Wallis in Hoje Macao….

Any Portuguese readers – here I am talking Wallis Simpson from Macao!

Hidden Heritage and Marginal Voices in Chinese Diasporas: Opera, Food and Water – April 3 2025, via Zoom

Hidden Heritage and Marginal Voices in Chinese Diasporas: Opera, Food and Water

Thu 3 Apr 2025 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM BST

Join us for an exciting event jointly organised by Hub on Migration, Exile, Languages and Space (HOMELandS) Research Centre and the Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster. The panel brings together expert researchers from different countries and universities who will share with us their most recent research into diasporic Chinese heritage. Based on case studies of Chinese diasporas in Canada, Britain and Macao and through the lens of opera, food and water respectively, their fascinating work unveil the hidden heritage and marginal voices of underrepresented individuals, families and communities, asking new questions on memory, identity and belonging in Chinese diasporas and beyond.

Speakers: Prof. Wing Chung Ng (University of Texas at San Antonio), Dr. Rui Su (Middlesex University) and Dr. Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira (University of York)

Discussant: Prof. Cangbai Wang (University of Westminster)

The event is chaired by Professor Gerda Wielander

More info and book a slot click here

Souvenir of Peking, 1908

This type of Chinese silk embroidered souvenir from Peking appear regularly for sale at auction. They were locally embroidered and sold to soldiers who then usually slipped in a portrait photograph and sent them home as rememberances of their time in China. This one is slightly different in that a photo of Yuan Shi-kai, then head of the Beiyang Army (& about to be deposed upon Cixi’s death) was added.

This example is from the 2nd Cameron Highlanders with their cap badges and 10 embroidered flags of foreign nations represented in the Legation Quarter as well as the Qing. Peking N. (north) China is scrolled across the bottom. It is from 1908, the only year the Cameron Highlanders were in China. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these were sold to foreign troops in Peking from the late 19th century to the 1920s.

Biblioteca Sir Robert Ho Tung, Macao

Spending time at the Biblioteca Sir Robert Ho Tung in St Augustine’s Square, Macao. Built 1894, purchased by Ho Tung 1918 as a home & bequeathed to Macao as a library in 1956. The frontage & much of the original interior are well preserved & a sizeable modern addition added at the rear cleverly doesn’t affect perspective…

Her Lotus Year on Kindle for Just £1.99

A great limited time deal on the kindle of Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties & the Making of Wallis Simpson at amazon.uk….

This Sunday – the Final Day of the Macao Literary Festival 2025

Domingo à tarde – Barra – Macao Literary Festival – 3pm

Mel Jacoby’s Photography at the HK FCC

An exhibition of amazing photograohy from Mel Jacoby curated by his biographer Bill Lascher opening in the Hong Kong FCC Monday.

BTW: the book of Jacoby’s incredible 1930s and wartime photography in Asia is also still available from Blacksmith Books – A Danger Shared – a must have for anyone interested im the region period….

The exhibit opens on April 1 in the FCC’s main bar and lounge and will run through April 30. Bill will be at the club for its opening and for a lunchtime book talk the following day and an evening event for the Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong.

Her Lotus Year – Madame Wellington Koo

Koo Vi Kyuin, better known to everyone as Wellington Koo (and now often Gu Weijun in China). He had grown up in a well-to-do Shanghai cosmopolitan family and was educated at Shanghai’s St. John’s University and at Columbia in New York. In 1912, he had returned to work for President Yuan Shih-kai
and then, at just twenty-seven, was appointed China’s ambassador to the United States. In China and abroad, Koo was best known for having been the Chinese diplomat who refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference over objections to Japan’s Great War land grab in Shantung. He had since served as both China’s foreign minister and finance minister.

He was still only thirty-seven and married to the beautiful daughter of a Chinese-Javanese
sugar baron, Oei Hui-lan. They were the most celebrated couple on the Peking circuit, and Wallis attended a dinner at their home at least once in the company of her then lover Alberto da Zara. How they got along is not recorded—at the time, Oei Hui-lan was apparently exasperated at the number of dinners she was having to arrange in their home.

Twenty years later, Madame Koo was in London, as her husband was the wartime Chinese ambassador to Britain. Wallis was now the Duchess of Windsor, and the infamous China Dossier had spread a great deal of gossip about her China time. Madame Koo made the comment that Wallis knew only four words of Chinese: “Boy, pass the champagne.” This is a somewhat catty story in a rather catty memoir, not to mention the phrase being actually unrenderable in the exact form Oei Hui-lan suggests.

This portrait is by Olive Snell, a South African born English artist – her portrait of Oei Hui-lan was painted in 1927, a few years after Wallis met her in Peking.

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…