All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
My latest bi-monthly column on Macao and popular culture for Macau Closer magazine – Almost nobody reads Nick Carter-Killmaster bookstoday, which is a shame as some of them are pretty good, including the 31st in the series, Killmaster: Macao (1968) by Manning Lee Stokes….
The indefatigable Patrick and Tina at Historic Shanghai have created a wonderful Wallis Simpson in Shanghai walk based on the information in my book, Her Lotus Year. It looks amazing…. Booking information here
Pictures of the tour courtesy of Historic Shanghai
A question for the Macao experts….
The Teatro Apollo on Macao’s Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, close too Senado Square, is well known. Built as a cinema in 1935 with shops and apartments on the front part, and the 1,038-seat auditorium on the ground floor at the rear. It has sadly been messed around with since, but still remains an art-deco treasure of Macao.
However, the other day I came across the Edificio Apolo (one ‘l’) on a back street of the old town. It is a later building, though painted in the light green much beloved of Macao (and now the colour of the newly refurbished and large Hotel Central, also on the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro). I can’t find any information on Edificio Apolo, it’s origins or if there is any relationship to the Teatro Apollo or a quick bit of opportunism by a developer?
MASSIMODECARLO in Tai Kwun is pleased to present Beneath the Golden Canopy, Dominique Fung’s first Hong Kong solo show. With her distinctive blend of historical reference and symbolism, Fung paints a world of contradictions, where grandeur is laced with disquiet, authority is performative, and the artifacts of the past refuse to stay still.
At the heart of this new body of work is Empress Dowager Cixi, a figure long debated in historical narratives. The de facto ruler of China from 1861 until her death in 1908, Cixi has been portrayed in the West as ruthless and manipulative, while in China, her legacy remains contested. Fung does not seek to reclaim Cixi, but instead uses her as a lens to explore power, femininity, and the ways in which history is mediated and mythologized.
More details here….
‘Without radio there is no nation” an RASBJ in-person discussion between John Alekna and Jonathan Cheng of John Alekna’s book, “Seeking News, Making China: The Surprising and Intertwined History of News and Politics in Modern China”
Wednesday Apr. 9 from 7-8 PM Beijing Time – drinks and canapés from 6.30PM
La Maison Lyonnaise 2F, 44 Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing
北京市朝阳区光华路44号（巴西大使馆对面）
Over the last 20 years, developments in communications technology have revolutionised how we receive news, overturning political systems in the process. This phenomenon is hardly new. Interlocking technological, informational, and political transformations have occurred many times in the past. John Alekna traces one example – the history of news in twentieth-century China – to demonstrate how large structural changes in technology and politics are heard and felt. Scrutinising the flow of news to reveal who has power and why, uncovering the connections between different regions, peoples, and social classes, John Alekna weaves together rural and urban history to tell a story of the rise of mass politics in modern China, including the remarkably large role of women.
John Alekna is Assistant Professor of the History of Science at Peking University. His research focuses on information, technology, and the emergence of modernity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Asia. He is currently working on a biography of a Qing scientist-turned-explorer who led an 1879 expedition across the Himalayas into India. At Beida he teaches the History and Philosophy of Science, the History of Science in China, and Information as Material, Theory, and Practice. John Alekna’s book, “Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society” came out in March 2024.
Jonathan Cheng is China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the Journal’s coverage of the world’s second-largest economy across a range of areas including politics, economics, business, technology and society. He oversees a team of more than two dozen correspondents and researchers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore and New York with responsibility for the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
RMB 200 for members of RASBJ and of partner RAS branches, RMB 300 for non-members. Includes a welcome drink and canapés. You may find payment by Alipay easier than by Wechat; you can also pay by credit card.
Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up here
If you’re in, or passing thru, Macao then do visit the Tap Seac Gallery to see Wang Zhengping’s exhibition of b&w photos from Inner Mongolia (part of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival 2025)…until 10/4
So WildChina Travel are arranging an amazing tour this September to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanhaiguan, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the footsteps of Wallis Simpson. We’re staying at heritage hotels all the way, some great dinners are planned, side trips to the Western Hills etc, and guided walks/talks by me & others revealing Wallis’s China as well as my other work (Midnight in Peking, Bloody Saturday, City of Devils). WildChina guides and myself will also offer tours of other sights – Forbidden City, Shamian Island, the Bund, Old Dragon Head Fort, the former concession of Tientsin etc. It’ll be a quite amazing tour I’m sure – more details here…
The other week I got to wander the hutongs around Shijia Hutong (where Wallis lived in 1925) with the amazingly knowledgeable Matthew Hu Xinyi, director of the Shijia Hutong Museum and a dedicated architectural preservationist in Beijing. He pointed out one particular facet of hutong life I was not aware of and that perhaps links to Wallis – horse mounting stones.
Wallis loved to ride, and would regularly take a pony, with her host on Shijia Hutong Herman Rogers, to the Tartar Wall beside the Legation Quarter for a morning ride. Herman had a small stables with several Mongolian ponies at his courtyard home. And there, as Matthew pointed out to me, by the front entrance to several hutongs on Shijia are the horse mounting stones, literally large stones that allow you a little extra height to mount the pony. Most have disappeared over the years, probably becoming an inconvenience to parked cars, but a few remain, such as the one below…
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
