Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity

The intro to Qin Shao’s book may slightly overstate Shanghai’s importance in terms of an international financial centre, but that doesn’t detract from the awful destruction wrought upon the city by communist politicians, property developers and architectural vandals….

Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity in recent decades, now ranking with New York and London as a hub of global finance. But that transformation has come at a grave human cost. This compelling book is the first to apply the concept of domicide-the eradication of a home against the will of its dwellers-to the sweeping destruction of neighborhoods, families, and life patterns to make way for the new Shanghai. Here we find the holdouts and protesters, men and women who have stubbornly resisted domicide and demanded justice. Qin Shao follows, among others, a reticent kindergarten teacher turned diehard petitioner; a descendant of gangsters and squatters who has become an amateur lawyer for evictees; and a Chinese Muslim who has struggled to recover his ancestral home in Xintiandi, an infamous site of gentrification dominated by a well-connected Hong Kong real estate tycoon. Highlighting the wrenching changes spawned by China’s reform era, Shao vividly portrays the relentless pursuit of growth and profit by the combined forces of corrupt power and money, the personal wreckage it has left behind, and the enduring human spirit it has unleashed.

The Shanghai Mansion Nobody Wanted

1937 Shanghai and gangsters running wild in the chaos of the Japanese attack on the city – kidnapping, extorting, selling drugs, robbing banks and post offices, raiding rich homes – but here’s a novel one I’ve never heard of before – planting a bomb in a house, asking for $30,000 and if you don’t pay up exploding it. It was probably a ruse – a chancer’s chance but seems nobody wanted to take the risk that it just might be for real and so the mansion (address sadly omitted – though, Shanghai being Shanghai, probably long bulldozed to make way for a crap apartment building or shit shopping mall) stayed empty, unlet, unsold and unlived in….

Among the Celestials: China in Early Photographs

Somehow missed this delightful collection of photographs of old China when it came out – Among the Celestials –

The flourishing of photography as a medium in the mid-19th century coincided with a rise in curiosity about China on the part of the Western world. As the number of foreigners living and travelling in China increased, early photographs of China were taken by and for an international audience. Among the Celestials assembles 250 fascinating images of China in the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th, captured by the Western camera lens. The photographs portray the gritty side of the country as well as stunning views of palaces, temples, harbours and gardens. This juxtaposition of the sordid and the serene provides a multidimensional picture of China’s physical and social landscape before Mao Zedong’s ascent to power changed the country forever. The photographs, many published here for the first time, are both beautiful and moving, and together offer a new understanding of a social and cultural history associated with a time of significant historical change.

Shanghai’s War-time Collaborators – Posies and Pistols in 1941

China is to have a two day public holiday this September to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. Of course the Communist Party’s role in WW2 has been massively overblown, the KMT’s downplayed and the interesting question of collaboration and Wang Ching-wei ignored completely. Came across this great picture of the inauguration in early 1941 of Chen Kung-Po (Chen Gongbo – far right in overcoat) as the Mayor of Shanghai in the puppet collaborationist government of Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jingwei). At the time Nationalist hit squads were highly active in Shanghai and had already assassinated a number of leading collaborators. Chen was a major target and so his bodyguard carry flowers in one hand and a pistol at the ready in the other. Events eventually caught up with Chen and he was executed in 1946 in Suzhou. Unrepentant, his final words to the firing squad were “Soon, I will be reunited with Wang Ching-wei in the next world”.

Attention Chinese Ladies of 1936 – Beware Hair Curling!! It’s “immodest”

A little known danger – hair curling – according to a campaign launched in Southern China in 1936. Yes hair curling is “immodest” and hair curlers are a “device of the devil”. Sadly no more details on the Shanghai cabaret dancer who burned to death while having her hair curled.

Culture and Commerce in Conrad’s Asian Fiction

Andrew Francis’s study of interactions and networks concerning the Far East trade in Conrad’s work looks interesting….

Andrew Francis’ Culture and Commerce in Conrad’s Asian Fiction is the first book-length critical study of commerce in Conrad’s work. It reveals not only the complex connections between culture and commerce in Conrad’s Asian fiction, but also how he employed commerce in characterization, moral contexts, and his depiction of relations at a point of advanced European imperialism. Conrad’s treatment of commerce – Arab, Chinese and Malay, as well as European – is explored within a historically specific context as intricate and resistant to traditional readings of commerce as simple and homogeneous. Through the analysis of both literary and non-literary sources, this book examines capitalism, colonialism and globalization within the commercial, political and social contexts of colonial Southeast Asia.

When an American VP Could Give a Chinese Diplomat a Gift that Cost Less Than a Dollar

John Nance Gardner was the rather overlooked Vice President during FDR’s three terms – with FDR such a commanding personality perhaps that’s no surprise and he argued with FDR a lot and so got rather sidelined though was often referred to as “Mr Common Sense”. In 1935 FDR sent Garner on an extended tour of the Far East with stops in the Philippines, Japan and China where he stayed in Shanghai for a time. Apparently after meeting Chinese senior officials in Shanghai he declared “Now, these are our kind of people.”

Which brings us to the dinner he had attended clearly by a senior Chinese diplomat and his wife. The diplomat’s wife admired Garner’s watch and he magnanimously gave it to her. However, so the Charleston Daily Mail reports, it only cost 98-cents. And so the question – was Garner a tight-wad who refused to pay more than a dollar for a watch or just an abstemious public official. We might also ask whether the current VeeP wears a dollar watch? I doubt it…and also perhaps what the reaction of a senior Chinese official to be presented by Joe Biden with a 98-cent watch in these days of craven grabbing of Rolexes etc would signal ?

VP Garner

Asia House Lit Fest 2015 – License to Thrill – Is Asia the perfect setting for the modern day thriller? 11/5/15

May already, and it’s the annual Asia House Literary Festival in London from the 7th to the 18th…For ChinaRhymers there’s some good events including Alex Monro on his book The Paper Trail, Amitav Ghosh launching the third and final installment in his Ibis trilogy, Flood of Fire, writers on the Silk Road and my good self talking Chinese thrillers with Adam Brookes and A Yi….full details here and more on my event below….

Is Asia the perfect setting for the modern day thriller? To mark the launch of the second instalment of Adam Brookes’ Asian spy series (out in June 2015), the Washington-based journalist will offer a persuasive argument that it indeed is. Brookes will be joined on stage by acclaimed Chinese writer A Yi, whose thriller A Perfect Crime has recently been translated, and Paul French, author of the bestselling page-turner Midnight in Peking. A highly entertaining and adrenalin filled night, where the lines between fact and fiction will blur. A Yi’s appearance has been supported by a PEN Promotes! Award from English PEN. More details and tix here