The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps

Benjamin Olshin’s The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps looks like a read to sink your teeth into one weekend…

In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo. While Polo’s writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Now, there’s new evidence connected to this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself. In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin’s own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo’s daughters – whose names appear on several of the artifacts – preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? If the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why? Regardless of the maps’ provenance, Olshin’s tale takes readers on a journey into Italian history, the age of exploration, and the wonders of cartography.

The Forbidden City Nightclub, San Francisco 1943-1945

A while back I posted some old postcards of San Francisco’s Chinatown from the 1930s. The place was a host of nightclubs and entertainment places run by China (see also Lisa See’s new book China Dolls). Thanks then to the reader who sent me a picture of the staff and beautiful showgirls of the Forbidden City Nightclub in San Francisco from 1943-1945. The Forbidden City was at 363 Sutter Street (now renumbered 369). For those interested in who performed there and more information there’s a host of detail here. One thing I do notice, seeing the flyer below, is that dinner was served at 5.30 with the first show at 7.30 – very Chinese dining times!!

Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and the Great War, A Q&A with Dr. Anne Witchard

A link to a recent Q&A with Anne Witchard on her new Penguin Special, England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and the Great War, for the Los Angeles Review of Books China Blog that may interest China Rhyming readers….

Learning Shanghainese in 1869

Came across Mr Joseph Edkins of the London Missionary Society’s Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect the other day, published in 1869 by Presbyterian Mission Press in Shanghai. It’s handily also online here…. it must have been quite popular as it was republished in 1913. Its popularity was probably mostly due to the fact that Shanghai Municipal Council recommended it as the best study aid to their staff needing to learn Shanghainese – as Municipal coppers and other staff got extra wages if they mastered the dialect, and there wasn’t all that much do in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century, learning Shanghaihua was probably quite popular.

Lawrence of China – T.E.’s Missionary Brother

Anthony Sattin’s The Young T.E. Lawrence has just been published reminding me that Lawrence of Arabia’s older brother was a missionary in China. Montagu Robert Lawrence (1885-1971) was a Medical Missionary in China, first with the China Inland Mission and later with the Church Missionary Society. Robert was definitely more influenced by their mother’s evangelical Christian beliefs that his brothers. Robert had served durin the First World War and then embarked on the missionary route. He was accepted into the CIM in 1921 and on arrival in China trained during 1922 in language studies in Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), Kiangsu (Jiangsu) before being stationed at the Paoning Memorial Hospital in Szechuan. His mother, Sarah, joined him there in 1923. In 1927, due to the dangers associated with increasing attacks on missionaries and other westerners in western China, Robert and his mother returned to England, part of the evacuation of more than half of the CIM staff in China at the time.

However, Robert returned to China in 1932 working as a locum for Dr J. H. Lechler at the Church Missionary Society hospital in Mienchu (a small missionary post in Szechuan), accompanied again by his mother (who was then 70 years old). In 1935, as the Lawrence’s were leaving China via a voyage down the Yangtze, they received news of the death of T. E. Lawrence in a motorcycle accident in England.

Jing Jiang Hotel Luggage Label

These days they seem to prefer Jin Jjiang to Jing Jiang but the hotel’s the same, of course originally Sir Victor Sassoon’s Tudor style Cathay Complex on Rue Cardinal Mercier (now Maoming Road). But, for a time there, after 1949 and before they regulated the spellings it was the Jing Jiang…..

A Chinese Diplomat on the Cap D’Antibes – Who Was It?

A little mystery I’m sure someone out there knows the answer to….

I just read Calvin Tomkins short and perfectly formed biography of the Murphy family, their interconnections with everyone from the Fitzgeralds to Picasso, Dos Passos, Diaghilev, Archibald McLeish etc on the French Riviera – Living Well is the Best Revenge.

In 1923 (or possibly 1924) the Murphy’s went to Cap D’Antibes, invited by Cole Porter. They liked it and stayed in the Hotel Du Cap run by Antoine Sella and his family. The hotel usually closed in the hot summer months (the Cap was not yet the fashionable resort it would later become) but Gerald Murphy persuaded the owner to stay open with a skeleton staff to accommodate him. It is mentioned that a Chinese family was staying there and were delighted as they also ended up staying for the summer. This family is never named, though other sources say the father was a Chinese diplomat in Europe.

Who were this Chinese family; who was the diplomat??? Anyone know???

RAS Shanghai – Empire of the Son – Japan’s Ultra-Modernism in Manchuria – 14/2/15

 RAS Weekender

Dr. EDWARD DENISON
Empire of the Son – Japan’s Ultra-Modernism in Manchuria