Shanghai-Nanking Railway badge c. 1920’s

Shanghai-Nanking Railway badge c. 1920’s

Barnes & Noble Labor Day Holiday Pre-Order Deal on Her Lotus Year

B&N Labour Day deal. Preorder HER LOTUS YEAR at B&N from 9/4-9/6 & get 25% off: code PREORDER25. NB discount is only available to B&N members but free memberships are available – sign up here: barnesandnoble.com/membership/ Already a member? Order your copy here…

Ed Wong’s At the Edge of Empire

New York Times China (and now diplomatic I think) correspondent Ed Wong’s new At the Edge of Empire (Profile Books)…

The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he planned a desperate escape to Hong Kong.

When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father’s mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation’s astounding economic boom and global expansion – and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his father’s footsteps, he witnessed protests and civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. And he had an insider’s view of the world’s two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads

Ching-lung-chiao (Qinglongqiao) Railway Station in the shadow of the Great Wall

All too often on this site I have the sad duty to report destruction – hutong, lilong, shikumen, temples, all manner of buildings – all lost so frequently to the bulldozer for, invariably, jerry-built high rises, endless roads or yet more half empty shopping malls. However, Qinglongqiao Railway Station in Badaling, by the Great Wall, has survived…

Below a picture by RE Baber of National Geographic from 1923 showing a train at the station and the old station sign. Below that the station in 1909, and below that the preserved station today…

The Bookseller – Editor’s Choice – Her Lotus Year

A fantastic early recommendation from the UK’s major publishing trade magazine, The Bookseller….

Maoist Movies at Venice in 1971

The 81st Venice Film Festival has begun so time to reup my South China Morning Post weekend magazine long read on how, during the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese ballet film wowed the West after premiering at Venice in 1971 – click here to read

City of Devils Kindle Edition Special Offer – £2.99/US$2.99

A limited period special offer on the e-book edition of my book City of Devils (here on Amazon.co.uk and here on Amazon US). So if you fancy some 1930s Shanghai gangsters, louche nightclubs & cabarets, fixed dog racing, questionable boxing tournaments, random murders, bent cops & loads of drug running you’re in luck….

1930s Shanghai could give Chicago a run for its money. In the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made – and lost.

‘Lucky’ Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison in the States, spotted a craze for gambling and rose to become the Slot King of Shanghai. Ruler of the clubs in that day was ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren – a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto with a dream of dance halls. His chorus lines rivalled Ziegfeld’s and his name was in lights above the city’s biggest casino.

In 1940 they bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation and genocide. They thought they ruled Shanghai; but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake. Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting moment even the wildest dreams seemed possible.

In the vein of true crime books whose real brilliance is the recreation of a time and place, this is an impeccably researched narrative non-fiction told with superb energy and brio, as if James Ellroy had stumbled into a Shanghai cathouse.

Her Lotus Year – Editor’s Choice in The Bookseller

Delighted Her Lotus Year: China, The Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson (out 11/24 from Elliot & Thompson in the UK & St Martin’s Press in the USA) is an Editor’s Choice in the UK’s leading publishing industry trade magazine, The Bookseller ….