Grab a Ming or Qing Brick on Shanghai’s Zizhong Road

A very Shanghai story today I feel. in its remorseless drive to destroy anything “old” and “historical” Shanghai has been moving to bulldoze the old residential lanes (we’re getting down to very low numbers of old lanes now left in the city) of the former Settlement and Frenchtown, Huangpu District government has turned the diggers and wreckers on Lane 60 Zizhong Road (formerly rue de Siemen, a once mainly residential road in Frenchtown, now close to the faux Xintiandi complex). However, destruction was delayed (not entirely halted of course) after hundreds of bricks dating to the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties were found. How these bricks came to be part of structures that mostly date from the 1920s is of interest historically of course. Some of the bricks were inscribed with the Chinese characters “Fifth Year of Xianfeng” (1855) and “Shanghai City Wall.”

However, problems then ensued when word got out and people arrived at the site to steal the bricks which can, apparently, be resold for about 1,000 yuan (US$162). A little profit from heritage is apparently OK, but leaving them in place not so much. This of course follows on people who were perhaps wanting a nice image of old Shanghai put up on Suzhou Creek for free for their wall, but actually probably just wanted the scrap metal for resale. Zizhong Road has already been effectively gutted with architecture of the banal such as the Lakeville Regency gated community thrown up. Now the bricks are mostly gone who knows where (try Alibaba perhaps?) and the rest of the street to follow.

PS: The current road name is derived from General Zhang Zizhong, commander in chief of the 33rd Army Group of the KMT, who died fighting the Japanese. He was a communist but his forces were incorporated into the larger Chinese army during the war.

rue de Siemen/Zizhong Road – towards the end of its days

Old Chinatown, San Francisco – recorded in postcards

Mentioned Lisa See’s new book China Dolls the other day, set in San Francisco’s Chinatown before the war. Then came across this set of postcards the other day – can’t date them and probably sent post-war but the images are, I think, 1930s….The accompanying text is quite fun, dipping into Thomas Burke-like imagery at points, “Oriental lanterns cast a mellow glow over the shifting throngs” etc. But they are rather nice all the same.

BTW 1: these pictures are credited to Stanley Plitz, who’s company issued postcards in California from the 1930s to 1950s and were considered extremely high quality at the time

BTW 2: I’ve posted before on the 1885 map of San Francisco Chinatown, the district’s Chinese theatres, a newish guide to Chinatown’s architecture, and the wonderful Chinese telephone exchange (again pictured below)

Click to enlarge

Grant Avenue, Chinatown

Chinatown & Street Scene at Night, Chinatown

“Kong Chow” Temple & Bulletin of Latest News

Chinese Six companies’ Building & Chinese Telephone Exchange

Business District & Joss House-Tong Buildings, Waverly Place

Street scene & Chinese children

Interior, Chinese Telephone Exchange & Reading the Bulletin Boards

Chinese fortune teller & Mandarin Theatre

Interior, Tin How Temple (Joss House) & Picturesque costumes

Street Scene

Old Shanghai’s Bund: Rare Images from the 19th Century

Dennis Crow (a relative of the great Carl Crow – see my biography of the great man!) has a new collection out of pictures of the Bund – his collections and finds are never anything less than stunning….

Presented as a collection for the first time, these rare and early photographs of Shanghai’s most famous waterfront offer a unique glimpse into how a marshy embankment turned into the Bund, the city’s most recognised landmark. These images bring to life a past not usually seen in old Shanghai photographs, back when the city was nothing more than a small treaty port. But even then there existed hints of the modernisation that would transform Shanghai into an international commercial hub, and these first signs captured on film are now gathered together to present an exclusive visual history of this city’s fascinating beginnings.

From the Tsar’s Railway to the Red Army

After writing about the Chinese Labour Corps for the Penguin China WW1 series, Mark O’Neill has now told the little known story of the Chinese workers sent to Russia during the Great War….

It is a little known fact that during the First World War Russia received the majority of Chinese wartime labourers working overseas. Despite assurances that they would not be involved in the war, thousands of Chinese workers dug trenches and carried ammunition for troops on the Eastern Front under brutal conditions. Then, in 1917, life for the Chinese worsened with the Bolshevik Revolution’s arrival. Some of the workers signed up to fight for the Red Army and many were left stranded in Russia, unemployed and destitute. Their plight has been described as the most tragic episode in 400 years of Chinese emigration. The men had crossed the border into Russia with dreams of earning enough money to build a house or business for their family at home. None could have imagined the hell that awaited them.

Chinaphobia On Screen at the BFI – September 29, BFI, London

Chinaphobia On Screen at the BFI

An illustrated talk exploring problematic representations of Chinese people in British and American film

In this richly-illustrated talk, Christopher Frayling, cultural historian and acclaimed writer on film, draws on his forthcoming book The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu and the Rise of Chinaphobia to explore problematic representations of Chinese people in British and American film. Frayling’s talk offers a fascinating counterpart to our landmark season A Century of Chinese Cinema, and key context for serials such as Dr. Sin Fang (1928), recently added to BFI Player. Following his talk, Frayling will join others in a panel discusson to further explore the issues raised.

Tickets £6.50

Click here to book

The Midnight in Peking Walking Tour of Old Beijing is now Free on Voicemap

Thanks to the people at Voicemap, the audible walking tours specialists, my Midnight at Peking walking tour is now available free to download to your device thingy. So, if you’re in Beijing….it’s here…the New York Times enjoyed it!

This walk is based on the major locations featured in my book Midnight in Peking (Penguin, 2012) that retold the story of the horrific murder in 1937 of a young Englishwoman, Pamela Werner, in Peking on the eve of the Japanese invasion of the city. It covers Pamela’s former home on Armour Factory Alley, the Fox Tower (Dongbianmen) watchtower where her body was discovered, the former Badlands red light entertainment district of Peking and the former Legation Quarter, home to embassies and clubs of the foreign colony of Peking in the 1930s and also where many of the suspects in Pamela’s murder spent their days.

A Dreamt Shanghai – Nazim Hikmet’s Gioconda and Si-Ya-U, 1929

I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, no expert in Turkish poetry. However, I’ve recently been reading Charles King’s absorbing history of interwar Istanbul, Midnight at the Pera Palace – The Birth of Modern Istanbul, and have learnt a little. King profiles many of the cultural figures who formed modern Istanbul including the leftist poet Nazim Hikmet, who spent many years in Turkish prisons and in exile in the USSR. One major work by Hikmet, and new to me, is his long poem Gioconda and Si-Ya-U, published in 1929. The poem concerns Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda) which falls in love with a Chinese communist and decides, basically, to elope with him. The poem has elements of Chinoiserie, whimsy, fantasy and reflects the massacre of leftists in Shanghai in 1927, suggesting that Mona Lisa joined the revolution in the city and was killed and burnt. The poem was in memory of Hikmet’s friend and comrade Hsiao San (Si-Ya-U) who he had befriended in Moscow in the early 1920s and believed had been killed in Shanghai in 1927, but in fact had survived. The two eventually reunited in Vienna in 1951 and again in Peking in 1952. You can read the entire poem here. I’ll excerpt several verses of interest to China Rhymers I expect….

Shanghai is a big port,
an excellent port,
It’s ships are taller than
horned mandarin mansions.
My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai…

In the blue river boats
with straw sails float.
In the straw-sailed boats
naked coolies sort rice,
raving of rice…
My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai…

Shanghai is a big port,
The whites’ ships are tall,
the yellows’ boats are small.
Shanghai is pregnant with a red-headed child.
My, my!

Chinese America: Exclusion/Inclusion

John Kuo Wei Tchen’s Chinese America ….

and I do believe that’s a young Anna May Wong there on the cover….

Presents the history of the Chinese American experience, from the role of Chinese tea in the American Revolution and the rich commercial and cultural interactions between China and the U.S., to an exploration of the practices and principles developed under Chinese Exclusion and their application to other cultural groups. This concise, illustrated history considers the legacy and lessons of this period in America’s history through photography, documents and historical objects.