And The City Swallowed Them…The 2008 Diana O’Brien Murder in Shanghai

Shanghai based journalist Mara Hvistendahl has done a solid job of work reconstructing the events around the 2008 murder of the Canadian model Diana O’Brien in her new e-book And the City Swallowed Them… Hvistendahl’s retelling of the horrific murder, the seedy underbelly of the Chinese modelling business, the police investigation and the underlying tensions in Shanghai on the eve of the 2008 Olympics is excellently done and revealing (as someone living a stone’s throw from the murder scene in 2008 all that permeated out was rumour and supposition at the time).

At age 22, Diana O’Brien left a small island community on Canada’s Pacific Coast and moved to China to work as a model. Twelve days later, she was stabbed in a Shanghai stairwell. The actions of both police investigators and O’Brien’s Chinese modeling agent soon aroused suspicion as her family sought answers from China’s opaque legal system. Ultimately, their quest would put them face to face with her accused killer.

At once a page-turning murder mystery and a work of deep investigation, And The City Swallowed Them is a true crime nonfiction story based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim’s and the convicted murderer’s families. The short book moves from Shanghai’s back alleys to the seedy underbelly of high fashion, where young models travel alone to strange cities, often with falsified work papers, and sleep ten to an apartment between cover shoots. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai’s explosive urbanization, the work also explores the world of China’s liudong renkou, or floating population, where the hopes of newcomers from poor villages often turn to dust—leading some to horribly desperate acts.

The debut digital title from the writers cooperative Deca, And The City Swallowed Them overturns assumptions about both China’s feared justice system, where the conviction rate for criminals is 99.9 percent, and the glamorous world of international modeling. More than a murder tale, And The City Swallowed Them lays bare the powerful forces that send two families on a collision course from distant sides of the Pacific.

The Saga of 81 Chaonei Dajie Continues

I first blogged about 81 Chaonei Dajie back in 2008 and have done so occasionally ever since as new rumours surface as to the Beijing buildings future. Frankly I’m amazed the French baroque style buildings are still there!! In Shanghai they would have either gone by now or become a bar, but Beijing’s record is far more awful and that they’re still standing, even in their current rather untended and decrepit state is something close to a miracle. Fitting perhaps as the buildings were the former missionary language training school. There have also been rumours about some French train magnate owning the buildings but I know of no solid evidence of that. Another erroneous tale has been circulating that the buildings were formerly the USSR Embassy pre-1949 but that’s nonsense too. Certainly the property is now controlled by the Beijing Catholic Diocese but they have not proved to ever be great lovers of preservation.

And so now Shanghaiist reports more rumours about renovation plans – rumours that have periodically cropped up every six months or so for years now. And while it is true that No.81 has a preservation order applied to it this, as regular China Rhyming readers will know, effectively means nothing as this blog is packed full of Shanghai and Beijing properties with preservation orders who were bulldozed at 3am to make way for a shopping mall.

Maybe this time something will happen. As the insides have largely been gutted already and partially open to the elements for a decade or more now there is probably little left to salvage inside but it is to be hoped that any “restoration plan” doesn’t involve knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding it in a sort of similar style! A Beijing developer tactic we’re all familiar with time and again.

Chinese Wallpaper in National Trust Houses

I blogged recently on the discovery of some rather lovely Chinese wallpaper at Woburn Abbey. Woburn is not a National Trust property but, apparently, many NT houses do have excellent examples of Chinese wallpaper and not the Trust has gathered together all these locations in one delightful book, Chinese Wallpaper in National Trust Houses….

Marc Chadourne’s Chine (1932)

Marc Chadourne was a French writer (and Prix Goncourt winner), adventurer and spy of sorts who visited China several times in the 1930s. He also visited Russia, Singapore, Calcutta and Tokyo to have a poke about. His earliest trip yielded the book Chine (China) which was popular enough to go into a 20,000 print run initially. “Smiling chaos and prosperous disorder” were his general impressions. In what could be an echo of writing on China today Chadbourne wrote, “The Chinese wall is alive. Each Chinese builds it within and about himself. It explains and illustrates China. It is at once her spirit and her history, her protective organism and growth, the living symbol of her offensive and defensive strategy, of her struggle inch by inch against the Occident.” Hard to find but worth a read….and here’s a long and thoughtful contemporary review by Lucille Douglas (an illustrator who knew China well) in The Saturday Review of Literature from 1932.

Incidentally, Chadourne returned to China in 1939 on a mission for French intelligence and the French Colonial Ministry to describe China, and Shanghai particularly, as infested with spies, charlatans and crooks. You could write that today too!

Marc Chadourne

The French edition

the Italian edition for contrasting cover styles

the book is illustrated throughout by the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias

 

RAS Shanghai – Finding KUKAN, a long-lost Academy Award-winning colour documentary about World War II China – 15/7/14

RAS STUDIO

ROBIN LUNG
“Finding Kukan”

Paris 1919, A Stolen Chinese Box, An Alternative Theory on China-Japan in WW1 and Robert Goddard’s The Ways of the World

Interesting when you happen to pick up a novel that refers to an incident you’ve recently written about. So, if you happen to be interested in China’s role at the Paris Peace Conference and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles in 1919, you’ll probably enjoy Robert Goddard’s The Ways of the World. The novel is the first in the author’s planned The Wide World trilogy concerning espionage and shady goings-on in the aftermath of World War One and featuring James “Max” Maxted, a former Great War flying ace caught up in Great Powers deception and general murkiness. Book one of the trilogy, The Ways of the World, takes place during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919 in that great city. One aspect of the book invokes one of the great mysteries of that period and offers a possible hypothesis that any readers of my recent Penguin China World War One series e-book Betrayal in Paris might find interesting.

Here’s the mystery. Obviously during WW1 Japan took advantage of the European Great Powers killing each other in France and Belgium to make a land grab at the former German concession of Tsingtao (Qingdao) and across Shantung (Shandong) province (if you didn’t know that see Jonathan Fenby’s new book on the incident here). Then, with China looking weak, Tokyo made its infamous and extortionist 21 Demands upon Peking. In 1917 China officially declared war on Germany and became a recognised Allied nation. At the Armistice China was awarded a seat at the Paris Peace Conference and came looking for restitution of its territory in Tsingtao and Shantung. They were to be disappointed and betrayed at Versailles – Japan kept hold of Tsingtao with Great Power (and US) acquiescence. That’s the above-the-surface story. Of course there’s also a below-the-surface tale….

The official leader of China’s delegation to Versailles was Lou Tseng-tsiang (Lu Zhengxiang), a veteran diplomat and former Chinese ambassador to the Russian Empire at St Petersburg (Petrograd). Lou sailed from China to France with a stopover in Tokyo. This worried some who considered Lou rather pro-Japanese and some of his masters in the Peking government to be to cosy with Tokyo too. Suspicions heightened when Lou had a two-hour private meeting with Japan’s foreign minister. It became a confused situation – the Japanese claimed that Lou had promised not to cause any trouble between China and Japan, while the Chinese side claimed Lou had not officially recognised the validity of Japan’s 21 Demands.

Then it all became the stuff of a spy book. Rumours appeared in the press of the apparent theft of a box of Chinese official documents in Tokyo during Lou’s stopover. The possible scenarios multiplied:

1) Lou had allowed the Japanese to take the documents to undermine China’s bargaining position over Shantung at Versailles – the reasoning? He was always pro-Japanese and probably worked for them or was bribed;

2) The Peking government had instructed Lou to let the box fall into Japanese hands – the reasoning? The Peking government had strong pro-Tokyo elements who thought an alliance of some sort with Japan would help them beat the Southern, alternative, government established in Canton by Sun Yat-sen. It was an unholy alliance for regime survival purposes;

3) The Japanese did indeed steal the box – the reasoning? Well, they would wouldn’t they, as they wanted to undermine China’s arguments in Paris;

4) The box was never stolen – the reasoning? Lou never confirmed he’d lost it, the Japanese never confirmed they had it and the whole thing was a tall tale thrown together to make Japan look bad and China look even more bullied by Tokyo in Paris.

Goddard, however, has a much more thrilling explanation for the contents of the missing box (which I’ll paraphrase to avoid any spoilers):

The box contained proof that Germany attempted to get Japan to switch sides in WW1 from the Allies to the Axis and so use the Japanese Navy to attack Hawaii and the Philippines thereby distracting America if and when it entered the war. The bait (which the Germans offered via the Chinese – OK, a bit convoluted this – why not go direct to Tokyo?) was German controlled lands in the event of victory in the Pacific, Russian Far East and, rather daringly, Australia and New Zealand. Goddard supposes the Japanese agreed and signed a letter to that effect which was in Chinese hands, but then reneged just prior to America’s entry into the war. Still the letter would have been majorly embarrassing and would, if released, have undermined Great Power support for Japan in Paris and probably seen the Europeans side with China over Shantung and not Japan. Thus they stole the letter back during Lou’s stopover en route to Paris.

Fiendish! And a nice theory….maybe the letter will turn up one day; maybe it won’t; probably it never existed! But then was a Chinese box really stolen in 1918 in Tokyo and, if so, what was in it?

Tank Man: How a Photograph Defined China’s Protest Movement – 28 May

Another Tiananmen book for the 25th anniversary of the massacre. This book looks specifically at that iconic image (iconic in the West anyway thanks to the diligence of the Net Nanny in China!)…

No one knew his name. But soon millions would know about his bravery. For almost two months in spring 1989, Beijing s Tiananmen Square had been the site of growing protests against China’s hardline communist government. In early June, China s leaders had had enough. In a matter of days soldiers cleared the square. They used sticks and cattle prods. They shot rubber bullets, then real ones. They used bayonets. Student protesters fought back with firebombs and rocks, but they were no match for the soldiers. Gunfire still rang out in parts of Beijing, but China s leaders felt in control. As tanks rumbled through the streets near Tiananmen Square, a man in a white shirt came suddenly into view. He held up his right hand, like a police officer trying to halt traffic. The first huge tank in a row of four stopped just a few feet in front of the man. The tanks behind it stopped as well. Photographer Jeff Widener took a picture of the brave protester halting the huge armored fighting vehicles. The image was soon sent around the world, becoming one of the most famous photographs ever.”

How China Was Betrayed At Versailles

A slice of blatant self-promotion today I’m afraid, but if you’re interested in China’s role at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the arguments over Shandong and China’s betrayal by the Great Powers and the USA then this interview with myself for Beijing Cream regarding my e-book in the Penguin China World War One Series – Betrayal in Paris: How the Treaty of Versailles Led to China’s Long Revolution – might be of interest. The ebook is available here on Amazon.com and here on Amazon.co.uk