Perhaps the Grandest Chinoiserie Party Ever – Paris, 1923

A strong candidate for the best Chinoiserie party ever? La Bal du Grand Prix in 1923 held at the Paris Opera. The creative director was Jean Gabriel Doumergue, it was the last event of the Paris season on the eve of the Grand Prix of the Longchamps racing meeting. Doumergue opted for the theme of the Far East in the 18^th century – tout Paris turned out in Chinoiserie costumes that linked Imperial China to the court of Versailles (after all Marie Antoinette was apparently fascinated by China and loved the Chinese tea the Chinese Emperor sent her). The staircase and walls were draped in black velvet to symbolise a night in the East – it then got a bit confused with Rajahs and Nautch girls mixed in with Chinese style ladies, Eunuchs and  the court of Versaillies and Louis XV with the ladies carried in by black men in African costume (further confusing things somewhat). Replica Indian and Chinese treasures were paraded through the venue and the final tableau, devised by Doumergue, was of the flora and birds of the Orient followed by floral cascades of chrysanthemums, orchids, pagodas, porcelain bridges, parasols, roses and water fountains. Women gilded their eyes to appear Chinese and painted their finger nails vermillion – at 2am a band came on and everyone fox-trotted till dawn. Bet that beats the last party you went to!

Jean Rhys Goes for a Chinese (and an Indonesian) in 1930s Paris

References to Chinese restaurants and food in literature again. Regular readers will remember that this debate was originally sparked by reference in the first series of excellent TV show The Hour (set in 1950s Britain among BBC types) to the staff “going for a Chinese” – see my post on that here. Was this a phrase used in 1950s London? The jury still appears to be out on that – some respondents have said yes, some no, but we’ve not found a literary reference despite some close ones. 1930s British literature has a number of references to eating Chinese food (see my post of Eric Ambler here) and I came across another recently worthy of mentioning (at least on this blog where such things are seen as highly merited).

I happen to be reading a lot of Jean Rhys (below) at the moment and am discovering her earlier works from the 1930s, rather than the better known post-war stuff. All very pleasurable. Good Morning, Midnight (published 1939 but dealing with the earlier 1930s) is set in Paris among the city’s transient shop girls and refugee floating population on, or pretty near, the breadline. Rhys’s heroine (sort of) Sophia Jansen is an English girl adrift in Paris working boring shop jobs, meeting all manner of men and sinking into the drink. She does however like a Chinese – and is keen to have lunch at the Pékin Restaurant.

More revealing is her trip to a café specialising in Indonesian food – somewhere behind the Halles that caters to workmen who need somewhere to get a drink, eat and maybe catch some sleep. She finds the café taken over by a Dutchman and, though the décor is still English pub (it has been such an establishment previously) the menu is now Javanese. The place attracts some Parisian Chinese and we get a little idea what a menu inspired by a man from the Dutch East Indies is like and how much it cost in French Francs:

Spécialitiés Javanaises (par personne, indivisibles)

Rystafel complet (16 plats), 25.00

Rystafel petit (10 plats), 17.50

Nassi Goreng, 12.50

The menu is apparently rather amusing featuring cartoons of the struggling colonial Dutchman’s lament in the East Indies, “send more money, send more money”.

Talking of Josephine Baker – Shuffle Along’s Oriental Blues

Apropos of yesterday’s Josephine Baker post Shuffle Along was an all-black show that the young Josephine Baker was involved in in America in 1921 (as part of the road company) before her life and career transformed with her move to Paris in 1925. It was put together by Eubie Blake (below) the composer and Noble Sissel, the lyricist. It was basically a mash up of musical hall type songs loosely linked together with traditional “plantation” type scenes but also one inspired by some Oriental costumes called the “Oriental Blues”.

Oriental Blues has been rather forgotten particularly in the wake of the show’s stand out hit number “I’m Just Wild About Harry” which many of us can still sign the words to and seem to have absorbed by osmosis somehow (probably due to its long afterlife as Harry Truman’s campaign song).

It seems that Oriental Blues was sandwiched into the show as it happened the company has somehow come into possession of a lot of Chinese costumes and so thought they should use them somehow. there’s a video of someone playing Oriental Blues here.

Josephine Baker and her Indo-Chinoiserie

Regular readers of this blog will know that I often opt for posting on some quite obscure aspects of Chinoiserie. Today is such a day. With the prospect of a couple of days in Paris I thought a biography of Josephine Baker (and I’d recommend Phyllis Rose’s Jazz Cleopatra – Josephine Baker in Her Time) would make a good reading accompaniment; I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by Baker and the impact she had on France, Paris and the Folies-Bergére. Baker was to visit many places – all across Europe, North and South America, Cuba and North Africa of course entertaining Free French and Allied troops. But she never made it to the Far East – imagine Josephine Baker live in 1930s Shanghai!! But sadly it never happened.

However, there are a few Chinoiserie and Indo-Chinoiserie aspects about Baker. On her post-war American tours she did occasionally forgo her trademark short slicked down hair and kiss curl and made her hair up in a pastiche of an oriental Manchu style. But her occasional interest in things oriental had earlier roots. After making a lot of money since her arrival in Paris from St Louis in 1925 she bought a lovely house called Beau-Chêne in the Parisian suburb of Le Vésinet. She decorated the room in sumptuous style including a Chinese-themed East India room complete with temple rooms.

Baker of course became best known for her song J’ai Deux Amours (I have two loves) but before that her most famous song, first sung in a Paris revue in 1930, was La Petit Tonkinoise, the little girl from Tonkin, a song where Baker played a Vietnamese girl – it was a classic piece of Indo-Chinoiserie about a young Vietnamese girl falling in love with a French colonial planter.

The song was actually old – originally from 1905 and had been written for the music hall artiste Polin, but Baker made it her own in the 1930s. The lyrics in English below – a video of the song here.

It is I who am his little
His Anana his Anana his Anammite
I’m alive, I’m charming
Like a little singing z’oiseau
He calls me his bourgeois p’tite
His Tonkiki his Tonkiki his Tonkinese
Others make it the sweet eyes
But it’s me he loves best

The evening is due to a lot of things
Before starting to pile
I learn geography
In China and Manchuria
The boundaries, rivers
The Yellow River and Yangtze River
There’s even Love is strange
Watered by the Middle Kingdom

It is I who am his little
His Anana his Anana his Anammite
I’m alive, I’m charming
Like a little bird that sings
He calls me his bourgeois p’tite
His Tonkiki his Tonkiki his Tonkinese
Others make it the sweet eyes
But it’s me he loves best.

Rosemary Manning’s The Chinese Garden with a cover by Germano Facetti

Browsing in the wonderful Heyward Hill bookshop the other day (where Nancy Mitford worked through the Blitz) with a friend and we came across this book from 1962, The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning, best known for her popular Dragon series of children’s books. It’s actually a story about an English girls school but the cover is by Germano Facetti – he is more interesting than the book – Facetti was head designer at the veritable house of Penguin where he changed the traditional look of Penguin books. As a teenager he was forced to spend time in Nazi deathcamp for being in the Italian anti-fascist resistance. Here’s his obituary.

Hong Kong Yesterday – Fan Ho

Apparently this beautiful book is available on in a limited edition of 100 from ModernBooks – Fan Ho’s Hong Kong Yesterday, but even a look a few pictures on line is worthwhile as they are superb. I think there is a non-limited edition too.

According to the publishers –

Also available, a LIMITED EDITION of 100 books in a matching slipcase,

with a signed and matted 8 x10 inch print, Controversy –

(Please note that over 60% of the LIMITED EDITION has already been pre-purchased.  Very limited quantity.)

Introduction by John A. Bennette

Afterword by Mark Pinsukanjana and Bryan Yedinak

Port Arthur in the Snow

In a bit of a rush today due to heavy snow in the UK…so here’s a picture of snow in Port Arthur (Lushun)….

A Few More Early Chinese Cookbooks

Yesterday’s post on the Shanghai Restaurant’s cook book from 1936 got me thinking about other early Chinese cookery books in English…so here’s a few (I’m sure there’s loads more but these ones grabbed my attention for one reason or another)….

Chinese Cook Book by Shiu Wong Chan published by Frederick A. Stokes of New York, 1917. Contains Chinese recipes adapted for the American kitchen, with transliterations of names and also with Chinese characters. Recipes include Salt Chicken, Fried Noodles, Potato Pork, and Duck Chop Suey.

The Chop Suey Cook Book was published by the How Long Publishing Co. in 1924 in New York…

The great author and intellectual Lin Yutang published three cookery books – this one, Cooking with the Chinese Flavour, in 1958 in America – with his wife Lin Tsui Feng and daughter Lin Hsiang Ju. Dr. Lin wrote introductions which explained the historical background and relevance for American life.

The Nanking Cook Book was published by the American Red Cross  in 1940 as a reprint of the Book of Recipes for the Use of Chinese Foodstuffs, originally published in Shanghai by the Presbyterian Mission Press in 1924 and contains a mix of English and Chinese dishes.