Magic in the Moonlight – now on DVD and with a lovely Chinoiserie opening

Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight has a fun Chinoiserie opening featuring a European dressed as a Celestial Chinese performing magic tricks (Colin Firth). Of course this character Wei Ling Soo is based upon Chung Ling Soo, actually William Ellsworth Robinson, an American magician who worked mostly in Britain before the First World War impersonating a Chinese magician in full mandarin regalia until a catching a bullet trick went wrong and he ended up dead at the Wood Green Empire. I’ve blogged about him repeatedly (just stick Chung Ling Soo in the search box).

Anyway, it’s pleasant Chinois entertainment and interestingly the production designer for the film Anne Seibel has put up some of her designs and sketches for the Chinoiserie portions of the film on line here.

Gaspare Alessandri – Who Once Boxed in Shanghai

Just a little follow up to the article I posted on the near riot at a boxing match at the Canidrome in 1938 between the US Marine Chuck Haines and an Italian Savoy Grenadier. That newspaper article gave the Italian boxer’s name as Daspar Allesandri However, I believe they actually mean Gaspare Alessandri who is listed as a professional Italian boxer, born 1908 (or 1911 or 1912 in some records) in Ancona, and who boxed in Italy (mostly in Rome) between 1932 and 1936. This was presumably before he joined the grenadiers and was shipped out to Shanghai where he boxed for the Italian army. It seems Alessandri lost on the third round of a lightweight fight to Haines. Despite the arguments on the night he probably did – Alessandri’s professional record was won 0-lost 3- drew 2. In Italy he boxed featherweight rather than light. Not exactly stellar. In 1932 Alessandri boxed featherweight for Italy at the Los Angeles Olympics – he beat a French fighter before losing his next two fights to a German and a Swede. I think Alessandri died in 1997 aged a very respectable 89 in Rome.

The Canidrome

Meeting the Love of Your Life on the Bubbling Well Road

Sooo romantic – from a 1936 pulp story about a man who met the love of his life while shopping on Shanghai’s Bubbling Well Road….

More Troublesome Italians Rioting in Shanghai

I blogged recently about Italian soldiers and nationalists rioting at the Isis cinema in Hongkew in 1937….seems they kept getting into trouble…here they are rioting again in 1938. This time the problem was a boxing match at the old Canidrome Gardens when Chuck Haines, a member of the US Fourth Marines stationed in Shanghai, decked Daspar Allesandri, an Italian Savoy Grenadier stationed in the city, in the third round. Seems the Italians weren’t happy! They may have had reason to be pissed off – it was regularly alleged that fights were fixed at the Canidrome. On the other hand the Marines famously had some tasty boxers in their ranks. Seems the Garde Municipal Frenchtown flics waded in and stopped a full scale riot occurring….Probably they all departed for Blood Alley, got drunk and then finished off their arguments out in the street.

The Asia Literary Review – Spring 2015

Well done to Martin Alexander and Phillip Kim in Hong Kong for saving and bringing back the Asia Literary Review….a job well done….The Spring 2015 issue is out now and all details of contents and how to order are here….

Shanghai Taxi Dancers in 1949; Shanghai Auto Show Girls in 2015 – Feel the Rhyme!

File this one under the ever more packed heading ‘nothing new under the sun’ – models who have traditionally worked the Shanghai Auto Show went on strike recently after they were banned from their usual activities of causing a scrum of males to bash their camera phones in excitement as they drape themselves over unexciting Volkswagens.

Back in 1949 Time photographer hit the ‘Hai and found taxi-dancers from the city’s nightclubs and dancehalls up in arms and protesting at the curtailment of their long-established business….

In both cases much attention was drawn to the incidents and disputes presumably as both auto show models in 2015 and taxi dancers in 1949 are rather more interesting to look at than coal miners or textile factory workers?

Russell & Co Announce Formation – April 1824

At the end of April 1824 Samuel Russell and Philip Ammidon announced to the readers of the New York Evening Post that they had founded their business at Canton dealing in silks, tea and opium. By the 1840s they had risen to be the largest American trading Hong in Canton. Russell himself withdrew from the company and returned to America in 1836. The firm finally folded in 1891.

When an Acre of the Bund was a mere four million bucks

The idea that the West is obsessed with ridiculously high property prices in Shanghai – “it’s a bubble”, “no it’s not”, “yes it is” – and that they are indeed ridiculously high is, of course, nothing new. The American newspapers in 1935 were incredulous that an acre of land on the Shanghai Bund was worth four million dollars!! Of course four mill wouldn’t get you much these days and yuo can’t buy land anymore anyway….