Showing off your China Photographs 1900 Style

We often (including me on this blog) tend to over-concentrate on old photos of china and neglect how people who took or bought them displayed them, often when they had returned from China. I was reminded the other week while in Hong Kong and looking at several recently unearthed collections that often photographers in China sold beautiful leather and skin covered albums in which to mount the photographs. These were often works of art and beautiful objects in and of themselves and also lapped up a bit of Chinoiserie too. Here’s one that popped up for sale recently on the internet to give you an idea of how lovely these album covers could be sitting on your coffee table…

The Badlands of Old Peking: Paul French – Wheeler Center, Melbourne – Tuesday 12 March 2013

I’ll be doing an event in Melbourne on 12 March around my forthcoming e-book (or available if you’re in Australia or as a limited edition hardback on Hong Kong and China) Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking.

In Midnight in Peking, renowned China commentator Paul French solved a grisly, long-forgotten true crime story which shocked the one-time inhabitants of pre-communist Beijing’s infamous nightlife district.

Now he’s returned to the Peking Badlands to delve deeper into the tight-knit rookery of brothels, dive-bars, drug dens and flophouses which were both the decadent playground of foreign Peking and an unforgiving Hell’s Half Acre for its residents.

Evoking the nightclubs and brothels of the Badlands of the 1920s and 30s – with cabaret dancers, pimps, the ‘poor unfortunate’ … and the master criminal who was the uncrowned King of the Badlands, French brings a world almost completely slipped from history back to life – in all its gruesome glory.

Paul French – Born in London and educated there and in Glasgow, Paul French has lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. He is a widely published analyst and commentator on China and has written a number of books, including a history of foreign correspondents in China and a biography of the legendary Shanghai adman, journalist and adventurer Carl Crow.

The Wheeler Centre, 6:15PM – 7:15PM, Tuesday 12 March 2013

It’s free, but to book click here

Water Margin: Hong Kong’s Link to the Sea

Was in Hong Kong recently and bumped into an old friend Matt Flynn, who knows more about ships, ports and all things shipping and water-related in Asia than any one has a right to. And interested to know that he’s published a book, Water Margin: Hong Kong’s Link to the Sea, with all proceeds going to the Ocean Recovery Alliance.

As far as I know the book in on Amazon and in all good bookshops in Hong Kong.

Ocean Recovery Alliance and Hong Kong-based Flynn Consulting have collaborated to publish Water Margin: Hong Kong’s Link to the Sea, a book featuring exquisite photography and engaging stories about Hong Kong’s magnificently unique aquatic landscape.

Doug Woodring, founder of Ocean Recovery Alliance, says, “Our book is an appreciation of Hong Kong’s maritime resources in all aspects ranging from heritage, culture and recreation, to the breathtaking natural geography and wildlife. It is our intention that the stories and photos in this book initiate response and commitment to creating a future for Hong Kong waters as a sustainable asset for the next generation.”

The key photographer of Water Margin is Robin Moyer, a professional photographer for nearly 40 years including 16 years with TIME Magazine. Robin’s work has won him many awards and citations including ‘World Press Picture of the Year’ for his work on the war in Lebanon. Copies of some of the photographs from the book will be on display and for sale.

This bilingual (English/Chinese) hardback book will make an excellent Christmas present! Proceeds from the sale of both the book and the photographs will go to Ocean Recovery Alliance, a Hong Kong registered charity which aims to introduce innovative projects and initiatives that will help improve the ocean environment.

Tempest in a China Teapot: Friends, Enemies, Fraudsters and Bringing Chinese Poetry to the World – Shanghai International Literary Festival – 10/3/13

Excellently we have both of my initial Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai–Hong Kong University Press “China Monograph” authors in one place at the same time and while the Shanghai International Literary Festival is on….so, obviously, we put them together to chat…with you….on this great topic…as a special RAS Shanghai event at the SILF 2013.

Tempest in a China Teapot – Friends, Enemies, Fraudsters and Bringing Chinese Poetry to the World

Sunday 10/3/13 – 4pm

M on the Bund, Shanghai

Tickets here

Anne Witchard, University of Westminster (Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie, Lao She in London)

Lindsay Shen, Shanghai Sino-British College (Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai)

Moderated by Susie Gordon

One of the culturally significant exchanges that took place in the West’s engagement with China at the beginning of the twentieth century was the race to publish translations and interpretations of Chinese poetry. Ezra Pound emerged from this somewhat controversially as the ‘inventor of Chinese poetry for our time’ – according to TS Eliot. Not so well known are the fierce rivalries, malicious point-scoring and unabashed mud-slinging that he and his contemporaries were embroiled in as they battled for Sino-poetic pre-eminence. Amy Lowell (cruelly dubbed ‘the “hippopoetess” by Witter Bynner and Pound), Shanghailander Florence Ayscough, Lowell, Harriet Monroe and her journal Poetry, Bynner and the infamous Spectra Spoof – there’s a lot more backstabbing, bitchiness and ego involved in translating Chinese poetry than simply words on a page!

Monroe

Authors and academics Anne Witchard and Lindsay Shen discuss the tempest in the China teapot that rumbled on through the interwar years in Chinese poetry studies and read some of the major Chinese works in translation that were at the centre of the storm.

Pound

Speaker Bios:

Anne Witchard teaches modernism and literature at the University of Westminster in London. She is also author of Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie,  Lao She in London for the RAS Shanghai-Hong Kong University Press China Monographs series and was co-editor of Gothic London; Place, Space and the Gothic Imagination. Anne also runs the conference series and research project, China in Britain: Myths and Realities. She is currently working on a collection of essays on Modernism and Chinoiserie for Edinburgh University Press and a biography of the pioneer of modern dance Margaret Morris.

Lindsay Shen is Associate Professor at Sino-British College, Shanghai. She is Honorary Editor for journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China in Shanghai. She has published in the fields of design and museum studies in Europe and the United States.  Her latest publication is Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai for the RAS Shanghai-Hong Kong University Press China Monographs series.

Susie Gordon is a British writer based in Shanghai. She is the author of Moon Handbooks Beijing & Shanghai guide, and writes for magazines including Shanghai Business Review and China Economic Review. Her poetry collection Peckham Blue was published in London in 2006, and she has contributed to literary journals such as Unshod Quills and HALiterature. She is currently working on a novel set in Shanghai.

An Intimate Travel Guide for Twenty Oriental Cities from Tokio to Singapore

A lovely cover from Stuart Lillico’s 1935 An Intimate Travel Guide for Twenty Oriental Cities from Tokio to Singapore, published by Shanghai’s Mercury Press (linked to the English language evening newspaper of the same name). The Chinese cities included are Canton, Chefoo, Hankow, Hongkong, Nanking, Peiping, Shanghai, Tientsin, Tsingtao and Dairen. Lillico was a prolific book reviewer writing reviews on subjects as diverse as DH Lawrence to Norway in World War Two. He was also, and even more obscurely, the long time editor of Hawaiian Shell News. Just how many subscribers that had remains a mystery…

The RAS Comes to BILF – Anne Witchard on Lao She & the Premier of Ding, a one-man monologue based on the short story of the same name by Lao She – March 9th Beijing Bookworm

This weekend the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai and the Beijing International Literary Festival get together….

As regular readers will know last year I published Anne Witchard’s study of Lao She in London, and the modernist influences he received there, as the first book in the new Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai and Hong Kong University Press “China Monographs” series (two a year, and two more to come this year in the summer). This got me thinking that not enough people now read (especially in translation) Lao She’s excellent short stories. Without doubt Ding (1935) is Lao She’s most overtly high modernist short story directly referencing European modernism in its homage to Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). It seemed to me suitable for being converted into a short one-man monologue for an actor to take it to new audiences and also compliment Anne’s book.

And so we have the world premier of Ding, the monologue (please note that’s “monologue”, not “musical” – though Les Mis is doing OK I note!). My first theatrical outing darlings and I’m thrilled (I think you’re supposed to talk like that when you do anything linked to the theatre). As Anne is speaking on Lao She, London and Modernism at the Beijing International Literary Festival at the Beijing Bookworm that seemed a good time to launch the production – so March 9th it is. The good folk at the Bookworm (Alex Pearson and Kadi Hughes) have been wonderfully supportive, and the very talented Fabrizio Massini is directing the piece.

Tickets are now on sale for the debut performance of my adaptation of Ding, at the Bookworm on Saturday March 9th at 22:00 hours (how fringe is that!) For anyone in Beijing during the Festival I do hope you can get along – it’s a great story and hopefully my adaptation will do it at least some justice.The performance will follow on after a discussion about Lao She’s work and time in London with Anne Witchard and Alan Babbington-Smith, also at the Bookworm. Tickets for both events available only at The Bookworm. Box Office hours: 10am-9pm.

“Something’s not quite right about this version of Greece here in our New China… I’m a narrow chested Apollo!!” – Ding

Remembering Sir Robert Hart – The “IG’s” Tombstone Re-Dedicated

Noting Robert Bickers yesterday reminded me that I should also note the brilliant job he’s done around the re-dedication of the gravestone of Sir Robert and Lady Hester Jane Hart. I don’t expect I really need to tell regular readers of this blog the exhaustive history the “IG”, Sir Robert Hart of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service (but if you don’t know or you’re having an off day here’s more on him). Robert, Dr Weipin Tsai at Royal Holloway University of London and others having done a great job restoring the grave (at Bisham in Berkshire) and they recently had a great rededication, of which more details and pictures here. I hope they won’t me reposting an image of the lovingly restored tombstone. There’s more about the day, the classical music that accompanied it and all that here.

Hart as portrayed in Vanity Fair in 1894

Lit Fest Time Down Shanghai Way

It’s impossible to list all the good stuff at the Shanghai International Literary Festival this March (though you can see the whole shebang of a programme here with all ticket details). Here’s a few China-related events that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog…

• Thursday 7th – 12pm – Shelly Bryant (translator of Northern Girls) and Linda Jaivin talk about translation and the issues therein
• Saturday 9th – 2pm – Michael Vatikiotis talks about SE Asian lit
• Sunday 10th – 3pm – James Fallows on Can China Make it?
• Friday 15th – 7pm – Unsavory Elements launch of ex-pat tales with various writers
• Saturday 16th – 3pm – Disappearing Shanghai with Howard French and Qiu Xiaolong