Ballad of a Small Player on Netflix, 29/10/25

November 2 – Beijing – The Midnight in Peking Walking Tour with Paul French and WildChina

It’s on, with me leading the tour, this coming November 2…..

Email WildChina Travel directly at info@wildchina.com and specify “MiP tour on November 2nd”

A Waxy Deng and Thatcher from 1982

Somewhat weird wax figures of Deng Xiaoping and Thatcher depicting their meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in September 1982 when they discussed the return of Hong Kong. The figures were produced by Pang Liming and Ai Desheng of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and went on display in Beijing and at the Hong Kong Museum of History.

Eileen Chang’s The Repulse Bay: Love, Upheaval, and the Beauty of Fragility – 1 October 2025 – 1 March 2026, Repulse Bay, Hong Kong

1 October 2025 – 1 March 2026

12pm – 7pm

G203B, The Repulse Bay Arcade

Standard – HK$40/person, Concession – HK$20/person

As an iconic heritage, the original Repulse Bay Hotel has long been a favourite destination for celebrities and socialites. This year, in honour of the 30th anniversary of Eileen Chang’s passing, The Repulse Bay is proud to announce the launch of Eileen Chang’s The Repulse Bay: Love, Upheaval, and the Beauty of Fragility, an immersive exhibition tracing the acclaimed author’s profound connection to Hong Kong and this landmark. Running from 1 October 2025 to 1 March 2026, the exhibition invites visitors to journey through the intriguing history of former Repulse Bay Hotel and the literary genius of Chang, revealing how her experiences amid the turmoil of war inspired her modern Chinese literature and enduring works.

The exhibition showcases an array of important artefacts and memorabilia, including a 1941 hotel menu, evocative photographs, and previously unreleased materials that highlight the hotel’s timeless elegance. Also on display are replicas of Eileen Chang’s original manuscripts and letters, on loan from the Hong Kong Metropolitan University. These precious exhibits offer intimate insights into how the hotel sparked Chang’s explorations of longing and the delicate beauty of a vanishing world.

Her Lotus Year: Wallis Great Peking Love Affair

Wallis’ grand love affair in Peking was with Italian naval officer Alberto de Zara. She mentions him obliquely in her memoirs, but in his 1949 autobiography (Pelle D’Ammiraglio – Skin of an Admiral) da Zara fondly recalls Wallis and their summer together in 1925…. It’s never been translated into English….

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…

When Captain Silvares Shot Mrs Silvares (& her lover) in Hong Kong, April 1924

On April 12,1924 Captain Silvares of the Portuguese army in Macao shot his wife, Mrs Silvares and a certain Lieutenant Sequeira, a fellow Portuguese army officer, in Hong Kong. Here’s what happened….

Captain Silvares came across to Hong Kong from Macao. His wife had sailed across a couple of days before. They were to have a little weekend break from his army duties in the Portuguese colony in the neighbouring British colony. But somehow Silvares found out that his wife had had supper that evening with a colleague of his Lieutenant Costa Sequeira, in Hong Kong to catch a liner to Europe and redeployment back in Portugal.

The couple had gone out to the famously romantic spot of the Repulse Bay Hotel for supper and, who knows, perhaps more? Moonlight across the bay, the gentle lapping of waves, a decent wine list, some rather comfortable rooms…

Discovering them together Silvera was, not unsurprisingly angry. In the ensuing argument Silvera shot both his wife and Sequeira, wounding them requiring a trip to the hospital. Silvera was arrested by the Hong Kong Police. All pretty obvious you might think – Mrs Silversa indulging a little bit of exmarital fun with Lieutenant Sequeira; her hsuabnd catches her, flies into a rage and attempts to shoot the pair of them dead? Case closed.

But it seems the British wanted nothing to do with a Portuguese menage-a-trois or unseemly Latin crimes de coeur. Sequeira was released and allowed to board his liner to Europe and go about his business (his arm in a sling) while Captain and Mrs Silvares were escorted to the dock, put on the next ferry to Macao and told to not return to Hong Kong anytime soon. The police recorded it all as an unfortunate ‘accidental discharge’ of Silvare’s pistol in an enclosed space leading to some minor wounding. Potentially tricky inter-colony problem solved.

Yea, right…. I’ve not been able to find what eventually happened to the Silvares’, their marriage or Sequeira but I think we can safely assume ‘accidental discharge’ was the least of the rpoblems at repulse Bay that evening in 1924.

Another Kowloon Art Deco Gem – 179 Prince Edward Road West

I’ve blogged before about the well maintained cluster of art deco apartments and shops at 190-204 and 210-212 Prince Edward Road West. I’ve also written about this areas modernist and art deco traditions for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine (here) and I also include 190-204 and 210-212 Prince Edward Road West on my Voicemap walking tour of art deco Kowloon.

But I’d also like to mention the smaller art deco building further towards Mongkok East at 179 Prince Edward Road West by the junction with Nullah Road. It too has been quite well maintained with the restored façade in front of a 20-storey rear extension and the creation of a boutique hotel (Hotel 1936).

Given the similarity in style between the two buuildings quite close to each other I think we can assume 179 was, like 190-204 and 210-212 Price Edward Road West a project of the Franco-Belgian developer Crédit Foncier d’Extrême-Orient, who also built St Teresa’s Church nearby.

Writing Home: Selected World War II Letters of Leslie A. Fiedler

Writing Home: Selected World War II Letters of Leslie A. Fiedler (State University of New York Press) contains a large number of utterly fascinating letters from China. These are all letters written by Leslie Fiedler to his wife Margaret from May 1944 to December 1945 while he was stationed around Asia and in China as an intelligence officer during World War II.

The letters in Writing Home offer a glimpse into a crucially formative period in the life of Leslie A. Fiedler, one of the greatest literary critics and American public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Written to his wife and two sons between May 1944 and December 1945, while he was serving as a cryptologist and translator for the Office of Naval Intelligence, they contain firsthand accounts of his experiences in various locations in the Pacific Theater, including Hawai’i, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guam, and China. Constrained by Navy censors from writing directly about his work as an intelligence officer, he writes, instead, on a variety of themes, events, places, and war situations, including the ethical contradictions between a war fought for and in the name of freedom on the one hand and the oppression of indigenous Hawai’ians and prisoners of war on the other. He also questions the mainstream, European-centered view of the war and provides new insights into the role of Jewish servicemen in World War II. Finally, the letters document the beginning of the formation of American intellectual life in the years preceding the Cold War, forcing us to rethink certain premises of American exceptionalism in the second half of the twentieth century. Taken together, they offer a unique and fascinating immersion into history through the eyes of one of the makers of post–World War II American literary culture.