Plugging Badlands – the e-book

I have a small e-book out in Australia, New Zealand, China and Hong Kong – there’s also a limited edition about if you pop into a Dymocks in Hong Kong or the Bookworm in Beijing (and some other places including online here in Oz). It’s called The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking and includes the back stories of a lot of the witnesses that appeared briefly in Midnight in Peking – more details, pictures, maps and stories from the old Peking Badlands.

Here’s a link to a WSJ feature on the book…it’ll be out as an e-book in America and Europe/UK next March.

Shanghai 1925 – Just Like Chicago

Regular readers will know that I like to collect random examples of people comparing Shanghai to various other places – see here and here for instance. In general I have found after exhaustive study (or at least more study than anyone else I suspect) that the Americans make much more sensible comparisons than the Brits who invariably have their tongue in their cheek when they comment on such things – much to the delight of other Brits and the bemusement of everyone else. Of course, as everyone knows (except themselves perhaps), Americans lack this particular gene and so tend to only something looks like something when it does indeed look rather like it. Boring…but true and so…Shanghai like Chicago

“November 26th (1925 I think): Thanksgiving Day in Shanghai … Streetcars clang and rickshaw pullers yell … Really, except for the Chinese faces all about and the scarlet and gold shop signs, we might be in Chicago – same cold air, tall buildings, busy streets – the Bund reminds me of the lakefront. Our hotel, the Plaza, and the theatre are both modern and comfortable, our meals American” 

A rather useful comparison from Jane Sherman in  Soaring: The Diary and Letters of a Denishawn dancer in the Far East, 1925-1926

Chicago – mid-1920s

Shanghai – mid-1920s

Hanoi Metropole Developments

VinaCapital, which has a 50% stake in the historic Hanoi Metropole Hotel is up for grabs. The other 50% is owned by the Hanoi government (i.e. the Communist Party of Vietnam), which exercises all control over the business according to local law. Vietnam’s economy has, once again, been the phoenix that failed to rise and so VinaCapital wants out of its assets in the country. The question, from a heritage point of view, is what is the likely future of the Metopole? The cost to anyone will be high (US$58.7mn some say in the FT) and that’s for a stake with no real control over the development and running of the hotel.We shall see what happens.

Of course the Metropole is a gem – Charlie Chaplin and W Somerset Maugham stayed there, and of course Grahame Greene. And so, The Quiet American (1955):

“It was cold after dark in Hanoi and the lights were lower than those of Saigon, more suited to the darker clothes of the women and the fact of war. I walked up the rue Gambetta to the Pax Bar – I didn’t want to drink in the Metropole with the senior French officers, their wives and their girls, and as I reached the bar I was aware of the distant drumming of the guns out towards Hoa Binh.”

With a classic Citroen DS outside…

the famous terrace where the hacks all sat…

Sink Street – London’s “Dingy Street Inhabited by Asiatics” That Never Existed

I’ve blogged before about the old London Chinatown of Limehouse (just put ‘Limehouse’ in the search box for the site. But I’d never heard of Sink Street before – apparently a “dingy little place inhabited for the most part by Asiatics.” It appears in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, first published in 1934 and apparently also in Brideshead Revisited (though I can’t remember that reference).

Waugh describes Sink Street as being a small street just off Golden Square, near Piccadilly. The main feature of the street, apart from the Asiatics who inhabited it, was (in Waugh’s mind) The Old Hundredth which never shut, never got busted, sold liquor constantly and sounds like a lot of fun – not to mention the girls.

Of course Golden Square exists, a stone’s throw from the nightlife and entertainment centre of Piccadilly (and not far from Gerrard Street and the environs of today’s London Chinatown), but Sink Street is made up and the Old Hundredth probably an approximation of the infamous Kate Meyrick’s night-club at 43 Gerrard Street (and various other West End locations over the years).

So Sink Street sadly never existed…shame!

RAS Shanghai 4/12/12 – “For Conquest and Learning: Imperial Russia’s explorers in Central Inner and East Asia, 1860-1917”

An interesting RAS Shanghai event on Tuesday 4th December…

RAS LECTURE

Tuesday 4th December 2012 at 7.00pm – starts 7.30pm prompt

Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 XingGuo Road, Shanghai

Victor Zatsepine

“For Conquest and Learning: Imperial Russia’s explorers in Central Inner and East Asia, 1860-1917.”

This talk is about Imperial Russian explorers in China during the 19th century. They played multiple roles as the agents of Imperial Russia’s territorial expansion in Asia, as passionate scientists who studied China’s geography, ethnography and culture, and as mere adventurers. It will compare the activities of two colorful explorers, Nikolai Przhevalsky and Peter Kropotkin, who became internationally acclaimed for their contribution to geographic knowledge about Asia. They also left very different legacies: one as a xenophobe and an ardent advocate of imperial conquest, and another as a revolutionary and an anarchist.

Dr. Victor Zatsepine is a research assistant professor at the History Department, University of Hong Kong. Born in Samara (Russia), educated in Beijing, Boston and Vancouver, he is finishing a manuscript on the history of the Qing-Russian border to be published by the UBC Press. His research interests include regionalism in Chinese history, Sino-Western encounters, and the colonial built environment in China and Asia.

Entrance: RMB 80.00 (RAS members) and RMB 130.00 (non-members). Includes one dirink of 150 ml. glass of red or white wine/draft beer/soft drink/ tea or coffee. Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption.

Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RAS Monographs: Series 1 & 2 will be available for sale at this event.

Priority Booking: Members will have priority booking until 1 December 2012

To RSVP:  Please “Reply” to this email or write to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Kim Yam Road Singapore Shophouses

The relentless move of the property developers along the Singapore River has left rather a lot of souless streets and buildings around Robertson Quay. However, Kim Yam Road and its line of shophouses has been restored and a number of companies and businesses have moved in and the offices look nice. Any shophouse that survives is worth a photo I feel…

RAS Shanghai Author Anne Witchard on Lucky Cat this Saturday Talking Lao She and London

Anne Witchard, the author of the first in my series of China Monographs for the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai, will be talking about Lao She and his time in London on the excellent arts radio station Resonance 104.4 FM this Saturday with Zoe Baxter who often plays a lot of great old and new East Asian and Chinese music – they are online and usually archive the shows as podcasts too.

This Saturday I am joined in the studio by Dr Anne Witchard of the University of Westminster. Anne is the author of Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie: Limehouse Nights and the Queer Spell of Chinatown (Ashgate Publishing, 2009) and co-editor with Lawrence Phillips of London Gothic: Place, Space and the Gothic Imagination(Continuum, 2010).

I will be talking to Anne about her latest book >Lao She in London (Hong Kong University Press 2012) which details the time Chinese writer Lao She spent in london in the 1920s. The book reveals Lao She’s encounter with British high modernism and literature from Dickens to Conrad to Joyce as well as his tiem spent in the notorious and much sensationalised East End Chinatown of Limehouse.

Along with her colleague Dr Diana Yeh, Anne has headed up the AHRC funded reserach prject Translating China which has hosted a number of workshops, discusssiona and events.

China in Britain #4 Aesthetics: Visual and Literary Cultures is on Saturday Dec 8th 2012 – Time 9:30:AM – 4:00PM. Entrance is free but booking is essential. For more information see: http://translatingchina.info/ This will be the last episode in Series 7 of Lucky Cat on Resonance 104.4FM.

Old Shanghai Settlement Boundary Stone Uncovered (Partially)

My thanks to James Bollen for this picture of a recently uncovered old boundary stone that marked the northern edges of the International Settlement. James spotted it up on  Qufu Road/Tibet North Road (formerly Alabaster Road and Thibet Road North) where some longtangs are currently being demolished (ho hum!).Afraid I don’t know much about boundary stones so any info or guidance much appreciated – I think the Chinese character is sui, meaning to satisfy or fulfil, and by extension fulfilment. However, it appears there is another character underneath buried by the rubbish?

Any help much appreciated

No idea what will happen to the stone – a bit heavy and fixed to “liberate” so will probably get smashed soon…