For those that value independent media and quality writing covering Asia, the quarterly Mekong Reviewis a must – subscriptions are available for print and/or online….ridicouslously cheap subscription details here (from a paltry $3 a month – keep independent media on Asia alive!)
Out now is the November 2024-January 2025 issue and, among all the other good stuff (check out the latest issue’s contents here), is my review of North Korean senior defector Thae Yong-ho’s (who slipped away from the DPRK’s London embassy in 2016 to Seoul) new memoir Passcode to the Third Floor: An Insider’s Account of Life Among North Korea’s Political Elite (Columbia University Press) – paywalled, but subscribers can read here….
The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernisation and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptised Japanese buried in what was called at one time the ‘Protestant Cemetery’?
Hong Kong’s Meiji-era Japanese community was one of two halves. Company executives sat atop the social ladder and karayuki-san, or prostitutes, occupied the lower echelons, with tradespeople and professionals somewhere in between. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as increase recognition of this fragmented community’s place in the development of this diverse city.
Yoshiko Nakano is a professor in the Department of International Design Management at Tokyo University of Science. She previously taught Japanese studies at the University of Hong Kong.
Georgina Challen holds an MA in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong. Born in England, she grew up in Switzerland and has called Hong Kong home since 1990.
In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J. Antony provides a comprehensive account of the history of maritime piracy in coastal south China from the 1630s to the 1940s. He neither romanticizes nor maligns pirates, but rather analyzes them in the context of their times and the broader world in which they lived. The author demonstrates that Chinese piracy was a pervasive force shaping maritime society as it ebbed and flowed between sporadic, small-scale ventures and professional, large-scale enterprises in the modern era. This book offers important new insights into the underside of modern China’s history and the interactions between pirates, foreign traders, local communities, and the state.
Before retiring in 2019, Robert J. Antony was Distinguished Professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His publications include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKUP, 2016) and Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas (HKUP, 2010).
I should tip my hat to one of the best novelists to describe the insular “goldfish bowl” world of the Legation Quarter Set of 1920s Peking – Ann Bridge (aka Lady O’Malley). Wife of a British diplomat, she lived in Peking from 1925 to 1927, almost contemporaneous with Wallis. Afterwards she wrote 3 highly descriptive novels of the city and its 1920s “Foreign Colony”, all worth reading – Peking Picnic (1932), The Ginger Griffin (1934) & Four-Part Setting (1938). All contain Wallis sojourner-like characters enchanted with Peking, making it on their wits, and much desired within the male heavy society. Sadly not much read today Bridge deserves a revival…..
Heads up HKers – Black Friday Bookazine Book Bonanza – 15% OFF books this Black Friday , 29/11 – including my very own Her Lotus Year (& other titles!!). In store & online – use code FRIDAY15 at checkout….
My Grandfather Duan Qirui by Naihui Zhang (Author), 张中柱 William Chang (Author), 刘继峰 David J Liu (Translator) from Ehg Books… Reading the blurb (as you can below) I do wonder if this might prove a rather self-indulgent book and I’ve never been much of a fan of family members writing biographies of relatives – it is impossible to be unbiased I find…. anyway, books on Duan don’t come along often so…
Using time as a guiding thread, this book traces the life journey of Duan Qirui. From attending old-style private schools, his upbringing in a military camp, walking alone the one-thousand li journey at age 15 to join the army, attending Tianjin Military Academy, studying abroad in Germany, taking part in establishing the New Army at Xiaozhan, serving as the “artillery commander”, assuming the position of the principal of the Baoding Military Academy and eventually becoming the important leader of the Beiyang Army and the head of the Republic of China government (ROC).
The book enumerates the contributions made by Duan Qirui to China’s progress, including the initiation of China’s military modernization, the insistence on the transformation of China’s political system through “three creations of the Republic”, and the promotion of China’s entry into the Allied Powers to take part in the war against Germany, among others. At the same time, he not only opposed the monarchy dictatorship but also keenly recognized and opposed the “Knock down the Confucius’ shop (打倒孔家店)” campaign promoted by the Chinese agents of the Soviet Union’s Third Communist International. After became Zhizheng (执政the Chief Executive of the Republic of China, or the head of the state), he collaborated with Sun Yat-sen in seeking to convene a constitutional conference and persistently attempted to pursue the path of constitutional democracy to unify China.
Throughout the writing, the author emphasizes the importance of Confucianism’s influence on the moral character of the Chinese people. In the early 20th century, Duan Qirui, who initially served as a Qing military general and later became a high-ranking official in the Republic of China, was able to abandon the traditional “King’s-State (家天下)” approach and resist the wave of Soviet-style communism. Instead, he chose the path of republicanism and constitutional democracy. This can be traced back to the influence of Confucianism, which he received from a young age. Just as Christianity influenced the founding fathers of the United States, Confucianism deeply ingrained itself in Duan Qirui’s bloodline, shaping his political aspirations and life path. The book’s exposition is based on this context: without moral cultivation, an individual cannot go far on the right path; however, even with morally upright individuals, a society without check-and-balance of power, may succumb to the temptations of power, wealth, sex and fame, leading them astray. American founding father John Adams once emphasized, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” This book tirelessly and extensively argues that in building a civilized society, (1) the importance of cultivating moral qualities in individuals from a young age should be recognized, and (2) the Acton’s axiom, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which is an objective law that is not subject to people’s will, should be recognized. Therefore, the concept of “King’s-State” inevitably leads to corruption as power corrupts, resulting in being strong at first and then falling apart and eventually being replaced. On the other hand, the “Party-State (党天下)” system, self-proclaimed to be superior to the decayed old world, experiences absolute corruption with absolute power and fails to catch up with the prosperity and renewal of the private capitalist market economy under constitutional democratic rule even after seventy years. Ultimately, it can only lead to the depletion of public trust and self-collapse.
