Thomas Burke’s Broken Blossoms: Stories from Limehouse Nights

Passing through London this week and so thought it might be time for a couple of London-related posts, but always with a China theme. A friend passed along a lovely cover for an edition of Thomas Burke’s Broken Blossoms. The book s presumably a reprint of Burke’s short story “The Chink and the Child” and some other related stories that featured in his famous Limehouse Nights (1916) book set in the hyper-realised Chinatown of Limehouse in the East End. Not sure what year this edition was published (the first under this title was 1920) but probably somewhat after the popular DW Griffith’s film of the “Chink and the Child” which was called Broken Blossoms and starred Lillian Gish and Richard Barthlemess (in yellow face). Broken Blossoms tells the story of young girl, Lucy Burrows, who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows, and meets Cheng Huan, a kindhearted Chinese man who falls in love with her. Yellow Peril for sure but Burke’s tales of Limehouse do partially reveal that now lost world.

Anyone wanting more on Burke, Broken Blossoms and Limehouse see Anne Witchard’s Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie.

HKUP Moves into Run Run Shaw Heritage House

I would normally note that a university press was changing addresses but you’ve got to hand it to Hong Kong University Press – from a dull warehouse in Aberdeen to the Run Run Shaw Heritage House on the HKU campus in Pokfulam. The new premises include a great little bookshop too.

HKU Press Bookshop
G/F, Run Run Shaw Heritage House
逸夫苑  地下
Tel: (852) 3917 7801
E-mail: upweb@hku.hk

Johnnie Walker Drinkers in 1930 Shanghai

I’m told the rich and sophisticated like to drink Johnnie Walker these days in Shanghai over other whisky brands….thus was it ever!! this from 1932 in the North-China Daily News….

Hollywood Chinese – Film Screening and Discussion – London, May 1

An interesting event if you happen to be in London this May Day….

Artefact & Curation Research Hub and TrAIN Research Centre present:

Hollywood Chinese

Dir. Arthur Dong, 2007

Film Screening and Discussion with Professor Li

Fulbright Distinguished Chair, University of Arts London (2013)

Date: Wednesday 1st May 2013 

Time: 17:30 – 19:30; followed by drinks in Terrace

Combining historical footage with interviews of directors and actors, both Chinese and non-Chinese, Arthur Dong’s 2007 award winning documentary offeres a rare historical overview of the Chinese in the Hollywood dream machine. We shall watch the film and then open up a discussion, centered on but not limited to the following, “ethnicity and visibility”, “minority, majority, and mediated democracy”, “representation, political and asethetic”, “representation as identification and regulation”, “representation between race, gender, and nation”. Undergriding these different aspects of the documentary is an overarching question specific to the film and its US context. Instead of the common sense question perennially posted to a Chinese American, “which part of you is Chinese and which part is American?”. We will attempt a question of uncommon sense, “How does the Chinese define the American subject?”.

Professor of English, & the Collins Professor of the Humanities at the University of Oregon, USA, David Leiwei Li is Fulbright Distinguished Professor Chair at the University of Arts London (2013), completing his ongoing monograph, Globalization on Speed: Economy, Emotion, and Ethics in Contemporary Chinese Chinema. He is the author of Imaging the Nation: Asian American Literature and Cultural Consent (Stanford UP 1998), the editor of Globalization & the Humanities (HK UP, 2004), and Asian American Literature, a 2240 pages collection of criticism (Routledge, 2012).

This is a joint-college event between London College of Fashion and TrAIN Research Centre. It is opened to all University staff, researchers, postgraduate students, and the public. You do not have to be a member of the hub.

Based in Chelsea College of Art and Design, TrAIN is a UAL Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, a forum for historical, theoretical and practice-based research in architecture, art, communication, craft and design. http://www.transnational.org.uk/

The Launch of London Fictions (but there’s always a China link in there somewhere!) – 24/4/13, Hackney

What looks like a lovely book is London Fictions – a book of essays celebrating the depiction of London in fiction, from Children of the Ghetto and Child of the Jago to NW and Capital. It is a book about East End boys and West End girls, bed-sit land and dockland, the homeless and the homesick, immigrants and emigrants. Edited by Andrew Whitehead and Jerry White, London Fictions includes essays by Courttia Newland, Philippa Thomas, Lisa Gee, John Lucas, Cathi Unsworth, Ken Worpole, Angela John, and Sanchita Islam. Additionally there’s an essay on Limehouse and the old London Chinatown by Anne Witchard, who, as regular readers know, wrote Lao She in London for the RAS Shanghai-HKUP China Monograph series I edit. So we’re plugging her.

More details on the book below and if you’re in London on April 24th there’s a launch event at Broadway Book down on Broadway Market in Hackney

London Fictions is a book about London, real and imagined. Two dozen contemporary writers, from Cathi Unsworth to Courttia Newland, reflect on some of the novelists and the novels that have helped define the modern city, from George Gissing to Zadie Smith, Hangover Square to Brick Lane. It is a book about East End boys and West End girls, bed-sit land and dockland, the homeless and the homesick, immigrants and emigrants. All human life is here high-minded Hampstead and boozy Fitzrovia, the Jewish East End, intellectual Bloomsbury and Chinese Limehouse, Black London, Asian London, Irish London, Gay London…

Shanghai Lady Ad for London Assurance

Travelling today again so here’s a hastily posted old Shanghai ad for the London Assurance Company…

Midnight in Peking at the Chopsticks Club – London 23/4/13

Should you happen to be in London I’ll be talking on Midnight in Peking to the good folk of the Chopsticks Club, a UK networking organisation for people interested in China.

Non-members can apparently attend – but there is a form (here) and a charge for dinner, at the Imperial China on Lisle Street in Chinatown.

Shanghai Ladies Ad with Hatamen Cigarettes

Travelling today and so a little pressed for time and in the air…anyway, here’s a nice old Shanghai ad for Hatamen cigarettes….