Spring 1925, the weather’s getting warmer and Wallis is living at #4 Shih Chia (Shijia) Hutong with Herman and Kitty Rogers. Here she’s sitting in the courtyard reading a newspaper (Peking News, Peking Daily News, Peking & Tientsin Times?) on some nice rattan furniture….. And is that an ash tray on the other chair?
If you haven’t gotten along to see Shanghai Dolls yet I urge you to…. details/tickets etc here…
When two penniless actresses meet in Shanghai at auditions for Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, they quickly become inseparable. But as political upheaval rips through China, their tumultuous friendship will alter not only the course of their lives, but the course of history. One will become China’s first female director. The other, the architect of the Cultural Revolution.
Amy Ng’s newest play looks at the untold story of two of the most influential women in Chinese history – Madame Mao and Sun Weishi – and how the personal truly is political.
And some nice background music as the audience wait for the play to start….
Talking to Phil Craig on the Scandal Mongers podcast about 1945 in China/Hong Kong & the fate of empire – the quiet dissolution of International Shanghai & the Treaty Ports vs the reestablishment of British rule in Hong Kong – Churchill waved the former through but freaked out about the chances of the latter not happening – click here
Heads Up: i’ll be at the Felixstowe Book Festival talking about Her Lotus Year – 28/06/2025 – the amazing thing about UK lit fests is undoubtedly the incredible venues – here Felixstowe’s Harvest House – click here for tickets and more details
A painting titled Mountains Near Shanghai by Major-General Walter Fane C.B. (British, 1828–1885) – though I have no exact date or which mountains these are I’m afraid – and I’m not entirely sure it isn’t mis-labelled. I assume ‘near’ means at least a few hours away.
Anyway, Fane was a British Indian Army officer on the North West frontier. In 1860 he raised the irregular cavalry force of Fane’s Horse to fight in China during the Second Opium War. He took part in the looting of Peking in October 1860 and the burning on the Yangmingyuan (Old Summer Palace)…. for which he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Bath (hopefully those people involved with China who accept British “honours” and gee-gaws think upon that!). And apparently he still found time to do a bit of painting…
From late December 1924 to the summer of 1925 Wallis lived at #4 Shih-Chia (Shijia) Hutong, the home of Herman and Katherine Rogers. The only pictures we have of Wallis there are outside or sitting on some internal steps so revealing little of the scope and grandeur of the siheyuan (a courtyard surrounded by buildings on all four sides).
However, further along the street lived the Ling family and (then a student at Yenching University), a 24-year-old Ling Shuhua (aka Ling Ruitang, Su Hua Ling), the daughter of a former mayor of Peking and later to become a noted writer, artist and art collector. In her memoir – Ancient Melodies (under the name Su Hua), 1953 and written when she was living in London, Su Hua included this sketch of the Ling family home, which must have been approximate to the Rogers’s courtyard close by. The Ling family courtyard is now the Shijia Hutong Museum.
