All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Here is a class of (not so) happy Chinese girls taking part in an “Occidental” baking class for “Orientals” (so the captions ran back then) run by missionaries at the Moore Memorial Church (now the Mu’en Church on Hankou Road) in Shanghai in 1937…the rolling pins, the bowls, the aprons – it’s as if Mary Berry had come to town!!
The other day I mentioned the various film versions of Somerset Maugham’s 1931 short story Vessel of Wrath. One of those is the 1954 movie The Beachcomber starring Donald Sinden, Glynis Johns and Robert Newton. It isn’t, in my opinion, as good as the earlier version from 1938 with Charles Laughton, not least because the later version moves the action from the Dutch East Indies to the Indian Ocean.
Anyway, it’s a rarely shown film nowadays but, if you happen to be in the UK, it’s on Talking Pictures TV today at 4pm….
The poet, playwright, memoirist and activist Langston Hughes was born this week in 1902. In 1933 he spent three weeks in Shanghai – wandered the city, met some poets, took in the Canidrome Ballroom and recalled his arrival in the city in his memoir I Wonder as I Wander…
Naturally there’s been some moaning and quibbles but generally the reviewers seem to like the new Stephen Knight drama starring Tom Hardy on BBC1, Taboo….I have to confess that I LOVE it personally….here’s the synopsis….
Adventurer James Keziah Delaney, long believed to be dead, returns home to London from Africa in 1814 in order to inherit his late father’s shipping empire. All is not what it seems, however, as Delaney encounters numerous enemies intent on making his life back in the United Kingdom very difficult. Focused on building a shipping empire to rival the imperious East India Company, Delaney’s other wish to seek vengeance for his father’s death means conspiracy, betrayal and bloodshed are also in the cards. As he works to accomplish that, Delaney must also navigate increasingly complex territories in order to avoid his own death sentence.
I make note of the programme here because China Rhymers may like to know that ultimately Delaney’s ambitions, his fights with the perfidious East India Company, the British Government, those pesky American rebels, and all manner of other strange types, are all in the service of securing a monopoly on the tea trade between Canton and the new United States of America….
Talking of publishing pulp version of more serious books yesterday, here’s W. Somerset Maugham’s The Beachcomber. Never heard of it? Not surprising – it’s actually Maugham’s short story Vessel of Wrath (1931), which is to be found in his 1933 collection of short stories Ah King. It is quite a racy story (Maugham did do plenty of racy) about a missionary couple on some remote islands of the Dutch East Indies. they have to suffer a man called Ginger Ted who is a drunk, scourge of the Dutch authorities and a womaniser (cavorting with local women no less!). One of the missionaries, Miss Jones, who obviously hates Ginger Ted, finds herself stuck with him on a broken down boat. She is sure that he will rape her, though in the morning her virtue is intact. Ginger Ted is outraged by the idea that he would have raped her; he never thought about it; it was all in the prim and proper Miss Jones’s mind. Eventually Ted does give up the drink and also comes to God. it’s a good story to contrast with Maugham’s short story Rain (1921) where missionaries and libertines clash with a very different outcome. Two films were made of the book – one in 1938 and another in 1954 and both called The Beachcomber.
Anyway, clearly the idea of a man and woman stuck together for a night in the middle of nowhere appealed to the pulp people who also opted for The Beachcomber rather than The Vessel of Wrath which is a rather obscure Bible reference.
The book was a success to the point that it seems the pulp publishers decided to pulp the entire Ah King collections of short stories as all rather ribald and saucy (which, read in a certain light, several of them indeed are)…
Robert Ford (1923- 2013) was a radio operator and British diplomat who worked in Tibet in the late 1940s. He was one of the few Westerners to be appointed by the last independent Tibetan government before the 1950 Chinese communist takeover. Ford was arrested in 1950 by the advancing Chinese army, accused him of espionage and spreading anti-communist propaganda. He spent nearly 5 years in jail, in constant fear of being executed, and was subjected to interrogation. Only in 1954 was he allowed to send a letter to his parents. At the end of 1954 his trial was held and he was sentenced to ten years jail. He was eventually released and expelled in 1955. In 1994, he declared that during the five years he spent in Tibet, he “had the opportunity to witness and experience at first hand the reality of Tibetan independence.” In 1957, he published a book, Captured in Tibet (U.S. title Wind Between the Worlds), about his experience.
What I didn’t know is that later, to reach a wider audience, a pulp cover version of the book was also published….
Browsing copies of various Pearl S Buck novels the other day I thought there must be a Phd for someone in differing representations of Chinese women on her covers….
In the 1930s The Shanghai Times newspaper ran a nice sideline in custom printing – stationery, business cards etc etc….all out of their print works down on old Shanghai’s “Newspaper Row” at the Bund end of Avenue Edward VII (Yanan Road). Be wary though….The Shanghai Times, though English language, was known for its overtly pro-Japanese line was generally considered questionable by most of the foreign press corps.
