news fast it seemed and rushed into print with this illustration on the cover. DEspite being put in the stocks, as illustrated, the Boxer Rebellion only gathered pace until Charlton Heston and David Niven sorted it out – or something like that!

ChinaRhyming’s French Week #1 – Shanghai’s Quai de France, 1932

A picture from the French magazine Voila of Shanghai’s Quai de France (the French Bund or now Zhongshan No.2 Road East) from the Gutzlaff Tower. The Quai is now not nearly so busy of course, the buildings along the Quai are all gutted with just one or two poor restorations and the Gutzlaff Signal Tower was moved 23m north to its current location in 1993 and cladded with white tiles in 1999 – nice to see the original (or at least the third incarnation of the Tower, after two previous towers from 1865 and 1884, completed in 1907. Although in the French Concession the tower in its present form was built by the Dutch (and is about the Netherlands only contribution to Shanghai’s architectural heritage).

For some reason the invariably questionable Wikipedia has the Tower labelled as art-deco. Being constructed in 1907 this is of course nonsense, though the more recent cladding and painting might indicate an attempt to art-deco-ise the structure. Those of long enough vintage will remember that it was the Police Station for the Bund from the 1950s through to the early 1990s, then, around 1993, hosted the Bund Exhibition and is now, I think, a cafe of some sort.

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – Cosmopolitanism at Dunhuang: Two 6th century Buddhist Grottoes – 24/9/16

Cosmopolitanism at Dunhuang: Two 6th century Buddhist Grottoes

Among the nearly 500 Dunhuang grottoes, two caves in particular stand out. Dating from the 6^th century, Mogao caves #249 and #285 are unique for their remarkable synthesis of images and concepts. Here Indian deities blend seamlessly with Chinese bronze-age motifs and Daoist immortals that are in turn peppered with themes from classical Greece and Rome, all of which is framed by Buddhist goals of transcendence. Dr. Neil Schmid explores how these seemingly disparate cultural elements came together coherently for the patrons and donors who created these shrines — and how these two grottoes are striking testaments to the eddies and flows of culture and ideas that swept across Eurasia during the early medieval period resulting in remarkably sophisticated and cosmopolitan creations along the Silk Road.

WHAT:Cosmopolitanism at Dunhuang: Two 6th century Buddhist Grottoes
WHEN:Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016 from 7:30-9:00 PM
WHERE:The Courtyard Institute,  #28 Zhonglao Hutong, Dongcheng
COST:RMB 50
RSVP:events@rasbj.org and please write “Dunhuang” in the subject header

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Neil Schmid is a specialist in Chinese Buddhism and Dunhuang Studies. After completing an M.Phil at the École pratique des Hautes Études in Paris and his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at UNC, Duke, and Penn, publishing on Chinese Buddhism, art, andDunhuang. Neil is currently Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture in Asia, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and as of 2016 Guest Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Vienna.