RAS SHANGHAI WEEKENDER – Ian Gow on “Scottish Shanghailander” Alexander Wylie – 12/1/13

  RAS SHANGHAI WEEKENDER

 on  

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.org.cn

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

Some Bombay Then and Now

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…

Fat China for under two quid at the Amazon.co.uk New Year sale

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!!

January 8 1937- The Fox Tower – Eastern Peking: The 76th Anniversary of the Murder of Pamela Werner

Just before dawn on January 8th 1937 in the wasteland in front of the ancient Fox tower the body of a young woman, lying at an odd angle and covered by a layer of frost. Her clothing was dishevelled, her body badly mutilated. On her wrist was an expensive watch that had stopped just after midnight. It was the morning after the Russian Christmas, which was thirteen days after the Western Christmas by the old Julian calendar, and the corpse belonged to nineteen-year-old Pamela Werner, an Englishwoman who’d been born and raised in Peking. When news of her murder broke it sent waves of fear through the city’s already nervous foreign community fearing the chaos and barbarism of a Japanese invasion of Peking.

76 years ago today….

John Garnaut on The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo – Shanghai FCC 10/1/13

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club Presents

 

‘The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo’

John Garnaut, China Correspondent and Author

Venue: TBD, Puxi

Thursday, Jan. 10th 2013

Time: 4:00 p.m. 

Admission: members free; non-members 50 RMB

RSVP: fcc.sfcc@gmail.com

About the speaker:
John Garnaut is The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s China correspondent. He graduated in law and arts from Monash University and worked for three years as a commercial lawyer. In 2002 John was appointed the Herald’s Economics Correspondent in the Canberra press gallery and in 2007 was posted to Beijing as the Asia Economics Correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. John has won the prestigious Walkley Award for “scoop of the year” in 2009 and was a finalist in the Graham Perkins Australian Journalist of the Year award in 2010. He is the author of “The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo” (2012).

A Comparing China Reversal – Li Hung Chang on Broadway as Hatamen Street

I’ve posted a number of times on “Comparing China” – cases where foreigners compared parts of China to parts of their home countries. The Brits are by far the most prolific and loopy at this but the Americans liked to give it a go too occasionally. See here for some examples from the likes of Jules Verne, Peter Fleming, Somerset Maugham, Auden etc etc.

So lets twist it around for a change – how about a Chinese doing a “comparing China” while travelling overseas? Why not indeed and so here no lesser a great Chinaman than Li Hung-Chang (Hongzhang, however you like it), leading self-strengthener, elder statesman of the Qing Dynasty, the man who quelled several major rebellions and served in important positions of the Imperial Court, including the premier viceroyalty of Zhili. He travelled to America in 1896 (and the picture below was also taken that year). And so this from The Memoirs of Li Hung Chang (1913 – Houghton Mifflin, NYC)

“In New York their principal street is called Broadway, when it is not broad  at all, but narrow, as thoroughfares go in this coun-  try. I think it is not as wide as the Hatemen Road  in Peking; but with its buildings it makes me think  of the Si-kiang River at Sin-chow, with its tremen-  dous depths and high banks. But Broadway leads  the universe for business, and ‘Business’ is the key-  note of progress to-day. In America, especially,  everything is ‘Business,’ even to the art of writing.  Nobody in the United States writes for the mere love  of the work. No, the most immortal poem or the  greatest tale of true love and heroism must be paid  for before the writers will let their manuscripts out  of their hands. It is wonderful to think that if I had  been paid even a tael for each full page I have written  I should be almost a millionaire!”

Broadway, Manhattan – 1890s

Hateman Road (or more usually Hataman Street), Peking – 1890s

The Chinese Children Next Door – Pearl Buck

Pearl Buck’s The Chinese Children Next Door, was about a family of six little girls totally overshadowed and enslaved by the seventh child, a baby brother.The book was first published in 1942 (I think) and sold very well – below are a selection of covers including an early recorded version on vinyl (kind of Audible.com for the 1950s!).

Sorry – Just one more comment on Chinese Restaurants in London – circa 1915

Just one more sneaky little post on Chinese restaurants in London (following these recent ones – here, here and here) – this from Thomas Burke’s Nights in Town: A London Autobiography originally published in 1915 ( just before his perhaps better known (at least to people interested in London’s Chinese community) Limehouse Nights in 1916) on going out for a Chinese in Limehouse just before World War One. My thanks to Anne Witchard for this – who is of course the author of the definitive work on Burke, Limehouse and Chinoiserie in this period – Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie. This from the chapter A Chinese Night:

Mr. Sam Tai Ling keeps a restaurant, and, some years ago, when my ways were cast about West India Dock Road, I knew him well. He was an old man then; he is an old man now: the same age, I fancy. Supper with him is something to remember — I use the phrase carefully. You will find, after supper, that sodamints and potass water are more than grateful and comforting. When we entered he came forward at once, and, such was his Celestial courtesy that, although we had recently dined, to refuse supper was impossible. He supped with us himself in the little upper room, lit by gas, and decorated with bead curtains and English Christmas-number supplements. A few oily seamen were manipulating the chop-sticks and thrusting food to their mouths with a noise that, on a clear night, I should think, could be heard as far as Shadwell. When honourable guests were seated, honourable guests were served by Mr. Tai Ling. There were noodle, shark’s fins, chop suey, and very much fish and duck,  and lychee fruits. The first dish consisted of something that resembled a Cornish pasty — chopped fish and onion and strange meats mixed together and heavily spiced, encased in  a light flour-paste. Then followed a plate of noodle, some bitter melon, and finally a pot of  China tea prepared on the table: real China  tea, remember, all-same Shantung; not the backwash of the name which is served in Piccadilly tea-shops. The tea is carefully prepared by one who evidently loves his work, and is  served in little cups, without milk or sugar, but flavoured with chrysanthemum buds.  As our meal progressed, the cafe began to  fill; and the air bubbled with the rush of labial talk from the Celestial company. We were the only white things there. All the company was yellow, with one or two tan-skinned girls.