Choy’s of Frith Street

A couple of photographs showing Choy’s Chinese Restaurant on Soho’s Frith Street – the street shot showing Choy’s alongside Parmigiani’s Italian deli and the Cote D’Azur restaurant is from 1956 while the close up shot is from the early 1960s. Choy’s was often regarded as one of the best Chinese restaurants in London after the war – along with the actor Ley On’s place over on Wardour Street and, perhaps slightly bizarely, a Chinese restaurant up on Tottenham Court Road run by the boxer Freddie Mills and actor Andy ho (which is a whole other, very messy, story)! Choy’s got great reviews – Cue: The Weekly Magazine of New York Life described it as the best Chinese food in London in 1955 with “world famous egg-foo-ying”. In 1958 Fodor’s described Choy’s as the best Chinese food in Britain and praised its “authentic Oriental atmosphere”. Additionally, and unlike most Chinese restaurants of the pre-war and immediate post-war era Choy’s was licensed and Fodor’s considered them to have a good cellar. They were open noon till 11pm including on Sundays in the late 1950s (which was quite something!).

Photo by Daily Mail/REX – Corner of Old Compton Street and Frith Street, Soho, 1956

Did Japan Try to Buy Macao in 1935?

Did the Japanese try to buy Macao in 1935? a Hong Kong-based stringer (looking for a quick pay day maybe?) for the London Daily Express caught the whiff of a story that Tokyo was willing to offer a million bucks (which would be about US$18million today I think – quite a bargain!) for the Portuguese territory. A further follow up story reported that a Japanese delegation was on its way to Lisbon to make the offer to the Portuguese government. Another journalist, digging a little deeper, discovered that a major stumbling block was that China had to give its approval to any sale. Now those that hate Chiang Kai-shek would probably argue that he’d take the deal and the money and buy the wife a new frock; others might suggest it would never be approved. Still others thought that, as Japan was massing troops across Asia and looked likely to attack (as it did a couple of years later), perhaps Portugal/China should sell while the going was good!

But it seems Portugal said no to the offer, if indeed it ever was really made….However, there was the desire by Tokyo to buy, or more likely try to lease, Macao as an air base or at least to have landing rights. Pan-American Airways was trying to negotiate a similar deal with Macao being the eastern end of its soon-to-be inaugurated China Clipper service. The Pan-American deal never materialised either eventually.

A Macanese street – apparently not for sale

Michael Meyer on In Manchuria – London 15/2/16 – SOAS

Monday, 15 February 2016

Orwell’s Unfinished Novel of the East

I’ve been reading, and hugely enjoying, DJ Taylor’s The Prose Factory: Literary Life in Britain Since 1918. Among the nuggets to be picked out is one about George Orwell’s last planned novel, of which only ‘fragments’ remain. Orwell of course served in the British Colonial Police in Burma, an experience that resulted in an outpouring of work (Burmese Days obviously as well as several short stories and a number of non-fiction articles critical of the British Empire in the Far East). Orwell was also a fan, as a boy, of Arnold Bennett, HG Wells and Somerset Maugham and planned a novel in their style. Shortly before his death in 1950, he was working on a new novel….’a rather old-fashioned piece about a young man coming back from the East in the 1920s: a trajectory that exactly parallels Orwell’s own return from Burma in 1927.’ Sadly it was never completed.

Orwell’s passport photo from his Burma Days – sporting a moustache style that would soon go decidedly out of fashion

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – 16/2/16 – News and Censorship in Wartime Shanghai: From the Archives of the Great Northern Telegraph Company

Tuesday, 16th February 2016
7:00 pm – 9:00 pmTavern at the Radisson Xingguo Hotel

News and Censorship in Wartime Shanghai: From the Archives of the Great Northern Telegraph Company

Speaker: Daqing Yang (George Washington University Visiting Scholar, Fudan University)

It is often said that truth is the first casualty of war. With the advance in communications technology and the rise of mass media, governments’ motivation and ability to influence news reporting became much greater. One hundred years ago, the Great War (1914-1918) was the first modern war of information and propaganda.

As the centre of international news in East Asia, Shanghai naturally became a battleground of information warfare shortly after Japanese forces invaded in autumn 1937. Despite the absence of a war declaration, Japanese military exercised belligerent rights by censoring news telegrams transmitted through foreign communications companies in Shanghai. Tapping the archives of such a company for the first time this talk reveals the hitherto unknown story of news and censorship, and explores their implications for the war and society.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Daqing Yang is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, where he teaches modern Japanese history. A native of China, Professor Yang graduated from Nanjing University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His research interests include the Japanese empire, World War II, as well as memory and reconciliation. His book, Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945, was published in 2011. His co-edited works include Communication under the Sea (2006) and Toward a History Beyond Borders: Contentious Issues in Sino-Japanese Relations (2012). In 2015 he was interviewed in the Shanghai Media Group’s documentary on World War II, Another Battleground.

The Great China vs USA Productivity Debate – 1912

This debate never goes away!! In 1912 the China Press was a new English language newspaper established in Shanghai only the year before by Americans from St Louis. The American press was keen to compare productivity….and here’s one way they framed the argument….

USS Pittsburgh Heads to Shanghai, 1929

The USS Pittsburgh hit rough seas sailing from Guam to Shanghai in early 1929. The Pittsburgh was the flagship of the United States Asiatic Fleet – seen below in 1927 (note Chinese soldiers aboard) and at anchor in Shanghai.

1957’s Flight to Hong Kong and Ad Typos

Not much recalled my fans of movies featuring China is 1956’s Flight to Hong Kong. It’s actually not that bad. A white guy raised on the streets of Macao by Mama Lin becomes a diamond smuggler, falls in love and double crosses his gang to get the girl in San Francisco. She gives him the brush off, the police and his old gang are after him so he heads back to Macao (on a flight to Hong Kong – hence the title). Rory Calhoun, a tough guy actor not much remembered now, is the lead with Barbara Rush, a real beauty also not much remembered now, as the dame. Hawaiian-born Soo Yong played Mama Lin and you’ll probably know her from Flower Drum Song or Love is a Many Splendoured Thing. Someone at the ad agency though wasn’t too geographically bright though as somehow Macao came out as ‘Macoa’!

The movie came with a nice tagline – “Filmed in the sin capitals of the world!” and locations did actually include Hong Kong, Macao, Tokyo and San Francisco. Really this is the major reason to watch if you want to see those places in 1956.

Lobby poster

Soo Yong and Rory Calhoun

bar life

a beggar kid who actually says “No papa, no mama… no whiskey soda”

A rather good Chinoiserie bar