Talking of Mollie Panter-Downes and WW2 Asia….

I noted yesterday having just read Mollie Panter-Downes’s wartime London diaries. I wish I’d read them a bit sooner. Last year I wrote a couple of articles for The Diplomat magazine to chime with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Asia and the fact that with the shake out of the leading cliques across the continent in 1945 and the blow done to European colonialism in the region things would never be the same again…The Lingering Ghosts of World War Two in Asia and The Rise of Asia’s Post-War Political Dynasties.

At the time I was keen to try and recall an apposite quote from someone in Europe acknowledging this at the time it was happening. I think I did recall one from Malraux, but Panter-Downes (below) was even more succinct in March 1942….

“Few intelligent Britons think that (post-war) Asia will settle down into the cosy old pattern of Empire, with mad dogs and Englishmen in sole enjoyment of the midday sun.”

Big Burly Wartime Builders Drunk Tea Amid the Chinese Collection at the V&A

I read Mollie Panter-Downes’s wonderful London War Notes over the Christmas break. They are essentially her diary of the war years from London which she wrote for Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker and that became her regular “Letter from London”. One small, fun China anecdote….

Towards the end of 1944, as the war, was starting to draw to a close and the German bombing raids on London slowed, the city was flooded with builders brought in from all over southern England to help get bomb damaged housing habitable again and ease London’s chronic housing shortage. Of course these builders needed to be housed somewhere themselves while they were working in the capital. One designated rest centre for the workers was the rooms of the Chinese collection at the V&A in South Kensington.

Now while you may like to imagine a bunch of burly patriotic builders sitting amid the Ming Vases and Qing urns having a cup of tea and a bacon butty after a hard day putting roofs back on houses they probably didn’t. During World War II most of the V&A’s collections were evacuated, to the Aldwych Underground tunnel, to Montacute House in Somerset and to Westwood Quarry near Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire.

However, the builders in the Chinese rooms may not have been lonely. The RAF had a canteen in the V&A up and running for tired fliers in town and other galleries were home to children evacuated for the duration from Gibraltar. So instead of sitting with a pipe at day’s end ruminating on the dynasties of China the poor blokes were probably kept awake by screaming children running up and down the empty corridors.

And perhaps the V&A was always so safe….

‘The Miraculous History of China’s Two Palace Museums’

The prolific Mark O’Neill has a new book out…. The Miraculous History of China’s Two Palace Museums. There’s a long interview and Q&A with Mark about the book here on the WSJ’s China blog.

And While We’re Talking of Pal Joey, Let’s Remember Judy Dan

Talking of Pal Joey yesterday….Quite a few Chinese-American actors pop up in the film – George Chan played the pianist – it was his last movie and he sadly died shortly after completing filming. Also Jane Chung plays a flower seller that interacts with Sinatra. You can also spot the lovely Judy Dan in a few scenes as the Barbary Coast nightclub hatcheck girl. Judy Dan (Judy Duyu) was actually Shanghai born in 1930 the daughter of film director Dan Duyu and the actress Yin Mingzhu. Dan and Yin were a Shanghai celebrity couple after he made and she starred in Hai Shi, The Sea Oath in 1922, arguably China’s first romance movie. Judy, their daughter was born in 1930…

Dan Duyu

Yin Mingzhu

The family moved to Hong Kong and Judy apprently worked in some capacity for Cathay Pacific where she was talent spotted. She entered and won the Miss Hong Kong competition travelling to America in 1952 to take part in the Miss Universe contest. she was the Third Runner Up. And so a few pics of Judy Dan…

Spotting the Chinoiserie in Pal Joey

George Sidney’s 1957 movie Pal Joey is a classic of course – Frank Sinatra as the rat nightclub host, Rita Hayworth as the stripper turned heiress who takes a shine to him and Kim Novak as the poor naive showgirl who comes to dote on him. It’s also a movie that shows some great exterior shots of the old International Settlement bar and strip joint strip of San Francisco – the name was, so some say, meant to remind sailors of good times they’d had in the Shanghai International Settlement. However, there’s a few other items of interest too..

But the point here is to mention Rita Hayworth’s chinoiserie heavy pad….silk screens, Ming horses, Guangyin statues…..

Rita Hayworth is the former stripper turned millionaire heiress Vera Prentice-Simpson. She lives in a swank pad up on San Fran’s Nob Hill and clearly has an eye for the Chinois…

Team Work in the Flowery Republic – Doing Business in 1913 China as a romantic endeavour

Bizarrely in 1913 the Cincinnati Enquirer Semi-Monthly Magazine decided to include an article on doing business in China by Carl Crow in a special “Romance” issue!! Slightly odd to say the least, as they admit themselves, but apparently

Slightly odd to say the least, as they admit themselves, but apparently Crow managed an article that “reads like a romance” – reaching a bit perhaps…

Anyway, you can decide for yourself. Of course I wouldn’t post anything about doing business in China normally – too, too boring but this is a) by Carl Crow b) oddly billed as a romance and c) from 1913 and d) has some cool artwork on the page….click on the pages and they should enlarge….

A little more on the USPO in Shanghai

I noted the USPO in Shanghai in 1935 was the only overseas PO the USA had at that time. The USPO maintained a United States Postal Agency at the Shanghai American consulate through which Americans could use the US Post Office to send mail to and from the US mainland and US territories. Starting in 1919 the 16 current regular US stamps were overprinted for use in Shanghai with the city’s name, “China”, and amounts double their printed face values.

Fascinating Facts for the New Year – Shanghai – The Home of the Only Overseas US Post Office in 1935

Who knew…