Christie’s The Big Four – More Covers

Having posted yesterday on Agatha Christie’s “Fu-Manchu-esque” The Big Four I thought a variety of covers over the years since its 1927 first publications might be interesting – I’ll start with the first publication UK cover from ’27 and then some other interesting ones…

Agatha Christie’s The Big Four & Li Chang Yen

Agatha Christie’s 1927 novel The Big Four is her only novel that steps outside the country house style genre (or essentially country houses put on the Orient Express or up the Nile) and works within the mysterious super villain genre. It’s a Hercule Poirot book but with a bit more action and daring-do than we’re used to by the fusty old Belgian. It’s an amalgam of four shorter stories Christie wrote for The Sketch. The Big Four are led by Chinese villain Li Chang Yen who bears a remarkable resemblance in description and action to Sax Rohmer’s far better known Fu Manchu. Li Chang Yen is often described as “Fu-Manchu-esque” but in 1927 only three Fu Manchu novels had been published and he was far from becoming the Yellow Peril phenomenon he has since. However, in Fu-Manchu-esque style we do get Limehouse dope dens and dark “Oriental” streets in the heart of the Empire’s capital. We are in, as The Observer review of the time noted, an East End ‘hung with rich Oriental silks’.

Anyway, this cover crossed my screen the other day and looked interesting and does, coming later than 1927 obviously, overtly seem to mimic Fu Manchu to attract readers attention.

Watson’s Chocolate Soda – Please Bring this Product Back

Watson’s the pharmacy chain from Hong Kong is now spreading out across mainland China with branches opening all over the place. They’re still in the mineral water business with their trademark stubby green capped bottle. However, I strolled around a Shanghai branch recently and Watson’s Chocolate Soda was conspicuous by its absence. No idea what it tasted like but I like chocolate and I like fizzy drinks so probably pretty good. Anyway, the bottle’s lovely!!! Sadly no branch (yet) back at 327 Kiangse Road (now Jiangxi Road). Perhaps some historically minded Watson’s exec with influence will revive the product as a limited edition with the rather ornate bottles, though I accept the price may have to change – a buck 40 for twelve bottles is pretty good!

Remembering Mata-Hari – died by firing squad 25 July 1917

I note (thanks to The Guardian who included a picture of her on their site) that this week is the 93rd anniversary of the execution of the legendary spy and femme-fatale Mata Hari. A former dancer in Paris, her exotic and provocative routines brought her fame all over Europe and she  became a celebrated courtesan with lovers including military and political figures from France and Germany. This ultimately led to her being charged and convicted as a spy during the Great War, although the Germans had dismissed her as an ineffective agent. She was executed by firing squad on 25th July 1917.

Now there is a slight China Rhyming angle to Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod) and she’s popped up a couple of times in recent research thinking about the western notion of the Oriental dragon lady (in Foreign Policy) and an essay on Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu’s images of women (for a forthcoming collection on Rohmer and Fu Manchu – more details to follow when I get a publication date for that collection). 

I won’t spell out all of Mata Hari’s exciting life (she’s got her own Wikipedia page here) but she did manage to create a create legend about herself as an Asian Godess/femme-fatale. Rohmer himself chose to believe the legend – in a 1932 interview he ruminated on Mata Hari, “who won her way into the secrets of the Allies through her alluring Oriental dancing.” Her described her (as per her own invented legend) as mixed race (her mother was Javanese, her father a Dutch banker in Batavia); manipulated by evil Eastern forces (at 14 her mother placed her with a mystic in an Indian temple to be trained as a dancer); a seducer of men (at 16 she reputedly ensnared Scots nobleman Sir Rudolf McLeod; a murderess (she reputedly murdered a gardener who poisoned one of her sons); and so naturally a spy.

In reality Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, was born in Friesland to white parents who owned a hat shop, though she was a brunette and had darker skin than her parents, leading to rumours of her part-Javanese ancestry. There was no temple at 16 and she met McLeod, a Dutch Colonial Army Captain and only parts Scots, when he advertised in an Amsterdam newspaper for a wife. Her child fell violently ill from complications relating to the treatment of syphilis contracted from his parents – no vengeful gardener in sight. The marriage fell apart, Margaretha returned to Europe and, incorporating elements of traditional Javanese dance she’d seen while living in the Dutch East Indies, became an exotic dancer with her trademark headdresses and be-jewelled dresses.

And so, on the anniversary of her execution, one woman who embraced Orientalism and Chinoiserie (or Dutch East Indies style) and ended up in a lot of trouble….

Some Yellow Peril Present Ideas

Looking for a present for that Yellow Peril arch Oriental super villain in your life? Look no further than e-bay….

The tasteful, and not at all sterotypical and racist, Mighty Beanz Fu Manchu toy….get the young’uns off to a good start Yellow Perilling….

the self-adhesive Chinaman moustache is guaranteed to be a hoot at any Yellow Peril fancy dress dinner party you may be called upon to attend….

Buck’s Letter from Peking Covers

Until I blogged yesterday about a new re-issue of Pearl S. Buck’s Letter from Peking I hadn’t really realised how many covers past editions of the book have amassed. I’ll put my favourite of the ones I’ve seen first and then a selection of others….

Pearl Buck’s Letter from Peking: A Novel Reissued

Buck’s Letter from Peking is one of her lesser known works, certainly less well known than The Good Earth – still, it’s worth a read and just been re-published…

RAS Shanghai – Liu Heung Shing: Photographs as the Pulse of Daily Life – July 27

RAS WEEKENDER – PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT

 Liu Heung Shing: Photographs as the Pulse of Daily Life

Saturday 27 July 2013, 4 PM

Hosted by M on the Bund

in conjunction with the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai

Entrance RMB 75 includes a drink

No booking required

Pulitzer prize-winning photographer HS Liu shares images from 30 years of photographing China, featured in his upcoming photographic exhibition, China Dream, Thirty Years: Liu Heung Shing Photographs. He discusses 30 years of photographing the People’s Republic and the ability of the photographic image to capture zeigeist, with special reference to the 1980s and 1990s. A conversation with Jean Loh.

Liu Heung Shing is a former foreign correspondent and photojournalist who has covered China, the U.S., India, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union. Named one of the 100 most influential people in contemporary photography by Paris Photo, he is also the author of several widely acclaimed books. These include China After Mao (1983) and his latest, China, Portrait of a Country (2008). His work has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography shared with his colleagues at the Associated Press for their coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. His exhibition, China Dream, Thirty Years: Liu Heung Shing Photographs is at the China Art Museum, Shanghai, in July.

 

Jean Loh is the curator of Beaugeste Photo Gallery in Shanghai. The gallery, which opened in 2007, specializes in Chinese contemporary photography. Jean, who was named “Gallerist of the Year” in 2011 by Photographers’ Companion magazine, presents themed works by the best Chinese contemporary photographers in bimonthly cycles.