Vigil: Version 2 Out Now

New edition of Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s Vigil on Hong Kong with additional materials from Amy Hawkins & Kris Cheng – from Brixton Ink – joins this week must read pile….

Her Lotus Year: The Black Dragon Temple

On spring weekends in the Western Hills around Peking Wallis would wander and see those temples still in use, such as the Black Dragon Temple, here with monks celebrating the Devil Dance and westing masks/costumes to chase out evil spirits; a ritual that took place every spring and here photographed in the 1920s by JT McGarvey for National Geographic

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now….

Paul French & Anne Sebba talk Wallis Simpson’s Incredible China Year – Books on the Rise, Richmond – 30/3/25

Next Thursday i’ll be at the great Books on the Rise in Richmond with Anne Sebba talking Wallis Simpson & her adventures in 1920s China, the gossip & scandal but also the truth behind her time in HK, Shanghai & Beijing….and its influence on her style…

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/paul-french-and-anne-sebba-discuss-duchess-wallis-simpson-tickets-1139761640749?aff=erelexpmlt

Ma Wei Slope by Keith West (1944)

I’d never heard of this book – Ma Wei Slope (Macmillan: 1944) – a palace intrigue novel set in the Tang Dynasty by Keith West. The detective novel features a rather drunken Li Po (Li Bo, the poet), palace girl Winter Cherry, her lover Ah Lai, and rows between the emperor and farmers. It got broadly good reviews in 1944 and this copy below is a later republication by Penguin in their trademark cover. I’m afraid I know nothing of the author, Keith West – one newspaper declared ‘he knows China…’, but quite how Iam not aware?

Until Andrew West (no relation) sent me the following:

“Keith West, the Oxford trained schoolmaster, who travelled extensively in the Yunnan and South China regions and whose hobbies have been collecting Chinese bronzes and embroideries” (China Monthly vol. 6, 1944, p. 30)

The ‘C’ Word: Being Chinese In Britain – British Library, 31/1/25

Event at the British Library Friday week….The ‘C’ Word: Being Chinese In Britain Today – click here for more details

Penguin Plays – Lady Precious Stream (1958)

This edition of Penguin Plays (produced mostly for schools and amateur dramatic groups who needed script and play ideas). Hsiung Shih-I’s Lady Precious Stream (1934) was included in this 1958 edition. I’ve blogged about Hsiung before – friend of Chiang Yee, Belsize Park resident, playwright. You can listen to my BBC radio documentary on Hsiung and the other Hampstead Chinese of the 1930s here, there’s also Diana Yeh’s excellent book on Hsiung, The Happy Hsiungs (HKUP/RAS China) and Da Zheng’s A Glorious Showman if you want more on Hsiung.

Lu Xun and World Literature

Lu Xun and World Literature by Xiaolu Ma and Carlos Rojas (Hong Kong University Press) continues the trend to incorporating Chinese contemporary literature into global modernism (as per Anne Witchard’s Lao She in London)….

In Lu Xun and World Literature, Xiaolu Ma, Carlos Rojas, and other contributors examine various aspects of Lu Xun, who is known as the father of modern Chinese literature. Essays in this book focus on Lu Xun’s works in relation to the notions of world literature and processes of literary worlding. The contributors offer detailed analyses of Lu Xun’s own literary oeuvre and of foreign works that engage with his writings. This volume also focuses on many facets of the publication and dissemination of Lu Xun’s works’, from printing and binding to the discussions and debates that followed their release in China and abroad. This book not only makes an important contribution to the field of Lu Xun studies, but also proposes a reexamination of the category of world literature.

Xiaolu Ma is assistant professor of humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Carlos Rojas is professor of Chinese cultural studies and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University.

Her Lotus Year- Thomas Cook’s 1924 Peking Guide

Wallis arrived in China in 1924, right in time to pick up the new Thomas Cook’s guide published that year. Their Peking office was in the lobby of the Grand Hotel de Pekin where she was staying.

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now….