Shanghai Volunteer Corps Insignia Badges

Some various insignia badges from different divisions of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC)…

Voices of the Walls – Kowloon’s Walled City Explored – Blue Lotus Gallery, Hong Kong till December 1 2024

You’ve still time to see the photo exhibition Voices of the Walls: Kowloon’s Walled City Explored at Hong Kong’s Blue Lotus Gallery till December 1, 2024

Blue Lotus Gallery presents “Voices of the Walls,” an exhibition exploring Kowloon Walled City’s rich history through photographs by Ian Lambot, Greg Girard Keeping Lee and AI illustrations by Bianca Tse. Running until December 1, 2024, it showcases the unique community that thrived in this ungoverned urban enclave. The exhibition celebrates the community that once lived there while also highlighting the importance of preserving collective memory through photography.

Photographs serve as a vital medium for preserving heritage, particularly for places that will eventually disappear like the walled city. While few ventured there, even fewer thought to document it. However, Ian Lambot and Greg Girard did just that in the years leading up to its demolition, culminating in the iconic book City of Darkness, published by Watermark, which has sold over 20,000 copies to date. This collection not only preserves the heritage of the notorious walled city through photographs and stories but also served as a source of inspiration for future generations of artists, still influencing everything from video games and AI-generated imagery, like that of Bianca Tse showcased in this exhibition, to films such as the latest blockbuster, ‘Twilight of the Warriors: Walled in.’

Venue: Blue Lotus Gallery, 28 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Opening times: Tuesday-Sunday 11am–6pm, closed on public holidays
Free admission

The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941

Rosemary Wakeman’s The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941 (University of Chicago Press)…

An interpretative history of global urbanity in the 1920s and 1930s, from the vantage point of Bombay, London, and Shanghai, that follows the life of business tycoon Victor Sassoon.
 
In this book, historian Rosemary Wakeman brings to life the frenzied, crowded streets, markets, ports, and banks of Bombay, London, and Shanghai. In the early twentieth century, these cities were at the forefront of the sweeping changes taking the world by storm as it entered an era of globalized commerce and the unprecedented circulation of goods, people, and ideas. Wakeman explores these cities and the world they helped transform through the life of Victor Sassoon, who in 1924 gained control of his powerful family’s trading and banking empire. She tracks his movements between these three cities as he grows his family’s fortune and transforms its holdings into a global juggernaut. Using his life as its point of entry, The Worlds of Victor Sassoon paints a broad portrait not just of wealth, cosmopolitanism, and leisure but also of the discrimination, exploitation, and violence wreaked by a world increasingly driven by the demands of capital.

Her Lotus Year: Wallis and Chinese Style

An argument of Her Lotus Year (out now from St Martins Press in the US and Elliot & Thompson in the UK) is that in China Wallis embraced Chinese aesthetics wholeheartedly and for life. From adopting Chinese style dresses, jade jewellery and the chignon hairstyle while there, she then later maintained these stylish elements and combined them with curios purchased in Peking as well as Chinoiserie items acquired later in America, London and Paris.

So here – 1) Wallis in a pink dress featuring Chinese decorative knotwork (Zhongguo Jie) and the Windsor’s pugs 2) Wallis & a Chinese screen in London 3) Wallis and a Chinese screen in either London or Paris 4) Chinese statuary and objets atop a Chinoiserie table.

The Fox Tower, Peking, 1913

Three rather interesting views of the Dongbianmen (east gate) Watchtower, or the Fox Tower as it was known to foreigners in Peking, which any of you who have read my book Midnight in Peking will know well. These three pictures are by the American photographer John David Zumbrun (1875-1949) who started his own studio – Camera Craft Company – on Legation Street (Dongjiaominxiang).

The first shows the view from some distance and that before 1949 the networks of canals of the Grand Canal were still surrounding the watchtower. The second shows camels passing by the Fox Tower and the third is the view west from the raised base of the tower towards the Legation Quarter, Chienmen (Qianmen) and what is now Tiananmen Square. If you visit the tower today you can see this same view, with some of the wall still intact and what was the Grand Canal is now a major railway line out of Beijing the post 1949 Beijing Railway Station.

Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria

Joseph A Seeley’s Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press) – apparently it’s free on Kindle! (here)

Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu’s seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. Joseph A. Seeley shows how the unpredictable movements of water, ice, timber-cutters, anti-Japanese guerrillas, smugglers, and other borderland actors also spilled outside the bounds set by Japanese colonizers, even as imperial border-making reinforced Japan’s wider political and economic power.

Drawing on archival sources in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and English, Seeley tells the story of the river and the imperial border haphazardly imposed on its surface from 1905 to 1945 to show how rivers and other nonhuman actors play an active role in border creation and maintenance. Emphasizing the tenuous, environmentally contingent nature of imperial border governance, Border of Water and Ice argues for the importance of understanding history across the different seasons.

Remembering the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 – Souls Left Behind: How Can We Retell the History? A Talk by Fan Wu & Xinran (Zoom, 23/11/24)

23/11/24 on Zoom via GuanghwaBooks – Souls Left Behind: How Can We Retell the History? with Fan Wu & Xinran honouring the Chinese Labour Corps in WW1 & the release of Souls Left Behind by Fan Wu (trans Honey Watson). Free sign up here

An online book event featuringSouls Left Behind, where we invite you to explore the profound connections between history, memory, and storytelling. We will begin with a warm welcome and an introduction to our distinguished guest speakers, Fan Wu and Xinran, both of whom bring deep insights and rich narratives to our discussion. Fan Wu will share the inspiration and historical context behind Souls Left Behind, offering a glimpse into the personal and collective stories woven throughout the book. Fan Wu and Xinran’s conversation will delve into the themes of resilience and the unique ways Chinese writers approach the retelling of history, inviting you to reflect on the power of storytelling in shaping our understanding of the past. To foster a sense of community, we will conclude with an open Q&A session, where you can engage directly with our speakers.

Souls Left Behind pays homage to the forgotten sacrifices of the Chinese Labour Corps in World War One, telling a universal tale of family, identity, and loss through the life of David. Oscillating between his older years as a widower supported by his daughter, and his experiences in his youth on a journey from China to France to contribute to the allied forces War efforts, this work is an emotional tribute to the forgotten of the forgotten, and those searching for their identity. Fan Wu has crafted empathetic characters and emotional storytelling to make this novel be a memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps, and a journey of reclaiming one’s identity.

City of Devils Spotted in Phnom Penh

Even when you’re about to have a new baby you have to find time for your other children…. spotted in Monument Books, Phnom Penh – City of Devils – shelved next to some newbie author called Xi Somethingorother….