All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Should really just note in a rather ghastly act of self-promotion that Midnight in Peking has just been nominated for an Edgar award in America, the awards of the Mystery Writers of America. I believe that the winners are announced in May. All very flattering and much appreciated….would obviously love to possess an Edgar!
A selection of the non-fiction I read and appreciated in the second half of last year – not exhaustive and not all necessarily published in 2012 (but within the recent past at least)…
HHhH – Laurent Binet – a tour de force as the French would say (and fitting as Binet is French) – the idea of weaving Binet’s investigation and recreation of the assassination of Heydrich in Prague with his own mixed feelings doing the research.
Death in the City of Light: The True Story of the Serial Killer Who Terrorised Wartime Paris – David King – a re-telling of the case of Marcel Petiot who was a serial killer in occupied Paris during the war. This is a little known story (at least on the English side of the Channel) and horrific.
A Dance with the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking’s Foreign Colony – Julia Boyd – Boyd’s telling of the lives and quirks of the foreigners that inhabited old Peking is fun and romps along at a pace – a great overview of a lost world that obviously appealed to me!!
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum – Katherine Boo – a rather lyrical account of the slums of Mumbai. What is fascinating is the micro worlds that exist in the slums – small business, entrepreneurs both business an social – but at the end it is the unremitting despair and obstacles people face that comes through. Certainly the best book on Mumbai since Sukehtu Mehta’s brilliant Maximum City (and on, how many writers wish they’d got to that title first!!)
Ian Fleming’s Commados: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WW2 – Nicholas Rankin – Britain remains in the midst of a prolonged bout of Fleming mania at the moment. And a good thing too, Fleming, Bond and all that is terrific. But Fleming’s wartime exploits are also amazing and worth covering and done well by Rankin. Worth noting here a short biography of one of Fleming’s fellow authors turned espionage experts Tina Roseberg’s D For Deception about the wartime experiences of Dennis Wheatley.
Nancy Mitford – Selina Hastings – originally published in 2010 but just out in Kindle edition so worth noting. Hastings is, for my money, the best biographer working today (see her Somerset Maugham bio) and this bio of Nancy Mitford is no disappointment either. Hastings places Nancy wonderfully within the mad Mitford world and explains the depth to what are often seen as her ephemeral novels. A cut above the usual fare that populates the Mitford Sisters publishing machine that continues.
Voodoo Histories – David Aaronovitch – useful rendition of the ridiculous theories around everything from 911 to Monroe to Diana to Hilda Murrell and David Kelly. The problem of course is the same as Hitch had with God is not Great – Aaronovitch expertly reveals the ridiculousness of conspiracy theory “arguments” and the possible delusions and delusional behind them but to those of us who reject conspiracy theorists and nonsense like God these books just confirm what we know. I fear they don’t persuade the delusional conspiracy theorists or the superstitious believers sadly.
The Secret Life of France – Lucy Wadham – OK, so I know a bit more about the French than I did before this book – their odd approach to sex, their complete lack of a sense of humour beyond that of a British 7 year old….but still they remain a mystery to me over there on that side of the Channel. Weirdos, the lot of ’em.
The editors of three literary journals – Asymptote,  Chutzpah! and Pathlight – come together to discuss their role mediating between non-Chinese readers and the latest crop of Chinese writers, specifically through presenting Chinese works in translation.
Join Asymptote, an online journal of literature from around the globe, as it prepares to celebrate its second anniversary with a launch event in Beijing.
Just as a quick follow up – I mentioned the The Shanghai Emporium in a post on the Shanghai Restaurant’s Cookery Book the other day – both the restaurant and Emproium were in London’s Greek Street, down in Soho. It seems the restaurant ran a food store selling Chinese goods on the same street in the 1930s and also advertised it in its branded cookery book. The ad below
BTW: 6 Greek Street today is still food-related by, perhaps in a sign of the changing foodie times in London, is now Le Bavoir Restaurant, described as “Modern European with Moroccan and Lebanese Influences.” (i.e. tagine with a knife and fork) – picture of the building today below…just a few doors down from the rather well known Gay Hussar restaurant, a surviving Soho institution.
Searching round the other day for Thomas Burke covers (see my China Rhyming tumblr post) I came across an interesting e-book publisher, PlanetMonk Books. They’ve reissued several of Burke’s works (for just a dollar or so) including Limehouse Nights and The Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse. Anyone interested in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century will find this a great list – I’ll put the Burke covers below plus a wonderful Chonoiserie inspired cover for Compton Mackenzie’s Carnival (1912). Thought these worth a plug…
  RAS SHANGHAI WEEKENDER
 on Â
Alexander Wylie 1815-1887,
“Scottish Shanghailander:
Missionary, Man of Letters, Mathematician”
Saturday 12th January 2013
4pm for 4.30pm start
RAS Library at the Sino-British College
1195 Fuxing Zhong Lu
 
Alexander Wylie was one of the leading members of a unique concentration of Missionary Scholars and Translators who lived and worked in Shanghai in the second half of the 19th Century. He was one of the founders of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS) later a Vice President and finally an Honorary Member. Wylie was also a key figure in the development of the NCBRAS Library and his collection of nearly 800 volumes helped to make this library one of the finest in Asia. In addition The Wylie Collection forms the cornerstone of the Bodleian Library’s China Collection at Oxford.
Originally hired as a printer for the London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai, Wylie is a scholar still extensively cited today in the fields of missionary history, archaeology, astronomy, numismatics and pre-modern Chinese literature. He also produced major annotated bibliographic publications. However, his most remarkable contributions related to the fields of mathematics and the history of mathematics. Wylie was the first translator into Chinese of the last nine volumes of Euclid, Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and Calculus. He also, by a series of remarkable articles, showed, that the conventional wisdom that China had no significant achievement in mathematics until after the Jesuits, was wrong and that pre-modern Chinese mathematics was on a par and even developed certain mathematical techniques that preceded Europe by hundreds of years.
Despite all these achievements and despite being cited widely in all these fields, there is no major article or journal about this outstanding scholar in English. There is however, a significant and growing literature in Chinese where he is rightly regarded as one of the fathers of Chinese mathematics and the history of Chinese mathematics.
Professor Ian Gow, OBE is Executive President of the Sino-British University College in Shanghai – a major joint venture between nine UK universities and the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. He was the Founding Provost of China’s first independent foreign university campus since the reopening of China, the multi-award winning University of Nottingham, Ningbo. Professor Gow has held numerous senior executive positions in UK higher education and has served as a Vice President (pro-Vice Chancellor) of four UK universities (Stirling, Sheffield, Nottingham and the West of England). He was awarded the OBE for his services to UK Higher Education in China and also holds awards from Ningbo City and Zhejiang Provincial Government for his contributions in education. He is an internationally recognized East Asia specialist with a PhD in Japanese Studies and has published extensively on Japanese politics and international relations.
RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.
PRIORITY BOOKING for Members until Thursday 10th January 2013
ENTRANCE: 30 rmb (RAS members) and 80 rmb (non-members). Includes one drink
MEMBERSHIP applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.
RAS MONOGRAPHS – Series 1 & 2 will be available for sale at this event. 100 rmb each (cash sale only)
WEBSITE: www.royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
Departing India today so, diverting from China a wee bit, here’s some then and nows of my rather Victorian inspired hangouts for the last few weeks….
Elphinstone Circle then…
Elphinstone Circle now…
Bombay GPO then…
Bombay GPO now…
St Thomas’s Cathedral then…
St Thomas’s Cathedral now…
Bombay Town Hall (and Royal Asiatic Society) then…
and now…(just the Asiatic Society these days – they dropped the “Royal”)
the Taj Hotel then…
and the Taj now with a ton of security…
Bargains, bargains, bargains…roll up, roll up and get yourself a deal people. Amazon.co.uk are having their new year sale and they’ve got (topical for many after the gut busting Xmas lunches) our book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation for under two quid – that’s less than a Happy Meal at McJunk, cheaper than fried chicken at KFCrap or even an over -sweet, over fatty coffee at Starcraps…how can you resist a treat like that? – for the same price as a couple of Snickers bars, a cheap Tesco Ready Meal, half a dozen deep fried youtiao on the street (though we admit those are really good!!) and certainly less than a kebab on the way home tonight (should you be reading this in North London).
All that knowledge, all those years of research, thought and pounding the streets of China on your behalf for just under two quid!! What can you get from McKinsey for two quid, PWC, some research company that turned up three weeks ago and claims to be able “get inside” China, some shonky consultancy that was set up last weekend by two MBAs who don’t even shave yet (we didn’t name one as they’re so many to choose from)? Some supposed “China Hand” in London or New York who last went to Shanghai when Pudong was paddy fields? Nothing, niche, nada – but we are offering a combined 55 years (or thereabouts) of hard fought China experience for one pound 79p – a bargain the like of which you will never see again!!
