Good Burgundy Wines from Rondon & Co on the Avenue Eddy VII

I’ve posted before on Frenchtown’s leading French vintner (and Free French hero in World War Two at a time when most Shanghai French lined up with Vichy pretty quickly) Roderick Egal (here,  here and here) but he wasn’t alone in selling French booze. L. Rondon, based on the Avenue Edward VII (the French side of old Yanan Road), also dealt in fine wines and spirits from the old country in the 1930s.

Merry Laughter and Angry Curses: The Shanghai Tabloid Press, 1897-1911

An interesting looking new book on Shanghai’s tabloid press prior to the founding of the Republic – Merry Laughter and Angry Curses by Juan Wang….

The end of the Qing dynasty in China saw an unprecedented explosion of print journalism. Chinese-owned newspapers, first encouraged by Emperor Guangxu to inform and educate an increasingly literate public, had by the turn of the century become more powerful than the state had ever anticipated or desired. Yet it was not the dabao, or “important” papers, that proved most influential. Rather it was the xiaobao, the “little” or “minor” papers — with their reputation for frivolity — that captivated and empowered the public.

Merry Laughter and Angry Curses reveals how the late-Qing-era tabloid press became the voice of the people. As periodical publishing reached a fever pitch, tabloids had free rein to criticize officials, mock the elite, and scandalize readers, giving the public knowledge about previously unspeakable and unprintable ideas. In the name of the people, tabloid writers produced a massive amount of anti-establishment literature, whose distinctive humour and satirical style were both potent and popular. This book shows the tabloid community to be both a producer of meanings and a participant in the social and cultural dialogue that would shake the foundations of imperial China and lead to the 1911 Republican Revolution.

Johnson Hire Cars of Shanghai

Apparently car hire is all the rage in China again these days and the big boys like Hertz and Avis and all them are piling in. Nothing new though – here’s Johnson Car Hire in the late 1920s in Shanghai….

Excuse for a good old Shanghai night in – Wang Renmei The Wildcat of Shanghai – With DVD of Wild Rose

A new book on 1930s screen godess Rang Renmei and an accompanying DVD of Wild Rose from Richard Meyer….

Wang Renmei was on a fast track to become one of China’s leading film stars in the 1930s. Her early films were received with magnificent praise by audiences and critics alike, though she later lamented that she became famous too early and never had a chance to properly study acting. The film Song of the Fishermen in which she sang and played a major role was the first Chinese motion picture to win an International Award in Moscow in 1935.

Wang’s personal struggles reflected the turbulent period from the end of the Qing dynasty to the rise of Deng Xiaoping. This study explores her artistic achievements amid the prevalent anti-feminist and feudal society in China prior to the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949—attitudes which contributed to the downturn of Wang’s promising career and forced her to accept various bit parts among the more than twenty films in which she appeared. In addition, personal problems as well as the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution led to her hospitalization for mental illness. Wang’s life is emblematic of the experiences of many left-wing and Communist Party members from the Shanghai film community who were viewed with suspicion and enmity by the Yan’an clique headed by Mao and later the Gang of Four. Wang’s performances in World War II for the Nationalist troops as well as her work with the US forces in China had a dire effect on her career after 1949. Yet today, her films are being discovered again.

Richard J. Meyer teaches film at Seattle University. He is the author of Ruan Ling-yu: The Goddess of Shanghai and Jin Yan: The Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai.

“Meyer always writes in an accessible, jargon-free style that invites all interested readers to share his enthusiasm and knowledge for the films he loves so much within their richest historical and cultural context. Thanks to this wonderful book, the Chinese actress Wang Renmei and the film Wild Rose will no longer be obscure within the English-speaking world of film scholarship.”
— Peter Lehman, director of the Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture, Arizona State University, and co-author of Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying

“Wang Renmei is one of the most dynamic and talented film actors in Chinese history, full of tensions and self-contradictions that revealed in part the violence and turmoil of her times and the political complexity of the film industry. This fine book on one of China’s most exciting film artists will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in early Chinese cinema.”
—Poshek Fu, professor of history, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and San Francisco’s Chinatown Theatres

No need to go into the history of the Statue of Liberty here (an endless Wikipedia entry here) but what of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s, the statue’s sculptor, view of the Chinese? Probably not a question you’ve ever asked yourself. Me neither. But I happened to read Elizabeth Mitchell’s e-book on the history of Bartholdi and the statue, Lady With a Past, and she describes Bartholdi’s travels across the United States raising funds to erect the statue. Bartholdi pitched up in San Francisco for a  couple of days but apparently found the Chinese quarter (Chinatown) “astonishing immoral”. Bartholdi, a Frenchman, wrote rather disparagingly of the Chinese community of California in the 1870s:

“Yesterday I went with a number of Frenchman to a Chinese theatre, a real Chinese theatre. It was horribly funny – music that would make your hair stand on end, fantastic yapping and meowing, extravagant costumes and make-ups, like the most extraordinary brightly coloured Chinese figurines. The effect was beautiful in colour. We were surrounded by Chinese whose pig-tails hung over the backs of the benches were they were seated. All the time we were there we felt like scratching ourselves. I had the satisfaction, however, of leaving the theatre without having taken anything away from my neighbours.”

Not sure which Chinese theatre in San Francisco Bartholdi went to – but probably one of these:

The Washington Street Theatre

The Jackson Street Theatre

Chinese actors in San Francisco Chinatown

The Hakkas of Sarawak: Sacrificial Gifts in Cold War Era Malaysia

A new book  by Kee How Yong, The Hakkas of Sarawak, on the Hakka Chinese community of Sarawak and their involvement, real or supposed, in the Communist movement in 1960s/1970s Malaysia…

More Chinese Lanterns in Literature – Ishwerwood this time

A while back I blogged on the occasional appearance of Chinese lanterns in European literature – Bel Ami, Trilby, The Man Who Was Thursday and Women in Love etc. Here’s another that crossed my desk the other day in Christopher Ishwerwood’s Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), his great book about the rise of the Nazis in Berlin.

In the early 1930s Isherwood, enjoying a prolonged sojourn in Weimar Berlin, some of it in the seedy and down at heel Alexander Casino populated by Berlin’s flotsam and jetsam, pimps and prostitutes which was lit by red Chinese lanterns and festooned with dusty paper streamers and trellis-work alcoves, arboured over with imitation cherry-blossom twined on wires.  Isherwood was not overly impressed with the decor but the lanterns got a mention.

A Great Summer Holiday Read – Hand-grenade Practice in Peking

Browsing a book store the other day a friend drew my attention to this recent, and rather delightfully bound, reissue of the legendary China Hand Frances Wood’s memoir of studying Chinese in the mid-1970s in Beijing, Hand-grenade Practice in Peking. A couple of things to note – if you haven’t read Wood’s account of her rather bizarre time in China at that rather bizarre time then you really should and it’s a great summer read. Secondly, if you’ve never browsed the growing list of Slightly Foxed books (who’ve republished this lovely edition) then you might find it worthwhile as there are some great classic reissues (not really China but still) of books by Graham Greene, Dodie Smith and others.

China in 1975 was a strange, undiscovered country, still half-mad from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, when young Frances Wood boarded a plane in London to study for a year in Peking

Virtually closed to outsiders for the preceding decade, China was just beginning to make tentative moves towards the outside world when Frances and her fellow students were driven in an ancient coach through the dark silent countryside to their new quarters at the Foreign Languages Institute. Here they were settled into small rooms with hard iron beds and a single dim light bulb. Outside were showers powered by an enormous boiler emitting boiling steam from cracks in the pipework. Next day, at the medical centre, they learned that medical treatment was free but ‘we would have to pay for our own abortions’.

Throughout the following year in an extraordinary Alice-in-Wonderland world where ‘education’ consisted of shovelling rubble, hand-grenade practice, and cripplingly tedious ideological lectures, Frances never lost her sense of humour. Or indeed her fascination for the ancient civilization that lurked behind the Cultural Revolution’s grim façade. Based on the letters she wrote home in 1975‒6, Hand-grenade Practice in Peking is both affecting and hilarious, a unique insight into a mysterious and painful moment in China’s history. It was an interlude which would eventually lead Frances to her present position as head of the Chinese collection at the British Library.