Old Shanghai – A city where men wore skirts and women wore trousers, at least in this photo

One canny photographer got a great shot that ran in many, many newspapers in the early 1920s – Shanghai – with a woman wearing trousers and two men, Scottish soldiers, wearing kilts. This picture ran in newspapers round the world in November 1924.

Now I’m rubbish at uniforms, regiments and all that so perhaps someone more knowledgeable can tell me if these gentleman are i) a Scottish regiment stationed in Shanghai at that time or b) members of the Scottish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps??

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – film showing: “Devils on the Doorstep” with remarks by Matthew Hu – 3/12/16Xinyu

“Devils on the Doorstep(鬼子来了)”a 2000 black comedy directed by Jiang Wen, will be preceded by remarks by Matthew Hu Xinyu. You may know that the movie, set in the waning days of WWII, sparked heated discussion because it underscores common human traits of both Japanese and Chinese. But did you know its most memorable scenes were filmed not far from Beijing in Hebei province? Before the film, Matthew Hu Xinyu, one of Beijing’s top cultural-preservation experts, will identify important examples of ancient Chinese architecture shown in the film.

WHAT: “Devils on the Doorstep” film showing, preceded by remarks by Matthew Hu Xinyu
WHEN: Saturday, Dec. 3 from 6:30 to 9:00 PM
WHERE: The Courtyard Institute, #28 Zhonglao Hutong, Dongcheng District www.courtyardinstitute.com
COST: 30 RMB for RASBJ members; 50 RMB for non-members
RSVP: please email events@rasbj.org and write “Devils” in the subject header

PLEASE NOTE: The black-and-white film, which is 139 minutes long, will be shown in Chinese with English subtitles

Shanghai Zig-Zag Bridge, Tea House and Yu Gardens in the Snow, 1920s

aaahhh lovely – no crowds, no tour groups with yellow baseball caps, no Starbucks, no tour guides with megaphones, but with snow in 1924….appears to be a little bit of restoration going on with some bamboo scaffolding up…

Wartime Macau: Under the Japanese Shadow

This collection, Wartime Macau: Under the Japanese Shadow, is most welcomed by me personally as a subject that has long fascinated. I have, in literary non-fiction style, written about the period myself – most recently in the September 2016 issue of Cha, the online literary journal based in Hong Kong with my piece Strangers on the Praia. Anyway, here are the proper academics weighing in on the subject. There’s a lot about Macao’s wartime history that remains secretive and of potential embarrassment to some of Hong Kong and Macao’s biggest families and companies, so I’m sure there’s still more to come out….

It has intrigued many that, unlike Hong Kong, Macau avoided direct Japanese wartime occupation albeit being caught up in the vortex of the wider global conflict. Geoffrey Gunn and an international group of contributors come together in Wartime Macau: Under the Japanese Shadow to investigate how Macau escaped the fate of direct Japanese invasion and occupation. Exploring the broader diplomatic and strategic issues during that era, this volume reveals that the occupation of Macau was not in Japan’s best interest because the Portuguese administration in Macau posed no threat to Japan’s control over the China coast and acted as a listening post to monitor Allied activities.

Drawing upon archival materials in English, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages, the contributors explain how, under the high duress of Japanese military agencies, the Portuguese administration coped with a tripling of its population and issues such as currency, food supply, disease, and survival. This volume presents contrasting views on wartime governance and shows how the different levels of Macau society survived the war.

Geoffrey C. Gunn is an emeritus professor at Nagasaki University and author of History without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region, 1000–1800.

“Wartime Macau deals with a fascinating and woefully understudied topic. The essays collected here show that there was no singular experience of World War II in Macau; how one experienced the war depended on a complex calculus of ethnicity, class, and connections. And yet, taken together, these experiences shaped the trajectory of the city’s political and social development for decades to come.”
—Cathryn H. Clayton, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

“This book represents a real breakthrough. Previous English-language accounts of Macau during the World War II have focused largely on the activities of the British in this neutral ‘Casablanca’. Drawing extensively on Portuguese, Japanese, and local Macanese sources, Geoffrey Gunn and his team have assembled a far broader picture, revealing the dilemmas and choices of Portugal’s beleaguered colonial government and placing Macau in a geopolitical context that stretched from the Azores to Australia.”
—Philip Snow, author of The Fall of Hong Kong

A Chinese-American Thanksgiving Menu, Reno 1924

Apologies for being a bit late with this but I just came across the Thanksgiving menu offered by the very well known and highly regarded Shanghai Low restaurant in Reno, Nevada in 1924…

ETC Werner on Lin Yutang’s Taipei Bookshelves

Back in 2010 I visited Lin Yutang’s house in Taipei, which is now a museum. I blogged about his Taipei house and noted that ETC Werner’s 1922 classic Myths and Legends of China was on his bookshelf. But, in 2010, I didn’t have a camera phone so I never got a chance to snap it. Recently the excellent writer on matters Chinese Michael Meyer visited the house and he did have a camera phone and got a shot of the book proudly displayed on Lin’s shelves.

Plastic Surgery in Shanghai, 1937 – Mouth Widening and Ear Contouring

The other day I came across two stories on plastic surgery in Shanghai. One just dropped on to my phone courtesy of some newsfeed I don’t want but can’t seem to delete. It was the all-too-familiar Shanghainese love plastic surgery story that anyone interested in China for anything longer than a year or two must be bored with. Then, browsing the archives I came across this story from August 1937 on the vogue for plastic surgery in…Shanghai.

Now some years back I co-wrote a book on obesity in contemporary China, Fat China. In that book is a chapter on extreme dieting, gastric banding, supposed slimming pills and plastic surgery, covering everything from eyes, chins and height to liposuction. But in that research I have to admit I never came across anything about mouth widening and wide mouths being linked to career success??? But apparently that, and having the right contour to your ear, was the key to prosperity!!

China Rhyming on Instagram – Come & Take a Look

Just to let anyone who might be interested know, if you don’t already, that I am uploading a lot of old China photographs, illustrations and drawings to instagram now at oldshanghaipaul – I usually put a few up a day….